by John McCormick and Rick Pearson, updated
JOHNSTON, Iowa – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said Friday that if he fails to win the Iowa caucuses it will not be because he is a black man.
Asked whether he is getting a fair hearing in a state that is heavily white, Obama said during the taping of an influential, statewide public affairs program that he was.
“I am getting a fair hearing and I will get a fair hearing and I think we are going to win this place,” he said during the taping of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press.” “You have people who are less concerned about race and much more concerned about ‘Is this somebody who is really going to be fighting for me?'”
David Yepsen of The Des Moines Register, the state’s most influential political columnist, then sought to further clarify.
“If you don’t do well in the caucuses, we’re not going to hear David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and all your spinners telling us, ‘Well, Barack Obama didn’t do well in Iowa because it’s a lily white state,'” Yepsen asked, referring to Obama’s top strategist and communications director.
“No,” Obama said. “We have invested in Iowa. I have been campaigning in Iowa. We expect to do well in Iowa.”
Obama said he believes the nation is ready to elect a black man president, a notion he said he bases on his own experience in Illinois.
“I heard this when I was running for the U.S. Senate. Illinois is 12 percent African-American. It’s not a majority African-American state or even a substantial plurality African-American state,” he said. “People said there’s no way folks Downstate are going to vote for you. And Downstate Illinois is pretty similar to Iowa, culturally and demographically. We ended up winning that primary by 20 points. We won the white vote, we won the rural vote, we won the farmer vote. There wasn’t a vote we didn’t win against strong candidates, one who spent $30 million dollars and another who was the sitting state comptroller.”
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But Obama’s logic may be somewhat faulty. A review of 2004 U.S. Senate primary vote totals show Obama, with few exceptions, lost virtually every large county outside the Chicago metropolitan area. He won Champaign County and barely Sangamon County, but lost Peoria County, Madison County, Rock Island County and St. Clair County. In essence, it was the Chicago area that got him nominated, not Downstate voters.
Obama said he believes Iowa will “set the tone for a lot of what happens” in the nomination process. He said it is not enough to run “old textbook campaigns of the past” and that he is trying to offer voters “change they can believe in.”
Asked if he can win Iowa, Obama had no hesitation.
“Oh, absolutely, I don’t think there is any doubt that we are doing extraordinary well,” he said. “We are clearly in a horse race with Senator Clinton and Senator Edwards and we have a great organization on the ground.”
Then, Mike Glover of The Associated Press asked whether Obama could survive a loss in Iowa.
“We can do well and not necessarily win, and still continue on to the other states,” Obama said. “But we intend to do very well in this state.”
Obama said Democrats should nominate him because he can appeal to people across party lines.
“The polls and surveys show that I am able to appeal to Republicans and independents in a way that none of the other nominees can,” he said. “And that means we can wide the field….We can win, I think, in suburban areas. We can win in states like Virginia.”
Although he often attracts many potential young voters to his events, Obama said his campaign is not depending on the group to actually turn out. The Des Moines Register’s polling, for example, shows that those under 25 represent only about 2 percent of likely caucus participants.
“We’re not banking on young voters,” he said. “We’re going after the traditional Iowa caucus-goer.”
But Obama said he suspects this election may be different.
“Young people recognize the big challenges that are coming up,” he said. “They are going to be more motivated than they have been in the past.”
Earlier in the morning, Obama met with eight women for a round-table discussion at a public library in Des Moines. With about three times that many reporters and photographers looking on, the group discussed issues faced by working and retired women for about 40 minutes.