Barack explains how he came to a decision to oppose the Iraq War in 2002 during a sit-down with the Des Moines Register editorial board on Monday, June 18…

Even Bill Clinton can’t halt the Obama show
Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingdom
… will carry Bill and Hillary Clinton in one direction across the state, venue of the all-important first primary caucuses, while Barack Obama, …

Bill Clinton was undoubtedly the master of what Americans call "retail politics" - typified by campaigning in Iowa - during the television age. But this is now the internet age and Mr Obama is already the hero of the YouTube generation that gets its news and organises much of its social activities via the internet. As of yesterday, the Illinois senator had 97,954 "friends" registered on the networking site Facebook, nearly five times as many as Mrs Clinton.

Among many Democrats, there is the gnawing fear that Hillary Clinton remains too divisive and shrill a figure to be elected president. Polls, moreover, show a pervasive dissatisfaction, bordering on disgust, with all politicians in Washington, where Mrs Clinton has been for the past decade and a half.

Mr Obama, who has the rare, uncanny knack of being almost impossible to dislike, has been in the American capital for barely two years. His campaign manager speaks of an "enthusiasm gap" that he enjoys over Mrs Clinton.

Americans are cynical about politicians, deeply fearful about the future and bracing themselves for defeat in Iraq. In these strange times, the "experience gap" the Clintons are highlighting as they tour Iowa this week may work in Mr Obama’s favour, if the yearning for something truly different trumps deference and respect for a proven track record.

Obama kicks off Fourth of July tour
DesMoinesRegister.com - Des Moines,IA,USA
Fifteen minutes was all it took to persuade Sylvia Mills-Echols to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. …

Fifteen minutes was all it took to persuade Sylvia Mills-Echols to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, started his Fourth of July tour through Iowa on Tuesday by standing on a vintage pickup truck festooned with flag bunting on the playground of Hawthorne Elementary School in Keokuk.

A crowd of about 300 people cheered during Obama’s short speech, which focused on uniting Americans behind the goals of withdrawing troops from Iraq, providing universal health care and improving education funding.

"I wasn’t a supporter until today," said Mills-Echols, 54, a teacher from Keokuk.

Obama’s Newcomer Appeal Helps Capture Hearts of Internet Donors
Bloomberg - USA
This year, Barack Obama is picking up where Howard Dean and John McCain left off. Illinois’s Democratic senator raised $10.3 million online in the last …

Obama has raised more online than some of his rivals, such as New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Senators Christopher Dodd and Joseph Biden, have raised from all sources combined.

While neither McCain nor Dean, Obama’s predecessors as online favorites, won their parties’ nominations, rapid changes in technology make comparisons between elections difficult, Corrado said. The rise of social-networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook gives Obama access to more organizing and mobilization tools than McCain and Dean had.

"The campaign is now very conscious of starting to translate that support into votes,'’ Corrado said.

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