Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama made his final pitch to the Johnson County faithful by espousing hope and taking a few embedded jabs at his critics, namely the Clintons. Obama came out swinging at those who question his experience to be the next president. “Experience is important, but there is the wrong kind of experience and the right kind of experience,” Obama told a overflow crowd of more than a thousand people crammed into a ballroom at the Marriott Hotel in Coralville.


“My experience is working in the real lives of real people, and I will bring real results if we have the courage to bring about change,” Obama said. “I’ll have to admit that these are not my words, but Bill Clinton’s words when he was running for president in 1992. Bill Clinton was right then, and Barack Obama is right now.”

For the most part, Obama was preaching to the choir, but he wasted no time pitching for caucus goers’ support while simultaneously debunking the pundits who question his supporters’ follow-through on caucus night. “The pundits have said that students and independents aren’t going to show up and caucus,” Obama said. “Are we going to prove them wrong?”Obama asked for a show of hands of undecided voters in the crowd, and roughly 50 people raised their hands. “My job here today is to be so persuasive that a light bulb will go on over your head and a beam of light will shine down on you,” Obama said. “You will have an epiphany that you will have to vote for Barack.”

“But if you are not going to caucus for me, then still caucus for someone,” Obama plead to the undecided voters. “I know that some of you committed to someone four or five months ago and now you’re regretting it, wishing now that you would have chosen to caucus for Barack Obama,” he joked. “I understand that, but make me your second choice.”

Shawn Noble, an Iowa City resident was there to do just that. “I plan on caucusing for Kucinich tomorrow, but I’m checking out Obama, just in case Kucinich isn’t viable in my precinct,” Noble said. “Kucinich’s directive to go to Obama if he’s not viable really had no effect on me. I was already considering Obama beforehand.”

Next up: change. Obama asked the audience who is best equipped to deliver change by taking a jab at his rival Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. “You can’t argue that you are the master of a broken system in Washington and that somehow you are the best agent to change the system,” Obama said. “You cannot seek the conventional wisdom in Washington on something as profound as war and then argue that you are the person to lead the charge on a bold and new course of foreign policy. That’s not how change works.”

This argument resonated with Iowa City resident Anne Cremer who says she is definitely an Obama supporter. “I’ve been drawn to Obama’s charismatic appeal and integrity from the very beginning,” Cremer said. “Admittedly, it’s painful not to support Hillary, a woman who has come this close to winning. But I don’t like her stance on the war and how she’s responded to this during the election. She schemes and plays political games too much. However, I will support Hillary 100 percent if she wins the Democratic nomination.”

Moreover, Obama took on the critics who said he has some pretty good ideas and gives a good speech, but people cannot vote for him because he has not been in Washington long enough. “They have not stewed and seasoned me. They have not boiled all of the hope out of me,” Obama said.

Obama took an opportunity to take a subtle jab at Bill Clinton, who used a roll-of-the-dice metaphor as an argument as to why voters shouldn’t vote for Obama. “The real roll of the dice would be to have the same old folks doing the same old thing over and over with the same results,” Obama said. “We cannot afford that gamble. We need to stand up for change, and that’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America.”

Despite the subtle jabs at the Clintons, the bulk of Obama’s stump speech stuck to the usual motifs of hope and change, ending on the former. “This whole being angry thing isn’t going to change anything,” Obama said. “There’s no anger shortage in Washington and we don’t need more heat; we need more light.”