Primary Calendar Reveals Promise, Pitfalls

Oct. 29, 2007 — -- This unprecedented primary calendar of the 2008 election cycle -- with its earliest-ever Iowa caucus and multistate Super Duper Tuesday Feb. 5 -- is providing Democrats and Republicans with both promise and pitfalls.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., held another event targeted at Iowa college students today, this one sponsored by MTV and MySpace, at Coe College in Cedar Rapids.

Of concern to Obama's campaign is where all these students will be Jan. 3, the date of the earliest Iowa caucus in history, which falls smack dab in the middle of winter break.

Will they caucus or be on a beach somewhere enjoying the end of their winter break?

"Some people have said, 'Aw, you've got a lot of young people to support you,'" Obama responded this morning in Cedar Rapids. "I know this room is young, but I ve got a lot of people who aren't so young who are supporting me. So were not completely relied on the young vote."

Obama also suggested that having college students dispersed to their homes would be better for his campaign.

"We actually want kids in Ames and kids in Iowa City, we want them to go home, we don't need to rack up some huge vote total in just concentrated areas we'd rather have focused all around."

Just in case, Obama is also talking about an issue of importance to older Iowans -- attacking rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in townhall meetings and over the airwaves for not being honest about Social Security.

Speaking to a gathered group of 100 in Iowa, Obama today said, "On issues as fundamental as how to protect Social Security, a candidate for president owes it to the American people to tell us where they stand."

Democratic Race to Upset Clinton Advantage

It's in Iowa where Obama and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina have the best chance of upsetting the Clinton juggernaut.

While Clinton has commanding leads nationally and in New Hampshire in South Carolina, polls in Iowa have shown Clinton in a competitive three-way race. Clearly concerned, Clinton's campaign today held a job fair at her national headquarters to hire up to 100 staffers to send to Iowa.

"Nobody has come to a caucus yet, nobody has cast a vote yet, and I'm doing everything I can to earn the support of Iowans," Clinton said earlier this month.

Republican Mitt Romney is also pursuing this traditional path to the nomination -- pouring money and organization into Iowa and New Hampshire, where he leads his party. Today, he was endorsed by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who misidentified Romney's party.

"If somebody'd said I was going to endorse a Democrat -- a Republican," Gregg said, catching himself with a laugh.

The Weight of Super Duper Tuesday

While the Republican front-runners signed their declarations of candidacy at the New Hampshire Statehouse today, both Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are trying to blaze unconventional trails to the party's nomination, looking beyond Iowa and New Hampshire and focusing on South carolina and Florida

In Florida last week, Thompson called "a standpoint of practical politics ... right before we go into a Feb. 5 day.

"I consider Florida my neck of the woods. I spent an awful lot of time in Florida as a Tennessee boy," Thompson said.

As for Super Duper Tuesday, it's an unusual addition to this election season, with more than 20 states holding primaries and almost 900 delegates up for grabs.

Thompson hopes to sweep the South, Giuliani big blue states like New York and California.

Giuliani did some fast math when asked by ABC News how important the Super Duper states were to him.

"You can win three or four primaries and lose California, and you're behind two-to-one," Giuliani said. "Giuliani said, "If you run the last election, you're going to lose this one. You've got to figure this one out. The person who wins this is going to be the one who did the best job of figuring this new one out."