Obama Picks Up Key Iowa Endorsements

[TeamJordan23]

Obama Picks Up Key Iowa Endorsements

The Nation -- He didn't get the coveted nod from the Des Moines Register. But today Barack Obama got a boost when the Iowa City Press-Citizen endorsed his candidacy.

"Obama has the right vision for a new national politics and a new global reputation," the Press-Citizen wrote. It's difficult to know how much any of these endorsements matter. But the Press-Citizen could give Obama a slight lift in the liberal bastion of Iowa City, the state's largest college town, where he's locked in a tight battle with John Edwards for votes.

Meanwhile, the Register's most insightful political columnist, Rekha Basu, also threw her support behind Obama.

"Clinton is smart, hard-working, gutsy and tough enough to absorb all the muck that's come her way," Basu wrote. "But Obama is simply a better candidate. He's that rarest of leaders, combining roots in white Midwestern America with black Africa, and experience both organizing in barrios and editing the Harvard Law Review. He's got idealism, compassion and intellect. And he lacks the baggage Clinton comes with, including all the controversies that swirled around her husband's White House. Nor is he compromised, as she has been, by the Senate vote that got us into this quagmire in Iraq. Clinton is likable - and polarizing. But Obama is a uniter whose very life experience promises a new chapter for America."

Rebutting a key argument invoked by Clinton supporters, Basu concluded that "one person's experience is another's baggage." The country, she says, "isn't hungry for Beltway insiders."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20071219/cm_thenation/45261708