of many direct-mail pieces from the Obama campaign. Not all of them, but quite a few. I remember one contained the full text of his October 2002 speech against the war.

"Turn up the heat" was definitely a poor choice for Clinton's crowd line at the JJ dinner.

I still think that the critical errors of the Clinton and Edwards campaigns came long before then when they vastly underestimated the size of the potential caucus-goer universe. Obama could have messed things up if he had stumbled badly at the JJ dinner, but I think by then he was already on track to win.

Brilliant strategy to bring new people into the process. "Unity" sounds great after the partisan hell that was the Bush years post-9/11 with Republicans inciting treasonous undertones and the like among the population. So I have no doubt that the whole kumbaya message from the Obama camapaign was a good strategy especially for the young and naive who are getting involved in the process for the first time. Selling a transformational message as you say and not issue based.

But governing-wise...it has been a completely different story. I wonder if those same star struck young people who were awed by Obama and his message will feel the same way come 2012 if the same governing style continues that allows the Republicans and recalcitrant Democrats have so much power when they should be fought instead. To claim that there has been "transformative" change thus far is pretty much a joke, and unless things change by the time re-election comes around, there's going to be a lot of jaded people when he comes around again selling a hollow message of "keeping the change going." For the rest of us who have seen disillusioned by pols time and again, but who DO care about what's going on and for whom the alternative GOP universe is frightening no matter what...that message will still ring hollow but holding our noses when pushing the lever is now habitual behavior--for the millions of young people who believed in the man in 2008, I'm not sure how many will hold their noses instead of staying home.

really stood out against the snow. The white Edwards '08 signs weren't nearly as visible. A lot of years we don't have much snow on the ground for the holidays, but that year we had a ton.

and aren't we all sooo lucky that Obama is still being post partisan...

FDR, Reagan, and to a lessor extent, LBJ, were transformative Presidents.  Obama is much like a Nixon or a Clinton.  He has generally kept things the same and has generally accepted that the country is conservative and will govern that way.  

Well, the Obama campaign certainly was on stride in 2008. Let's hope that's the case in 2012.

I was struck that turnout in Iowa was 240,000 and the yet the Edwards campaign was banking on only 145,000. That's quite the whiff.

WTF... Reagan was President for 8 years, ofcourse he had an effect. Even Jimmy Carter & Bush I had an effect.

However he was not "transformative". In the greater scheme of things (things like Civil Rights, State Rights, Welfare, Social Safety Nets) his accomplishments were zero. he tinkered on the edges but there was nothing great or transformative about his tenure.

This is really late to add, but I have a perspective to throw in on the JJ dinner and the Nov phase of the campaign. Because a week later was the Clark County (NV) JJ dinner at which all 8 candidates appeared and spoke, just after the nationally televised debate at which the pro-Clinton sections of the crowd shouted down Edwards and Obama when they went after her.

The Clinton campaign showed its organizational strength that night by packing first the debate auditorium and then the JJ dinner (benefitting in both cases from a sympathetic county party leadership.)

When Clinton took the stage at the JJ dinner, the room erupted with "turn up the heat" signs and chants. Although I agree that as a slogan, made no sense in the context of the national campaign, I think it was based upon a presumption which was the still-operative premise of the Clinton campaign -- inevitability. More precisely, regaining the appearance of inevitability, after the stumble in the Phila debate over immigration and then the "planted questions" frenzy. And I think that night here in NV, she seemed to be on her way back into the driver's seat.

After she spoke, 80% of the room emptied out, and Obama spoke to a cold and quiet hall.  In that context, speaking to a highly intense support base, "turn up the heat" made a lot of sense.

And I think what allowed her to hold on to her support in NH and NV in Jan after losing Iowa was the very strong bond her campaign forged with its supporters, and I think "turn up the heat" was really aimed at reaffirming that intense commitment when the campaign stumbled for the first time all year.

My sense of the campaign overall was that it couldn't forge that sense of commitment and intensity once it got out of the early states, so that paradoxically she turned what was supposed to be her strongest date -- Super Tuesday -- into her greatest challenge. Obama's campaign, for all the criticism of its supporters as true believers, seemed to be able to build a broad base of support rather than merely an intense but narrow one.

Ordinarily in a primary, having intense support of the core electorate is a winning formula, so I still think that Clinton didn't do so much wrong as Obama seemed to do everything right.

I've got no empirical basis for saying this but circumsantial evidence suggests to me that they may well have known but had no choice but to stick to a strategy of competing for traditional caucus-goers. Facing a severe deficit in resources and knowing they were relying on a risky "slingshot" strategy of parlaying Iowa into national momentum, there's no way Edwards could have really done what the Clinton campaign did in December, which was to realize the primary electorate in all the early states was going to be much larger and to revise its vote totals and voter contact strategy accordingly (at least thats what they did here in NV, with surprising success).