Video

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/04/iowa_dems/ Jan. 4, 2008 DES MOINES, Iowa --- Early Thursday evening -- before Barack Obama's breakthrough victory had been signed, sealed and delivered -- Iowa attorney general Tom Miller looked out at the army of hope-mongers in his own home precinct. "I thought we had a chance to win," he said, "but nothing like this." Then Miller, who last February was one of the first major Iowa political figures to endorse Obama, said with wonder in his voice, "He's going to be the next president." There are many rivers to cross before Obama is greeted with "Hail to the Chief." But this is the moment to marvel at what the first-term Illinois senator -- virtually unknown in the nation before his epic speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention -- has already achieved. A semi-reluctant candidate just a year ago, Obama defeated Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Inevitability in a state that destroyed anti-establishment candidates like Howard Dean and Bill Bradley. By leading the way to attract 236,000 Democrats to the raucous rough-and-tumble of a caucus -- nearly double the 2004 turnout -- Obama turned Iowa's first-in-the-nation contest into a virtual primary. Despite her third-place finish in Iowa