Obama has made cynics wilt, and stirred the heart of long-dead politicos in places where Democrats haven’t had a pulse in years.
Cecil Andrus, the eagle-headed eminence of Idaho, a former governor and Democratic cabinet member, nearly lost his voice introducing Obama in Boise on Saturday.
He recalled a time when he was a young lumberjack who drove down the Clearwater Valley to see Jack Kennedy speak in Lewiston, a day that changed his life.
Take a look at what happened on Tuesday in the nearly all-white counties of Idaho, a place where the Aryan Nations once placed a boot print of hate — “the international headquarters of the white race,” as they called it.
The neo-Nazis are long gone. But in Kootenai County, where the extremists were holed up for several decades, a record number of Democrats trudged through heavy snow on Super Duper Tuesday to help pick the next president. Guess what: Senator Barack Obama took 81 percent of Kootenai County caucus voters, matching his landslide across the state. He won all but a single county.
The runaway victory came after a visit by Obama last Saturday, when 14,169 people filled the Taco Bell Arena in Boise to hear him speak – the largest crowd ever to fill the space, for any event. It was the biggest political rally the state has seen in more than 50 years.