Obama plays on ‘kindergarten dream’

BARACK OBAMA said his win in Iowa lived up to his dreams — his kindergarten dreams.

Mr Obama, whose win in the Iowa caucuses dashed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s front-runner status, returned to New Hampshire yesterday, hoping to repeat the win in this state’s primary on Tuesday.

“This feels good. This feels just like I imagined when I was talking to my kindergarten teacher,” Mr Obama said.

The kindergarten line is a favourite for the Obama campaign, referring to an exchange with the Clinton campaign over the longtime ambitions of their candidates.

A month ago, Mr Obama took an apparent swipe at Clinton by saying he hadn’t been planning to run for president for years like “some of the other candidates”. The Clinton campaign responded by citing media reports quoting Mr Obama and friends talking about him running for the White House for years — and mentioning essays he’d written even in the third grade and kindergarten. Mr Obama has focused on the kindergarten mention, ridiculing the Clinton point.

Mr Obama remains in a tight race in New Hampshire with Ms Clinton.

“My throat’s a little sore, but my spirits are high because last night the American people began down the road to change and four days from now, New Hampshire, you have the chance to change America,” Mr Obama told a morning rally.

Ms Clinton was being joined in Nashua by her husband, hoping to become the family’s newest “comeback kid” in a state that revived Bill Clinton’s run for the Democratic nomination in 1992.

Without mentioning her by name, Mr Obama criticised Ms Clinton and her plea to “turn up the heat” in the campaign. “We don’t need more heat. We need more light,” he said.

Mr Obama said he would stick with his winning strategy in an abbreviated dash to the finish in New Hampshire’s presidential primary campaign, despite facing a different political alignment.

He said he saw no reason to revamp his campaign: “It’s not broken, why fix it?”

He returned to his message of unity and bipartisanship that won him favourable attention in a 2004 address at the Democratic National Convention.

“In four days, you can say we are choosing hope over fear, unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to Washington and change is a coming to America,” he said.