The campaign’s big story this weekend was the Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson Day blowout in Des Moines, where 9,000 of the party faithful showed up to cheer on their presidential candidates. The problem is, it was big news that happened late Saturday night, too late, in many cases for more than snippets and squibs to appear in the Sunday newspapers and morning talk shows.

With the Iowa caucuses less than eight weeks away, the speechifying was widely

Â

considered to be the kick-start to the final stretch of a long, long campaign. And the overnight consensus was that Barack Obama blew the hall away, with a rhetorical performance that could provide him with some momentum during those final weeks.

Here’s a sampling of the reviews, starting with a rapturous one from David Yepsen, the Des Moines Register’s dean of political gurus. Should he win the caucuses, “Saturday’s dinner will be remembered as one of the turning points in his campaign here.”

The New Republic’s Michael Crowley also crowned Obama as the winner of the evening. So did Time.com’s normally-snarky Ana Louise Cox. The Politico’s Roger Simon was less impressed, but gave the night to Obama by backhanding his foes.

And the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, still in the throes of a swoon over Obama and the man’s prospects as president, rounds up bloggers and videos of the speech.

Â

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 10:28 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Democrats, Presidential. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.