Mass. gov. rallies for Obama in Iowa

FT. MADISON, Iowa — White House hopeful Barack Obama brought in a new warm-up act today as he embarks on the final weekend of his campaign to win Thursday’s Iowa presidential caucuses: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Patrick, an African-American from Chicago’s South Side, told 400 Iowa voters to disregard pundits who say Obama, 46, ought to wait to run until he’s older or more experienced — they said the same thing when Patrick ran for governor of Massachusetts.

“It isn’t about whose turn it is — it’s about whose time it is,” Patrick said. “When you close your eyes and you imagine the kind of leadership you need, you know that the image that comes into your minds is Barack Obama. And then you open your eyes and the pundits...try to tell us once again why we can’t have what we know we want.”

Obama likewise blasted pundits who say he needs to spend more time in Washington, D.C., and who say of Obama, “We need to stew him and season him a little bit and boil all the hope out of him so he sounds just like everybody else,” Obama said.

Obama had been using former Air Force Chief of Staff Tony McPeak to warm up the crowds with zingers lobbed at President Bush such as: “We’ve been running this enormous experiment in this country for the past seven years, testing the proposition that it doesn’t make any difference if the guy in the White House is very bright. The results are in. Really, no matter who’s elected next January, there’s going to be a great jump in the IQ in the Oval Office.”

But as Obama nears the home stretch and populist rival John Edwards threatens him in the three-way race with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, Obama is slightly re-tooling his stump speech, adding lines such as this one that appear aimed at the working-class Iowans likely to dominate the Democratic caucuses:

“CEOs are making more in 10 minutes than workers are making in an entire year. And the CEOs get the tax breaks.”

And he talks about passing ethics reforms in Washington to prevent lobbyists from buying legislators meals. One unnamed elected official, he said, asked Obama, “What do you expect me to do, eat at McDonalds?” Obama said he responded: “Actually a lot of your constituents eat at McDonalds. But since you make over $160,000 a year, you can eat at Applebees.”

But Obama did not completely abandon the less-partisan, reach-across-party-lines image he has tried to cultivate. He said the polls show he has a better chance than any other Democrat of beating any of the Republican front-runners in November.

“I beat [Rudy] Giuliani; I beat [John] McCain; I beat [Milt] Romney; I beat [Fred] Thompson; I beat [Mike] Huckabee; I beat em all,” Obama thundered at the Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington. “John Edwards doesn’t beat ‘em all. Hillary Clinton doesn’t beat them all. And part of the reason is, I can reach out and get the support of independents and some Republicans...”

Those other candidates likewise are criss-crossing Iowa trying to convince voters to caucus for them Thursday night. And they are using surrogates, spouses and other relatives. Obama’s wife Michelle, his sisters, and Superman actor Brandon Routh are fanning out across Iowa to campaign for him.

Clinton has her husband among other surrogates campaigning on her behalf.