January 3, 2008: The Iowa Caucuses are held, earlier in the Presidential election campaign than ever before. The results are shocking on both sides.
Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas rides the evangelical vote to win for the Republicans. This is a serious setback for the front-runner, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and all but eliminates everybody else, including former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. The exception to this was former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York, who had bypassed Iowa, and was also bypassing the New Hampshire and South Carolina, and was betting on Florida, with its many retired ex-New Yorkers. He lost that bet, very badly.
McCain would bounce back, and Huckabee would end up finishing 3rd behind McCain and Romney in Delegates. He ran again in 2016, but didn't even do that way.
On the Democratic side, the front-runner, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, finishes 3rd. Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, the Party's nominee for Vice President in 2004, finds his populist message didn't quite catch on, and finishes 2nd. And finishing 1st, with 37 percent of the vote, in a State that is 95 percent white, is... Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
Obama was 46 years old, a little young by the standards of Presidential candidacies. He had only been in the U.S. Senate for 3 years, after 8 years as a State Senator. He had electrified the country with his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, but it looked like it was too soon for him.
The problem, on both sides, was the Iraq War. Americans were tired of it. As Senators in late 2002, McCain, Clinton and Edwards had both supported President George W. Bush's request to approve it. McCain still supported it, Clinton's support had become lukewarm at best, and Edwards had repudiated his support for it, which explains why, of those 3, he did the best in this vote. At the time of the Iraq War vote, Huckabee was Governor, Romney was running for Governor, and Obama was in the State Senate. So none of those 3 faced the proposed war as an issue, and were able to run against it without hypocrisy.
But only Obama chose to do so, and he did criticize Clinton over it. Iowa Democrats, who tend to be, as the old saying goes, "prairie populists," took to this, and gave him a narrow victory. He later called the upset win "my favorite night of my entire political career."
Nobody expected him to win this mostly-white State, or the upcoming mostly-white New Hampshire. Suddenly, millions of Democrats go from, "He's a breath of fresh air, and he'll be a force in the future, but he can't possibly win the nomination this time" to, "Holy cow, he can actually win this thing!"
This win led to him gaining support from the person he was attempting to surpass as America's most famous black person, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. She began promoting him. And the Kennedy family supported him as well, which helped him in New Hampshire: Clinton won it, but it was close. That meant that the race was basically down to 2, and it remained close all the way until the California Primary in June, when Obama got enough votes to clinch the nomination.
In the general election, Obama won 53.9 percent of the vote in Iowa, to McCain's 44.4 percent. In 2012, he won 52.0 percent, to Romney's 46.1 percent. Iowa had long been a Republican stronghold, a "Red State" -- Hillary's husband, Bill Clinton was the only Democratic nominee to win it between 1964 and 2008 -- but was now looking reliably "Blue."
That didn't last: Donald Trump won it with 51.1 percent in 2016, and 53.1 percent in 2020. (UPDATE: He won 55.7 percent in 2024, giving him a 13-point margin, the Republicans' biggest margin since 1972.)
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January 3, 2008 was a Thursday. One college football bowl game was played: Number 8 Kansas beat Number 5 Virginia Tech, 24-21 in the Orange Bowl, at Dolphin Stadium (now named Hard Rock Stadium) in Miami Gardens, Florida.
Baseball was out of season. There were 3 games in the NBA:
* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Chicago Bulls, 115-109 in double overtime at the United Center in Chicago.
* The Denver Nuggets beat the San Antonio Spurs, 80-77 at the Pepsi Center (now the Ball Arena) in Denver.
* And the Phoenix Suns beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 104-96 at the US Airways Center (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.
And there were 10 games in the NHL:
* The New York Rangers lost to the Vancouver Canucks, 3-0 at General Motors Place (now the Rogers Arena) in Vancouver.
* The New York Islanders lost to the Florida Panthers, 4-3 at the Nassau Coliseum. Jassen Cullimore scored the winning goal with 3:27 left in overtime.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 6-3 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.
* The Boston Bruins beat the Washington Capitals, 2-0 at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston.
* The Nashville Predators beat the Edmonton Oilers, 5-2 at the Sommet Center (now the Bridgestone Arena) in Nashville.
* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 6-2 at the Mellon Arena (formerly the Civic Arena) in Pittsburgh.
* The Minnesota Wild beat the Dallas Stars, 6-3 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
* The Phoenix Coyotes beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 4-2 at the Jobing.com Arena (now the Desert Diamond Arena) in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona.
* The Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-3 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles.
* And the Calgary Flames beat the San Jose Sharks, 3-2 at the HP Pavilion (now the SAP Center) in San Jose. Jarome Iginla scored the winning goal with 1:34 left in overtime.
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