Here are some miscellaneous items:
*The Kerry and Dean and Edwards campaign office are all within a Tiger Woods tee shot of each other. Only Gephardt's office -- in West Des Moines, instead of the downtown warehouse district where the other three majors are located -- is set apart
*At day's end, the press corps and all the campaign operatives hang at Chequers -- the hotel bar at the Hotel Fort Des Moines and, for one week ever four years, the unofficial Ground Zero for the political chattering classes. I stayed until close tonight, and people were still buzzing about what Dean's "hard count" is. (But again, more on that later when I can work through the significance of it.)
*Garance Franke-Ruta is one of the best, emergent reporters today, and she has a nice diary piece in the American Prospect. ("Iowa Inventory," www.prospect.org). She followed Edwards around today, and I caught up with her at the NC senator's final event of the day, which I will discuss at length tomorrow morning. But while at the Prospect's site, make sure to check out the analytical piece she co-authored with Prospect editor Harold Meyerson about what the GOP is doing, quietly, right now. ("GOP Deploys," also at www.prospect.org)
*There are about 30 "Apollo project" volunteers touring around the state in groups of 4-6, wearing bright orange jump suits (and a few with shiny silver space suits) to bring attention to the issue of "clean jobs" -- that is, jobs created/protected that do not come at the expense of pollution and/or use clean-fuels methods. Most of the volunteers are 18-22, and they are charged up. The group is surprisingly media-savvy -- they refuse to endorse any candidate, preferring instead to persuade all candidates "to endorse us." (They wouldn't even tell me who their favorite was, off the record, because they said "we know nothing is off the record.") Theirs is a tough, wedge issue -- but kudos to them for making some noise. The group I met today at Edwards' stop in Iowa Falls has been here since Monday and has attended 30 campaign events, putting a lot of miles on their cars along the way.