Obama's New Yorkers on the Racial Significance of Iowa

At a Barack Obama rally on Gold Street last night, City Councilman James Sanders and former congressional candidate Chris Owens told me, “The work begins now.”

I asked Owens if he thought the public nature of the caucus had any effect on Obama's win.

“If folks, particularly white folks, are willing to stand up under a black man’s banner and say, ‘I am standing with this man,’ that’s even stronger support," he told me. "It would have been much easier for them to do it in private, OK? Or to abandon him in private.”