Uplifting appeals largely replaced stinging insults as Democratic and Republican candidates did the only thing left to do in crucial races in Iowa that are too close to call - encourage supporters to vote for them.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was scheduled to make her closing argument to Iowa voters yesterday evening during a televised message in which she tells them to "take the first step" toward changing the direction of the country by voting for her at the caucuses.

"After all the town meetings, the pie and coffee, it all comes down to this: Who is ready to be president and ready to start solving the big challenges we face on Day One," Clinton says in the two-minute appeal to be broadcast during evening news programs on the eve of the caucuses.

Clinton has bought two minutes of air time on the early evening local newscasts in every media market in the state.

Most surveys show Clinton in a close and fluid three-way contest in Iowa with rivals Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

Obama also was to air a two-minute ad during the evening news programs. Edwards bought a full-page ad in the Des Moines Register featuring a testimonial from a laid-off Maytag plant worker, who also was appearing in a one-minute TV spot to begin airing yesterday.

"The polls look good, but understand this - the polls are not enough. The only thing that counts is whether or not you show up to caucus," Obama told a fired-up crowd of young and old packed into a high school gymnasium on Tuesday.

On the Republican side, two former governors, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, are vying to finish first in Iowa.

Amid murmurs of "Amen!" at a pizza parlor in Sergeant Bluff, Huckabee urged hundreds: "Don't go alone. Hijack your church's bus, whatever you've got to do to get people to the caucus who are going to vote for me."

The Iowa caucuses, and the New Hampshire primary five days later, are the crucial first steps in the process of selecting delegates to the parties' national presidential nominating conventions in August and September. Candidates who do well in those races traditionally are able to build momentum for securing their party's nomination.

Agencies

(China Daily 01/03/2008 page12)