Obama Campaign is Confident

The Obama campaign gave a Power Point presentation today to illustrate to the press where they believe they stand.
The desired result of this presentation depends on who you get your news from.

Here is Mark Halperin's take:

Conference call with campaign manager Plouffe, 24-slide powerpoint presentation focus on what Obama's accomplished in Iowa -- but also NH, SC, NV, and Feb. 5 states, citing polls, fundraising, organization, crowd sizes.

Perhaps trying to preempt a poor Iowa showing, Plouffe repeatedly cites "7 against 1" "avalanche" of spending facing Obama by Clinton, Edwards and outside groups backing them.

Here is Ben Smith's view:

The memo argues that public financing means Edwards can't survive to the Democratic National Convention (above), and that Hillary is too disliked to win the general.

Obama is "very well positioned" in Iowa, Plouffe said, but "as you get out of Iowa, we could not be positioned better."

The call has the perhaps useful effect of lowering expectations for Obama in Iowa as well, where, for a moment, polls seemed to make him the clear frontrunner, an expectation that isn't particularly useful.

And Eric Kleefeld says:

In a conference call with reporters this morning, plus a new Powerpoint, the Obama campaign is voicing confidence that they are well positioned to win the early contests, are already picking up steam in the later contests, and that Obama would be the strongest Democratic candidate.

This is the key slide from the presentation to me:

As I've said, turnout is key for Obama and large crowd sizes say one of two things about the strength of his campaign. Either he has a huge number of out-of-state volunteers coming to his events(like Dean in 2004), or he is getting more support than polls suggest.

Watch the entire presentation here.

Update: The campaign, instead of trying to lower expectations, predicted a win in Iowa.

This from Des Moines Register:

Democrat Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters this morning that Obama is positioned to win the Iowa Caucuses.

"We think we're going to enter caucus night with enough supporters identified to win even under the most aggressive scenarios," Plouffe said.