ON DEADLINE: Establishment Gets a Jolt

It was not a good day for politics as usual.

Iowa voters jolted the Democratic and Republican party apparatuses Thursday, selecting two fresh-faced, common-touch outsiders over establishment candidates who represent the cold precision of machine politics.

And that's exactly why Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee can't rest. The status quo isn't going to take this lying down.

This was a change election.

"This is shaping up to be an outsider's election," said Democratic consultant Jenny Backus. "The two candidates in Iowa are all about change _ two young, likable outsiders defeated tough, experienced insiders."

Obama, 46, is change personified, a black man just four years removed from the Illinois state Legislature. He defeated former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, the epitome of the Democratic establishment and 1990s-style politics, and John Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential candidate.

Here's why:

_ More than half of Democratic voters said they wanted a candidate who could bring change to the country.

_ More than half of the so-called change voters sided with Obama.

_ Clinton was favored by voters who said experience mattered most to them, but only 20 percent of all Democrats fell into that category.

So in a campaign that pitted change against experience, change won and Obama rode its coattails.

Addressing a cheering crowd of supporters in Iowa, the Illinois senator said, "We are one nation. We are one people. And our time for change has come."

Clinton ignored the obvious, which is that voters in Iowa wanted something new _ and she's not it.

"Together, we have presented a case for change and have made it absolutely clear that America needs a new beginning," she said.

Look for the Clinton machine to come to New Hampshire guns ablazing as they try to make the case that Obama is too raw and unready for the presidency. She will keep trying to make the case for experience, insisting Thursday night that she would be ready to serve from Day One.

Edwards sized the night up correctly. "The Iowa caucus-goers said we want something different," he said, ignoring the fact that another candidate left Iowa with the glow of a change agent.

Edwards passionately, even angrily, challenged Iowans all year to side with him and fight against lobbyists, special interests and greedy corporate agents. When you deliver a message of change during so-called change election and still lose, the news isn't good: Apparently Iowans didn't trust the messenger.

Clinton is in trouble, too. Though she has the resources to continue, the New York senator can no longer hide behind an aura of inevitability. Obama leaves Iowa with a burst of momentum and the next contest just five days away in New Hampshire, hardly enough time to build a firewall.

If he wins two in a row, a third is likely in South Carolina and three becomes four, five and six in a compressed election calendar _ and the nomination could go to Obama.

On the Republican side, a long-serving, smooth-talking Arkansas governor with a checkered record and no foreign policy experience climbed to the top tier of a presidential race. Haven't we seen this movie before?

Huckabee, 51, stood out from a field of stuffed suits with a dimpled smile, quick wit, an economic populist message and a wave of evangelical support.

"Tonight, what we've seen is a new day in American politics," Huckabee said.

Thanking God, Huckabee declared victory and sounded almost Democratic when he said voters are hungry for a leader who knows "one is not elected to be part of the ruling class. He's elected to be part of the serving class."

Huckabee rose from nowhere in the late fall to challenge former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Iowa, his candidacy viewed with suspicion by establishment, fiscally conservative Republicans.

"You've got economic conservatives who are terrified of Huckabee's populism," said GOP strategist Joe Gaylord said. "He's creating a holy war inside the Republican Party."

Six in 10 GOP voters said they were born-again or evangelical Christians, and by far the largest share _almost half _supported Huckabee.

Romney is in major trouble. He spent $6 million in television ads and several million more on a state-of-the-art ground game to be defeated by a political cypher. He returns to New England a weakened candidate, defeated by Huckabee and possibly overshadowed by a surging Sen. John McCain.

Romney has gone negative on Huckabee and McCain. Count on him to keep it up.

So it's on to New Hampshire for what could be Clinton's last stand and Round One of Huckabee vs. McCain.

Who'd have believed it?

"You have done," Obama told his supporters, "what the cynics said we couldn't do."

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EDITOR'S NOTE _ Ron Fournier has covered politics for The Associated Press for nearly 20 years. On Deadline is an occasional column.