Obama says hopes and change resonate with voters

By Mark Egan

PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama, dismissing rival Hillary Clinton's superior Washington resume, declared on Friday the last thing he needed was to become like establishment politicians with all hope "boiled out" of them.

The Illinois senator, bidding to become the first black U.S. president, said his upbeat campaign appealed to young people and had attracted the record numbers that propelled him past New York Sen. Hillary Clinton on Thursday to make him Iowa's choice for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Far from downplaying his relative youth and inexperience. Obama highlighted his newcomer status, saying he was different from the others seeking the presidency.

"They insist I still need a little more time in Washington and I need to be seasoned and stewed so they can boil all the hope out of me, and then, finally when I sound the same as everybody else and do the same old things, that I will be ready," he told a rally of 1,000 supporters.

"It is time for us to create the sort of America we can believe in again. That is what we can do it four days," he said, referring to Tuesday's primary, which will help pick who represent the Democrats in November's election to succeed U.S. President George W. Bush.

By casting himself as the outsider untainted by the ways of Washington, Obama is seeking to differentiate himself from his two main Democratic rivals.

Clinton, seeking to become America's first female president, spent eight years in the White House from 1993 to 2001 as first lady when her husband Bill Clinton was president. She was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000 and worked earlier in her career as a congressional legal counsel and a lawyer.

The second-place Democrat in Iowa, John Edwards, is a successful lawyer and former U.S. Senator from North Carolina who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. He then ran as the vice presidential candidate with U.S. Sen. John Kerry in their failed 2004 bid to unseat Bush.