The Clintons were incredibly popular with black voters, and many were choosing Hillary over Obama.
This whole theory that, "Hillary was forced to do this," or threatened or whatever is nonsense. The Clintons were more powerful than anybody. Nobody was threatening them to get out. Hillary's team screwed up and that's all there is to it.
A liitle know inside baseball nugget of information about the Iowa caucuses. If Hillary won Iowa and then steamrolls through New Hampshire, it was over. I have it from people inside the Richardson campaign that they made a deal with team Obama. In Iowa, Democrat rules were that if at the local caucus level your candidate didn't get 15% of the vote, you had to revote. The Richardson and Obama camps made a deal that if one side or the other didn't get 15%, they would vote for the other guy. Richardson was a meaningful candidate at the beginning, and he had votes in Iowa. But not as many as Obama. But the places where Richardson votes were recast for Obama was the differnece in Iowa. This little side deal put gave O the Iowa Caucuses, and without this win, Hiterly probably was a lock on getting the nomination. This lead to Richardson backing Barry at the rat convention (despite Bill's intense lobbying, and anger, remember Richardson was in Slick's administration, and was Monica's boss at the UN) and getting the Commerce Secretary nod at the beginning of O's term, before he had to withdraw for the dirt that was coming out of New Mexico at the time on him.....
“This little side deal put gave O the Iowa Caucuses, and without this win”
Reminds me of the ending to the movie “The Best Man” (1964).
Also Obama supposedly bussed in non-Iowans from the Chicago area.