[Cooper:] Michelle Obama, Barack Obama and the daytime television host, you know starts with an o. Just saying her name people pay attention. Oprah Winfrey has earned an understandable and rare position of trust among Americans, in part by being very careful about what she lends her name to and whom. That's why her endorsement of Barack Obama strikes such a chord. That and the timing of it coming just as new polling shows Senator Obama rising in support and frontrunner Hillary Clinton fading among registered Democrats nationwide. Obama is up five percentage points since last month and Senator Clinton is down, even though the gap between them is actually slightly wider in the new poll. Other polling though shows the two running essentially even or close to it in Iowa, New Hampshire as well as South Carolina. We'll talk about all that in a moment with the best political team on television, but first, the Oprah effect up close. Here's Candy Crowley.
[Candy Crowley, Cnn Senior Political Analyst:] Oprah.
[Oprah Winfrey, Talk Show:] Backstage somebody said, "Are you nervous." I go, "You're damn right, I'm nervous."
[Crowley:] Obama.
[Barack Obama,  Presidential Candidate:] We've had some big crowds here in Iowa. We have not had this big crowd in Iowa.
[Crowley:] Oh, my! It was a dazzling weekend, a big "O" blitz across three key states and every bit as much strategy at show time, a political one-two step. She brought them out.
[Winfrey:] You have to care about this country to come out in this kind of weather; 12 degrees freezing rain and snow. You love America. I can see that you do.
[Crowley:] He reeled them in.
[Obama:] Iowa, I need you to stand up!
[Crowley:] More than half the Democratic caucus goers in Iowa are female; seven of ten are 45 or older. This was about them. And she was about him.
[Winfrey:] I have found the answer. It is the same question that our nation is asking. Are you the one? Are you the one? I'm here to tell you, Iowa, he is the one. Barack Obama!
[Crowley:] They share modest roots. The son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, he grew up to run for president. Raised in the pre-civil rights south, she grew up to be a mega star. They believe in the reality of possibility.
[Winfrey:] You know, Dr. King dreamed the dream, but we don't have to just dream the dream anymore. We get to vote that dream into reality.
[Obama:] Because if a few stood up, a few thousand stood up and then a few millions stood up, standing up with courage and conviction, they changed the world! South Carolina, we can change the world!
[Crowley:] In South Carolina, almost half the Democratic primary voters are black. This stop was about them.
[Winfrey:] These are dangerous times. These are dangerous times. We're all watching "Dancing WITH THE Stars" trying to forget about it, but I know you feel it. Don't you feel it? I know in the beauty shops and the barbershops here and there's a lot of them in South Carolina because we love to keep our hair done down here. I don't know how you do it with this humidity, but we need a leader who shows us how to hope again and have faith again in America as a force for peace.
[Crowley:] politics is not risk-free for an entertainer and there was some thought she would pull punches when it came to Obama's rivals. The thought was wrong, not that she mentioned Hillary Clinton's pro-Iraq vote.
[Winfrey:] We recognize that the amount of time you spent in Washington means nothing unless you're accountable for the judgments you made with the time you had.
[Crowley:] And it's not that she directly criticized Clinton for being all over on the issues.
[Winfrey:] We need a president with clarity and conviction, who knows how to consult his own conscience and proceed with moral authority. We need Barack Obama.
[Crowley:] It was a one-woman tour de force and he was along for quite a ride.
[Winfrey:] He can bring us all together as one United States of America. As a United States, not the Red States and the Blue States and the left and the right.
[Crowley:] Half the voters in New Hampshire's '04 Democratic primaries identified themselves as independents. This was about them.
[Obama:] I want to summon the entire nation around a higher purpose, rally us around a higher destiny.
[Crowley:] Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, the double "O" show played in three early states.
[Unidentified Male:] That was a lot of time.
[Unidentified Female:] I came for Oprah hoping to hear something good from Obama I and I think I did.
[Crowley:] Bingo. They share a belief that this point in history is a transcendent moment.
[Cooper:] Quick clarification, on the way in to Candy's report we said the gap between Senators Clinton and Obama was wider than it was a month ago. We forgot to actually carry a digit and the gap is narrower, considerably so. Senator Obama has 30 percent now and Senator Clinton 40 a 10-point gap compared to 19 a month ago. Our apologies. Continuing the discussion now with Candy Crowley in Washington and John King in Sioux City, Iowa. Candy, pretty remarkable weekend in a race where we've seen remarkable weekends. The Obama campaign has got to be happy with this massive turnout. Do they think it will make much of a difference though when it actually comes to whom people want to vote?
[Crowley:] They do, but not quite in the way you might think. They don't think that there will be lots of people who will vote for Barack Obama because Oprah Winfrey endorsed him. They do believe that they've gotten just a treasure trove of material here off her coming and by that I mean they in fact asked for signatures and addresses and names when they gave out tickets. They asked for people to come in and volunteer for four hours in a Barack Obama campaign headquarters and people got a ticket. So if you wanted a ticket you gave over some of your information to the Barack Obama campaign and they can use that when it comes time to get out to vote.
[Cooper:] John, Oprah emphasized to the audience that she takes the endorsement of Obama seriously and didn't want to tell people how to vote. How effective was she?
[John King, Cnn Chief Correspondent:] She brings passion to the campaign, Anderson. You're at the point, 24 days to the Iowa caucuses and 30 days to the New Hampshire primary where energy matters. The candidates are tired, their volunteers are tired, their paid staff is tired. I was just in New Hampshire last week and you sense it here in Iowa as well. If you're talking to an Obama person, they're full of energy right now. They are full of vigor. If you're talking to a Clinton person, many of them are tired and they're beleaguered and they're looking around the corner to see what will go wrong next. So energy matters. If Oprah Winfrey can bring new energy and new infusion to the Obama campaign it is a huge blessing at exactly the right moment. This is when it counts.
[Cooper:] Candy, especially among female voters and African- American voters how concerned is the Clinton camp if they have made inroads there?
[Crowley:] Well, look I think you can see any number of things that point to the Clinton camp being worried about this and it's not just in Iowa if you win, it's how you win. If it's a very close race, even if Barack Obama finishes a very close first, that's an okay thing for him. It moves him into New Hampshire. If Hillary Clinton places second this, is not a good thing. Even though the race has been close in Iowa all along, the perception of her is "Oh, she's the formidable front-runner." She's going to win. She's inevitable and if she loses in Iowa, that definitely starts to drag her down.
[Cooper:] Candy and John, we're going to have more with you coming up in just a second. We're going to focus on the Republican race, but now more on the endorsement effects. The raw politics of it. Some of the names were A-list and others were A-list back when Jack and Jacqui were in the White House. Some, well you'll see. And then Fred Thompson, who'll probably be doing all right if he could only endorse himself. Anyway, the names now from A-list on down from CNN's Tom Foreman. Who's endorsing who?
[Tom Foreman, Cnn Correspondent:] The problem with celebrity endorsements is just keeping up with them. Virtually every candidate now has some sort of star power. Clinton has Streisand, Giuliani has Duvall, Edwards has Bonny Raitt singing his praise, McCain has Curt Schilling pitching for him. Kucinich has Sean Penn and of course, Huckabee has Chuck Norris.
[Mike Huckabee, , Presidential Candidate:] Chuck Norris doesn't endorse. He tells America how it's going to be.
[Foreman:] But the power of starlight is hard to measure. In the closing days of John Kerry's campaign, thousands showed up to see Bruce Springsteen saying Kerry was born to run.
[Sen. John Kerry,  Former Presidential Candidate:] I've been a fan of Bruce's for a long time, a long time.
[Foreman:] But the boss could not save him. Turns out, Kerry was born to lose. That's the thing about celebrity endorsements. At best, stars can get people to look at a candidate whom they otherwise might ignore, but that doesn't guarantee a vote and at worst, well, look at what some consider the first modern celebrity endorsement. Frank Sinatra supporting Democrat John Kennedy for president in 1960. When questions about Sinatra and the mob arose, Kennedy pushed away. Sinatra took his money and influence to the Republicans and 20 years later saluted President Ronald Reagan. Still, some celebrities hate the whole idea of playing at politics. The wheel of fortune's Pat Sajak says on his website, if any group of citizens is uniquely unqualified to tell someone else how to vote, it's those of us who live in the sheltered, privileged arena of celebrityhood. One's view doesn't get any clearer from the backseat of a limo. And that is raw politics. Anderson?
[Cooper:] I didn't even know Pat Sajak had a blog. Up next how CNN's new national poll shapes out for the Republicans and why the new front runner is now a political target. We're keeping them honest. Also in tonight's "Crime and Punishment", Michael Vick's lawyers fumble his defense on dog fighting charges. Why the NFL superstar will be behind bars longer than his co-defendants ahead on "360."