On January 3rd Iowans will be making a critical choice on behalf of the nation. The people here helping Chris Dodd are taking part in history here over the closing days before the caucus. I'm going to try to tell that story over the next week and give you a window into the Dodd campaign. Throughout our campaign I've covered hundreds of Dodd events. For the most part, I've eschewed writing the typical campaign blog posts cheering on how great the events are or how positive the crowds response is, because frankly, I think it's better to let the video from Dodd events do the talking for me. Now, though, I want to use my time in Iowa to show as much as I can what's happening on the ground.

After a hectic day of travel filled with missed and delayed flights, I arrived in Iowa last night to a bustling Dodd Headquarters in Des Moines. “Bustling” is a word you'll hear bandied about a lot when campaigns talk about the activity in their offices around Iowa this week, but to be honest it hardly covers what's going on. The winding halls of Dodd HQ were filled with staffers and volunteers fulfilling a range of tasks – planning the events between now and the caucus, calling Iowans to ask them to support Senator Dodd, honing the closing argument for Chris Dodd, keeping our web presence dynamic, and much, much more.

Last night Senator Dodd was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. A bunch of staffers watched his appearance at Lucky's, the bar next door to the office. We weren't the only ones, though — there was a buzz from people responding to Senator Dodd's mature leadership talking about the Benazir Bhutto's assassination. The next President is going to encounter issues that we haven't talked about in this campaign, and the question Iowans are going to be asking themselves “who do they trust to know what they are doing when that happens?”

This morning we awoke to snow in Des Moines. A few inches fell overnight and it's continuing to come down steadily. Fortunately for me, Erik Moe, our art director, is a Minnesotan with a lifetime of experience driving in the snow and muck, and he ensured the trip to the office this morning was a safe one.

First off the bat, we recorded two videos with Senator Dodd (which you'll be seeing shortly). Tim Tagaris took   this picture of Senator Dodd and I talking about the response online to his efforts to stop retroactive immunity from being part of FISA legislation. The Senator was humbled by the scale of support he received from the netroots in this fight and is committed to continuing it when the Senate returns in January. This is a team effort and together we can win this fight for good.

As I write this post now, people are working hard to prepare for a rally that will be taking place at our HQ in just a few minutes. We'll be posting pictures and video from at just as soon as we can, so you'll be able to see what the mobilization for Chris Dodd in Iowa looks like even if you can't be here to take part.

Stay tuned for more updates at The Dodd Blog.

Disclosure: I proudly work for Chris Dodd's presidential campaign.