Never mind that it was a sunny spring afternoon. The shades were down, the better to see Sen. Barack Obama on a computer in the corner.
He was answering questions in Iowa, and, for about an hour, a dozen people in Carmen Ashhurst's living room in Eastchester watched him live on a webcast.
America needs universal health care and better school reform, he said, more high-speed Internet access and a repeal of the Bush administration's tax cuts.
Those are all topics Hillary Clinton talks about and has been talking about for years. Some of the people watching had supported her in the past. But now they wanted to hear what the senator from Illinois had to say.
This was much too small a group to draw conclusions from, just as it is too early in the presidential race to predict much of anything. But here are some observations about Ashhurst's house party, which took place Saturday, part of Obama's community kickoff across the country.
It cut across race and gender and age, and what seemed to interest people most was Obama's promise to replace bitter partisanship with something new.
Andrew Watiker is 19 and a student at Oberlin College and Obama's opposition to the war is important to him. But he addresses it only after you ask him about it. What he mentions first is his belief that Obama may be the man to break through deadlock in Washington.
"I think, too, that there is a feeling that he'll represent change that maybe Hillary wouldn't represent," Watiker said. He could work more easily with Republicans than Clinton.
"Barack Obama would be able to help make that change possible, make things happen," he said.
When Obama talks about transforming the country, many Americans are skeptical. Lots of politicians vow to reform Washington and bring a new spirit to the country. It's a perennial political pledge. And if Obama has drawn comparisons to the Kennedys, he is also facing the predictable backlash.
That didn't seem to matter to Ashhurst's guests.
To 41-year-old Dawn Kirnon, an oncologist, Obama appears sincere, someone who doesn't try to please everyone all of the time. Other politicians say what they think people want to hear, she said.
"It absolutely drew me in," Kirnon said. "It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he's a black politician, because there have been other black politicians."
And, said this black woman who lives in White Plains, they didn't draw her to politics.
As for Clinton? Kirnon is not convinced that she would be able to govern well even if she were to win. Too many old political enemies would be waiting for her.
To 34-year-old Natalie Gross, Obama seems honest and hopeful to a degree that she has not seen in other politicians.
"I feel like I want to vote for him, but I need to figure out exactly why," said Gross, who works at Sarah Lawrence College as director of racial and ethnic diversity and campus engagement.
If that makes sense, she added. And it does if you're talking about Obama's charisma, that much-written-about and hard-to-pin-down quality.
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