MANCHESTER, N.H. — It’s 12 degrees, and the sun is going down.

I just walked on Manchester’s old-fashioned main drag, which is Elm Street. As readers/viewers of “The Virgin Suicides” know, the elms have been largely destroyed by Dutch Elm Disease.

They’ve converted many old shuttered mills here into office and living space. The Obama campaign in Manchester (they have 15 offices total) occupies a giant second floor room in an old factory space. It was packed with dozens of volunteers. It’s mid-day here. Do they have jobs?

It was a much bigger operation than the Edwards team I saw last night, and they’re growing. The national staff moves in tomorrow, and all the New Hampshire people move out to a “staging area.” (Yes, it sounds eerily militarist.)

I talked to Kathy Gillett, yet another typical Obama volunteer: New to politics, big-time member of the cult of Obama.

She has four kids and said she didn’t recognize the country in which they’re being raised. The divisions, the animosity, even in her own family, she said. “Obama sees we’re more alike than we are different.”

Her Republican brothers say they’d vote for him.

She’s Ward 1 Captain, she said proudly.

Obama is clearly on the move here, gaining in all the recent polls to essentially even. The outcome will depend on Iowa, to a great extent.

Gillett said they never got down during the dog days of late summer, early fall, when the Clinton annointment was on.

She said New Hampshire voters have gotten to know Obama, and they like what they see.

Also, Gillett, who’s not from New Hampshire, said the state deserves it’s first-primary-in-the-nation status. “They listen, they discern, and they take the responsibility seriously.”

Hopefully Nevadans get this.