Barack Obama is a historic candidate, son of a white American woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya. He is the first African-American to run

"The Bradley effect suggests Obama trails, perhaps significantly"

More worrying for the Obama camp should be the sudden movement of female voters to the Republican side. A recent ABC-Washington Post survey put McCain 12 percentage points ahead of Obama amongst white woman, while less than a month ago Obama had a 15% lead among woman in general. The only reasonable explanation for this sudden turnaround is Palin mania.

The majority of the American press condemned McCain for a lack for judgement after his appointment of an inexperienced Governor of Alaska as his vice presidential nominee after meeting only her once for 15 minutes. But Sarah Palin is pulling more and more voters towards the McCain campaign, drawn by her conservative values and perceived down-to-earth hockey-mom image. While Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate, a choice made to fill the gap in Obama’s foreign policy inexperience, has largely left voters indifferent. Palin is invigorating the religious right in a way McCain had failed to do throughout his campaign.

Democrats are now playing in the dark, uncertain how to take on Sarah Palin.

McCain’s lead may be even greater than pollsters think

Indeed, Palin is presently outperforming McCain. Campaigns are opportunities to field-test proposals and themes for the coming four years and build public support for action. This is what Obama is doing. But McCain isn’t making much of a positive argument for himself, beyond a few buzzwords like “maverick.” Especially on domestic issues, he has given virtually no clue as to what his priorities are, and what he wants to do in office. McCain’s ad campaigns have strayed from any sort of serious policy statements, focusing instead on the trivial and false. He has attacked Obama for acting like a celebrity, for wanting to teach sex education to kindergartners (false), and for calling Sarah Palin a “pig” (also false). Past Republican culture-war campaigns were negative, divisive and personal. But they made coherent arguments. In 2004 George W Bush’s denunciation of John Kerry as a liberal Washington insider who had trouble articulating clear positions had a ring of truth. Not so McCain’s ads. Instead they are used merely to get an anti-Obama message out and dominate news coverage, forcing Obama’s team into constantly denying false statements rather than set their own news agenda. Yet these ad campaigns have worked so far, helping McCain to the position Obama had enjoyed as the presidential front runner till a week ago. However, it seems unlikely that a culture war will benefit the McCain campaign in the long run. The fundamentals of the Presidential race, the financial hardship in America and a general unhappiness with the past 8 years of Republican rule still favour Obama. For many voters uneasy about their financial security those issues will eclipse the trivial issues put forward by McCain, while increased media coverage of the flaws in the McCain ads is likely to cause a backlash. Even Karl Rove, George Bush’s former media spin doctor, has said that John McCain’s recent ads have gone “too far” in terms of stretching the truth. Recently, in addition, Fox News anchors questioned McCain’s spokesman on the benefits of claiming Obama plans to raise taxes on the middle class when he has expressed no plan to do so.

The debates will also provide an opportunity for Barack Obama to cement his lead and prevent McCain from making a comeback. Through the debates’ focus on the candidates’ policies and positions Obama can concentrate public attention on his plans for America rather than a character battle between himself and John McCain. This is exactly what the McCain camp has tried to avoid. At the Republican convention in St Paul, McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis declared that “this election is not about issues”, but about a “composite view” of the candidates – in other words, character. Obama is the significantly favoured candidate amongst young voters when it comes to the defining issues of the election including the economy, global warming and health care. He leads substantially with voters aged between 18 and 29, a full 60% of which support the Democrat compared to only 32% who support McCain. Key will be Obama’s use of Hilary Clinton. If he can get her to support him more vocally and more consistently he may be able to retain more of the female voters that were disaffected by her defeat in Democratic primaries and are now moving to the Republican party rather than support the person that defeated their candidate. She has shown signs that she is willing to do this, but it is up to Obama to deploy her more effectively.

Presidential campaigns are notoriously volatile, and polls now are unlikely to represent the final outcome of the election. Yet Obama would do wisely to put a stop to the rise of Sarah Palin and Republican momentum lest he blow his, and black America’s, greatest chance at making history.