“..The world’s verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for..”
“..The feeling is familiar.
I had it four years ago and four years before that: a sinking feeling in the stomach.
It’s a kind of physical pessimism which says: “It’s happening again.
The Democrats are about to lose an election they should win - and it could not matter more.”
In my head, I’m not as anxious for Barack Obama’s chances as I was for John Kerry’s in 2004 or Al Gore’s in 2000.
He is a better candidate than both put together, and all the empirical evidence says this year favours Democrats more than any since 1976.
But still, I can’t shake off the gloom.
Look at yesterday’s opinion polls, which have John McCain either in a dead heat with Obama or narrowly ahead.
Given the well-documented tendency of African-American candidates to perform better in polls than in elections - thanks to people who say they will vote for a black man but don’t - this suggests Obama is now trailing badly.
More troubling was the ABC News-Washington Post survey which found McCain ahead among white women by 53% to 41%.
Two weeks ago, Obama had a 15% lead among women.
There is only one explanation for that turnaround, and it was not McCain’s tranquilliser of a convention speech:
Obama’s lead has been crushed by the Palin bounce.
So you can understand my pessimism.
But it’s now combined with a rising frustration.
I watch as the Democrats stumble, uncertain how to take on Sarah Palin.
Fight too hard, and the Republican machine, echoed by the ditto-heads in the conservative commentariat on talk radio and cable TV, will brand Democrats sexist, elitist snobs, patronising a small-town woman.
Do nothing, and Palin’s rise will continue unchecked, her novelty making even Obama look stale, her star power energising and motivating the Republican base.
So somehow Palin slips out of reach, no revelation - no matter how jaw-dropping or career-ending were it applied to a normal candidate - doing sufficient damage to slow her apparent march to power, dragging the charisma-deprived McCain behind her.
We know one of Palin’s first acts as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska was to ask the librarian the procedure for banning books.
Oh, but that was a “rhetorical” question, says the McCain-Palin campaign.
We know Palin is not telling the truth when she says she was against the notorious $400m “Bridge to Nowhere” project in Alaska -
- in fact, she campaigned for it - but she keeps repeating the claim anyway.
She denounces the dipping of snouts in the Washington trough - but hired costly lobbyists to make sure Alaska got a bigger helping of federal dollars than any other state.
She claims to be a fiscal conservative, but left Wasilla saddled with debts it had never had before.
She even seems to have claimed “per diem” allowances - taxpayers’ money meant for out-of-town travel - when she was staying in her own house.
Yet somehow none of this is yet leaving a dent..”
go to source/story>>Jonathan Freedland: The world’s verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for | Comment is free | The Guardian