By Edward Luce in Columbia, Missouri
Published: October 31 2008 19:33 | Last updated: October 31 2008 19:33
At the first mention of John McCain, the boisterous Missouri crowd starts booing. “Don’t boo,” Barack Obama shoots back: “Vote.” With three days still to go before election day, Mr Obama’s campaign estimates that more than 40 per cent of likely voters have already cast their ballots in swing states such as Florida and Nevada – another indicator, if any were needed, that Tuesday may turn into something of a formality.
“The die is being cast as we speak,” said David Plouffe, Mr Obama’s campaign manager. “We believe we are on a credible pathway to winning all of the battleground states.”
But Mr Obama, for whom the prefix “preternaturally self-confident” is a step away from becoming a Microsoft Word insert, lets slip an anxiety that complacency may yet prove to be his undoing, even if Mr McCain’s campaign has long since ceased to pose much threat.
“Don’t think for a second that this election is ours,” Mr Obama tells a rally that has been drilled for 40 minutes before his arrival about the logistics of voting. “Don’t believe for a moment that power concedes anything. We’ve got to have every single one of you voting and grab three more to take along with you.”
Almost two years after Mr Obama launched his campaign in the “depths of winter from the steps of the state capitol building in Springfield, Illinois”, as he puts it, the first-term African-American senator has honed his campaign stump speech into a taut piece of oratory far removed from the dreamy passages with which he started out.
Gone are the high-soaring flights of poetry that inspired millions (upwards of 2m, according to estimates) of educated young people to volunteer for his campaign. Gone, too, is the underlying cadence of the revivalist preacher that electrified believers but left others, particularly Hillary Clinton’s loyal army of blue-collar supporters, feeling cold or overlooked.
Instead of dwelling on the imperative of restoring America’s positive role in the world, Mr Obama talks almost entirely about the economy. With the exception of a brief passage on the need to wind down the war in Iraq, foreign policy plays no part in his “closing argument”. In place of inspiration, there is wit.
“A few weeks ago John McCain said: ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’ That’s why I spend all my time talking about the economy,” says Mr Obama.
In place of the preacher, there is a pugilist. “George W. Bush just keeps digging our economy into a deeper and deeper hole,” he says. “And now he’s trying to hand off that shovel to John McCain.”
And instead of Jimmy Carter, there is Ronald Reagan. It is not quite “morning in America”. But Mr McCain’s increasing tendency to focus on the dark clouds hovering over America’s horizon has allowed Mr Obama to corner the market for optimism: “The question I want to ask you is not: ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ – we know the answer to that question,” says Mr Obama. “But, ‘will you be better off in four years time?’ ”
Bill Clinton, who for the first time joined Mr Obama on the stump in Florida this week, recommended that television viewers should mute the sound button and judge candidates by their body language. Mr Obama would come across as self-possessed, Mr McCain twitchy. The same conclusions might be drawn from the wildly diverging tactics of both campaigns in the closing stages of this surprisingly non-cliff-hanging contest.
While the McCain camp is indulging in mutual blame games – or what pundits call a “circular firing squad” – and constant tussles with Sarah Palin to prevent the vice-presidential nominee from going off-message, Mr Obama’s camp continues to spread its wings. Yesterday it launched advertisements in North Dakota, Georgia, and Arizona, Mr McCain’s home state.
It would still be a shock if Mr Obama won any of them – all three were seen as unshakeable Republican bastions just a few weeks ago. But with millions of dollars left in the bank and the most extensive ground operations ever built by a Democrat in the genuine swing states, Mr Obama could not resist poking Mr McCain in the eye.
“Do you know what John McCain stands for?” Mr Obama asks. “Have you seen his ads? He spends all his time talking about me . . . They have called me every name in the book. But it isn’t going to work. Not this time.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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