Obama solidifies lead amid Washington turmoil

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON — As of Oct. 1, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama had built a strong lead that his rival, Republican Sen. John McCain, could find difficult to reverse. Obama's campaign has been aided by the financial crisis that has dominated the news for the past two weeks, a better-than-expected performance Sept. 26 in the first of three nationally televised presidential debates, and growing doubts that McCain's vice presidential pick, Gov. Sarah Palin, is up to the job. On Oct. 1, Obama was leading by a 50-42 percent margin, equal to the widest ever recorded by Gallup's 5-month-old daily tracking poll.
Other national tracking polls released Sept. 26-Oct. 1 confirmed a growing lead by Obama over McCain, more than nullifying the strong gains the Arizona senator made after the Republican Convention in early September and the initially rapturous reaction of his party's Christian Right base to his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Two major Internet betting sites also suggested that Obama came out of September with the wind at his back. The Iowa Electronic Markets (www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem), run by the College of Business of the University of Iowa, on Oct. 1 gave Obama 2-1 odds for winning the all-important Electoral College — its widest margin since June. The Intrade Prediction Market (www.intrade.com), which had McCain breathing down Obama's neck just 10 days before, showed a nearly 61-39 spread in favor of Obama on Oct. 1. And after the Sept. 26 debate, one of the most closely monitored poll-analysis Web sites, www.fivethirtyeight.com, gave Obama an unprecedented 80 percent chance of winning the election — by about 3.3 percentage points.
The polls as of Oct. 1 also showed significant advances by Democratic candidates in the U.S. Senate, suggesting for the first time that the party may hold a filibuster-proof 60 of 100 seats in the upper chamber in the next Congress. Democrats currently hold only 51 seats, including one by self-styled "independent" Democrat Joseph Lieberman, who supports McCain for president.
"The bottom line is that things have gotten worse for Senate Republicans over the past few weeks, so much worse that a magnitude of losses that seemed impossible just a few months ago now seems entirely possible," the influential National Journal's chief political analyst, Charlie Cook, warned Sept. 26.
The latest presidential polling Oct. 1 appeared to confirm that McCain's lead in Gallup's daily tracking poll Sept. 6 to Sept. 15 could not be sustained, particularly in light of a series of events that clearly favored the Democratic ticket. The most important appeared to be the financial crisis triggered by the bankruptcy of  Lehman Brothers investment bank Sept. 14, which effectively refocused public attention on the woes of the U.S. economy, of which Democrats are widely perceived as better stewards. McCain himself admitted last winter that he "doesn't really understand economics" and has long relied on former Sen. Phil Gramm for economic advice. Gramm, a major promoter of financial deregulation during the 1990s, who was dropped from McCain’s campaign last summer after he accused the electorate of having "become a nation of whiners," has become an increasingly embarrassing connection for McCain as the gravity of the situation has become clearer.
McCain's reactions to the crisis have only made things worse. On the morning after the Lehman collapse, for example, he asserted that the U.S. economy's "fundamentals" were "strong." Several hours later, he said the "fundamentals" were "at great risk." And when McCain last week briefly "suspended" his campaign to return to Washington, purportedly to broker the bailout deal, many analysts, including some Republicans, denounced the move as a stunt that needlessly injected "presidential politics" into a serious negotiation.
A second reason for the downturn in McCain's fortunes lies with Palin and rapidly diminishing media and public confidence in her fitness for the job, particularly after a one-on-one interview with popular CBS News Anchorwoman Katie Couric, in which, among other things, the Alaska governor insisted that her state's proximity to Russia gave her valuable foreign policy experience.
Obama clearly benefited from the Sept. 26 debate, the only one that was supposed to be devoted to foreign policy. While mainstream pundits declared the outcome a draw or a slight gain for McCain, a series of polls released through the end of September showed a consistent popular edge for Obama — particularly among independent and women voters — on the economy, honesty, leadership, and empathy for the average voter.
Obama also made substantial gains in the areas where McCain had previously enjoyed significant leads, specifically on foreign policy, the war on terrorism, and national security, according to all the polls, one of which found by a significant margin that Obama appeared "more presidential" than McCain.
Obama's better-than-expected performance, coupled with McCain's clear failure to "win" the debate — at least in the eyes of the public — could be particularly costly, according to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. "A foreign policy discussion afforded McCain his best opportunity to aggravate doubts about his foe," he wrote Sept. 29. "That opportunity is now gone."