Macharia Gaitho
26 October 2008
column
Washington DC — With just eight days to go before the US presidential election, Democratic candidate Barack Obama is poised to make history by becoming the first African-American occupant of the most powerful office in the world.
The Illinois Senator leads in all national opinion polls, and more crucially in the all the remaining key battleground states that have swung decisively in his favour and away from Republican rival John McCain.
The two almost crossed paths on Saturday as they both campaigned in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it was McCain who had to struggle to get a decent audience in a state that just a few weeks ago seemed his for the taking.
As the two candidates crisscrossed the crucial western states of New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado over the weekend, it appeared that for McCain, everything that could go wrong was going wrong.
On Friday evening onto Saturday, dominating the national news networks was a story about a McCain campaign worker charged with giving police false information about an assault by a presumed Obama supporter.
In the bizarre incident, Ms Ashley Todd, 20, carved a big letter 'B' on her on own face and then reported to a police officer that she had been attacked, robbed, beaten and been branded on the face by a "black man" man because she was a McCain supporters.
The B carved in reverse , she claimed, was supposed to stand for Barack, but police officer was sceptical about her story and under questioning she admitted making it all up.
Although there was little to indicate it was anything more than a stupid solo stunt by a troubled young girl, it was still a distraction for the McCain campaign that is already under scrutiny for a message that seems aimed at exploiting white fears about the prospects of a black president.
It did not help matters that McCain campaign officials in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where the incident took place played an active role in alerting the local media to the alleged attack.
The bizarre incident came just after another self-inflicted embarrassment for the McCain team was playing itself out in the media.
This was the revelation that the campaign, which is lagging far behind in fundraising and is trying to project itself representing the ordinary working class, had spent $150,000 in clothes and hairdressers and make-up for the party vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
The Republicans have also been distracted by two separate ethics investigations on Ms Palin, the Governor of Alaska. One is the "troopergate" affair where she is accused of instigating the sacking of her former brother-in-law for domestic reasons, and the other involves accusations that she made irregular expense claims in Alaska.
That was the background as both Obama and McCain wooed voters in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, western "cowboy" states that ordinarily would be natural turf for the Republican candidate but now all beginning to tilt Democrat.
The latest electoral college maps by various groups all show Obama holding leads of over 5 percentage points in both Colorado and New Mexico, representing major developments in States where the McCain held sway not too long ago. The two states have nine and five electoral college votes respectively and have already been coloured blue on the electoral college map by most analysts, indicating sure Obama victories.
Nevada, a state which had the McCain red on the map not too long ago, has now shifted to between leaning blue or too close to call, but Obama has already overhauled his rival to open up a narrow lead for the five electoral college votes at stake.
If he loses those three western states, then McCain's prospects are nearly doomed as there are very few battleground states left to conquer, and all are leaning towards Obama.
Just three weeks ago, there were at least 11 states listed on the battleground map; the States in which the election could go either way and ultimately determine who wins the battle for electoral college votes.
Apart from Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado with a total of 19 electoral college votes, others were Florida (27 votes), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Missouri (11), Indiana (11),and New Hampshire (4).
The 11 swing states together command 141 of the 270 electoral college votes needed to command a majority.
An average of the latest state-by-state polls from various groups including Gallup, CNN, Zogby, Newsweek and others shows Mr Obama leading Mr McCain in all those states. In many of the races the lead is commanding enough for the state to be removed from the "too close to call" list to the Obama state totals. Not a single one of the states indicated is leaning towards McCain.
The mathematics of it all is that Mr Obama is set for a landslide in the race for the 538 delegates that make up the electoral college.
A simple majority of 270 electoral college votes is required to win the White House. According to the latest projections, Mr Obama has already bagged 220 votes compared to 134 for Mr McCain, being totals for the states where the vote is already certain.
From the states that are classified as leaning heavily to either candidate, Mr Obama gets an additional 14 votes for a total of 234, just 36 short of the target; while Mr McCain gets 29 votes for a total of 163.
Then come the 11 battleground states listed above and their combined total of 141 electoral college votes. Some of them, like vote-rich Pennsylvania and Ohio with a total of 41 votes, are tilting so strongly towards Mr Obama in the polls that they could already be put in his bag. Others in the same category include Virginia with 13 votes, New Colorado with nine votes, New Mexico with five votes and New Hampshire with four votes.
Some pollsters, in fact, give Mr Obama all the 141 battleground state votes, making for a commanding victory of 375 at the electoral college to 163 for Mr McCain.
The upshot of it is that unless something really dramatic happens in the next few days to turn everything on its head, Mr Obama is headed for the White House.
This is a prospect the Republican Party seems to be resigning itself to as recriminations start within a campaign that in the last few weeks has hurled everything at Mr Obama but failed to make a dent.
According to various news sources, Mr McCain's top campaign officials are already at war as a blame game starts.
Ms Palin, is already ignoring Mr McCain in order to secure support of the party right wing for her on bid in 2012.
Meanwhile Mr McCain's desperate last minute bid to further distance himself from the unpopular President Bush with a series of hard-hitting attacks on the policies of the outgoing administration also seems to be back-firing.
Some of his criticism of President Bushs' eight years in office seems to have been lifted directly from the Obama campaign, and instead of winning him new voters has further alienated him from the Republican party base.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
