Is it all over?
Here in America many commentators, on the left and the right, already think it's all over. Speculation is now moving to who would fill the top positions in an Obama cabinet and whether the Democrats can increase their majority in the Senate by enough to give them a fillibuster-beating 60 seats.
If they do and they increase their majority in the House of Representives, as they likely will, then the Democrats really would rule the roost in both the legislative and executive branches of government. Speculation has already begun about future conflict between a leftish Capitol Hill and a centrist Obama White House, which Republicans regard as premature.
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But in the face of daunting polling figures, especially in the swing states showing consistent leads for Senator Obama, they are hoping for something of a miracle. One Republican strategist held out the hope yesterday of "pulling a Truman". In 1948, President Truman was widely expected to lose to Republican Thomas Dewey, who had a double digit lead in the polls. With almost no results in the pro-Republican Chicago Tribune even splashed, famously, in its election front page with "Dewey Defeats Truman". But the polls, then in their infancy, failed to detect a late swing to Truman, who was re-elected by a comfortable 2m votes.
Of course, it could happen again -- America's pollsters were pretty unreliable in the primaries -- but on the ground things are pretty grim for Senator McCain. George Bush's great election guru, Karl Rove, has just called Indiana, a strong Republican prospect in the mid-west, for Obama; and McCain's team are already starting to blame each other. A well-informed website reports that at "his Northern Virginia headquarters, some McCain aides are already speaking of the campaign in the past tense. Morale, even among some of the heartiest and most loyal staffers, has plummeted. And many past and current McCain advisers are warring with each other over who led the candidate astray." One wit told me that McCain's campaign has "formed a circular firing squad".
There is a growing consensus about why the McCain campaign is in trouble. The war hero senator's strength is in national security. But the "9/11 effect" in American politics is waning as the economy takes centre stage. The US is still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but the war on terror is taking a back seat to the recession now looming in the wake of Wall Street's financial meltdown. The expectation here is that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates again this week, which will put pressure on the Bank of England to follow suit.
Yesterday's splashed on the avalanche of job losses now hitting America's major corporations. In the last two weeks alone workforces have been cut in a long list of companies that reads like a "Who's Who of Corporate America" -- from General Electric to Yahoo to Coca Cola and even Goldman Sachs, tens of thousands of jobs are being shed. Unemployment, currently 6%, could rise to 8% or more in the months ahead.
Thus has national security been replaced by economic security as the main theme of the campaign of 2008. This has worked to the huge disadvantage of the incumbent Republicans (Gordon Brown take note) and, if the polls are to be believed, holed the McCain campaign below the waterline. Mr Obama grip on economics is not great but the voters seem to want a change -- and revenge. The Republicans look like they are about to feel their ire.
I'll be speaking to Anita about all this and more live from New York on the Daily Politics at Noon today on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ2. Hope you can us.
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