US:BEFORE FLYING with his family for a week's holiday in Hawaii yesterday, Barack Obama expressed concern about taking a break in election year.
He may have good reason to worry. He leaves behind a Democratic party that over the past fortnight has been showing signs for the first time of nervousness about the November 4th election.
For them, this is supposed to be the Democrats' year. Almost everything seemed to be going their way: unpopular president, disenchantment with the Iraq war, a faltering economy and an inspirational Democratic candidate.
What is worrying the Democrats, in spite of all these pluses, is that Obama's poll lead has remained stubbornly small. A tracking poll by RealClearPolitics published yesterday has Obama on 46.9 per cent compared with John McCain's 43.3 per cent.
"I think there are a lot of Democrats who are nervous," said Tad Devine, a John Kerry strategist in 2004. "I think they thought this election would fall into their laps."
Devine stressed that he was not among the pessimists and cautioned against what he described as "an artificial expectation that he needs to be way ahead at this time".
But the concern among Democrats is not just over the size of the poll lead, but over the impact of negative ads from McCain over the last two weeks that have reawakened bitter memories of Republican tactics in 2000 and 2004.
Since Obama's address in Berlin to an adoring crowd of 200,000 last month, the Democrat has been on the receiving end of ads from McCain portraying him as a celebrity-driven egotist and an elitist.
"Obama's bubble has not burst, but it is leaking," said Peter Brown, assistant director at one of the country's leading pollsters, the Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. He found it significant that when those surveyed were asked whether they want Democrats or Republicans to win, Democrats emerged with a double-digit lead, but when asked about Obama or McCain, Obama's lead was only in single figures.
Brown said that while the expectation is that Obama would win, "history is replete with northern liberals who end up losing".
McCain, in spite of being richer than Obama and with a taste for expensive living, presents himself as closer to the grittier world of working-class America.
McCain promised to fight an honourable, positive and respectful campaign against Obama but, unable to make an impact, he now seems to have put aside his resentment over what Bush strategist Karl Rove did to him in the 2000 Republican primary and called in a Rove protege, Steve Schmidt. - ( Guardian service)