If he wants to bounce Barack Obama needs to win over the working moms
Updated on 25 July 2008
Barack Obama needs to prove he can give more than just good rhetoric to win over ordinary voters, writes Felicity Spector.
For the wunderkind, some electoral problems. Barack Obama might have gone down a storm in Berlin but the news back home won't be quite so welcoming.
He's enjoyed a media bonanza like no other: fantastic images, and coverage so gushing, that it got the McCain camp all outraged - especially given the almost total lack of stories about the Republican campaign.
But no bounce. At least, not yet. Even though his foreign trip does seem to have succeeded in improving perceptions about his statesmanship, that doesn't seem to have translated into increased support.
According to a series of new polls, Obama's national lead over John McCain has narrowed and, more worryingly perhaps, he's now trailing in three all-important battleground states.
And, as predicted, the Republicans are using Obama's travels to claim he's just not interested in ordinary folks' problems back home.
When Barack was wowing those adoring crowds at the Victory Column, McCain was in Ohio - the state that could decide the election -at a cancer event both candidates had been invited to.
One mother, whose little boy was diagnosed with the disease, wasn't impressed. She had planned to support Obama "until he didn't show up tonight."
And here's a quote from ABC, from a voter at 'Schmidt's Sausage Haus' in Columbus: "I don't know why Obama's getting all this attention. McCain is right where he should be - in America."
The Republicans are also ramming home the message of hubris: that their Democratic rival is acting as if he'd already been elected.
"People of the world" he declaimed last night "this is our moment. This is our time." All fuel for the RNC's 'Audacity Watch' which is pumping out the message that Obama's treating the contest like it's already over. Yesterday's email cited an Atlantic Monthly piece claiming the Democrats were already planning the Presidential transition. Not the sort of thing that goes down very well back in Columbus.
Here's the most worrying signal that things are awry: the Quinnipac University/WSJ poll out today. Obama slipping in many of the most crucial states. And this, rather than some notional national lead, is what really matters.
Obama's lead in Michigan and Wisconsin has narrowed. From a five and seven point lead in Colorado and Minnesota, it's now a dead heat.
Other recent polls, says the Wall Street Journal, show close races in Virginia, Florida, Nevada and New Hampshire.
And, more bad news for the Democrats: according to the latest WSJ/NBC poll, although most Americans feel their country's status abroad is a problem, 55 per cent of them still think Obama is the 'riskiest choice' as President. Most still believe McCain would be the better Commander in Chief.
But all this is still pretty early in the campaign - and pre-Labour day, to boot. Obama's team have plenty of time to make up the groundwork back home. But this election is clearly no shoo-in.
Key for Obama is showing not that he can give good rhetoric but that he can feel the pain of ordinary voters. So expect to hear much more of the 'ordinary Obama' story: the boy raised by a single mom who worked his way through school.
That could be the only way he can connect to those regular, blue collar voters in Ohio - the working moms. The very people Hillary managed to reach out to, who Obama urgently needs to win over to his cause.
