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THE MOST striking thing about the mood in pre-election America is that so many people have a voluble view on what is going on. A hotel clerk who showed me to my hotel room and switched on the TV to find the Democrat contender in full flow said, "I just hope he wins". Granted, this is first-stop Manhattan, where it is unthinkable that a guest might be carrying a torch for John McCain.
But the compelling nature of the contest now reaches far beyond the progressive comfort zone of the East Coast. Already, the early number of votes cast has broken records.
Barack Obama, who started the election race as the underdog in his own party, is in sight of the White House. The polls say it, the confidence of the campaign says it and the edgy infighting in his rivals' camp says it loudest of all. A monthly magazine in New Mexico has taken a punt on an "Obama wins" front page. Hostage to fortune but a better bet than the alternative.
Today, Mr Obama mounts a platform with Bill Clinton in Florida: a daring combination of the new star and the old Greatest Hits medley of bygone Democrat glory. Two men who have had little affection for each other have patched it up - not least because the Clintons cannot appear to be churlish about a major event in the history of America's progressives, and because Obama is taking no chances.
He is tiring, unsurprisingly, having fought two gruelling campaigns successively - one for the nomination against the Clinton machine and another against his real rival for power. A sprinkling of grey flecks are now visible in his fiercely shorn haircut.
Those speeches, once rhapsodic, have become safely boring. The days when he could deal with a near-hysterical fan shouting "I love you" by exclaiming, "I love you back!" are over. At rallies like last night's in the swing state of Virginia, he reads from the autocue and changed little more than the name of the state and city. "No mistakes" is the final stage motto. Winning formulae are not to be tampered with.
"This election could be really big for Barack," says one campaign insider. "But it depends on a lot of people turning out who haven't voted before, or vote rarely. That's why the fear thing is still there."
The fear thing is the last hurdle on an extraordinary journey for Mr Obama.
As his campaign moves into territories that the Democrats would have deemed beyond their reach only a few months ago, making a serious bid for a win in Florida and now firmly ahead in Pennsylvania and Ohio, there has never been greater nervousness in a campaign about whether the polls are telling the truth.
Views on Mr Obama are more textured than the orthodoxy that educated liberals like him, uneducated worshippers of God and guns don't.
Yes, there is overt and covert racism. In its most virulent and aggressive form, it is there in the dim white "supremacists" hatching Palookaville-style plots to assassinate a black president, the second batch of the campaign season arrested this week.
It is there passively in communities who feel that they are already at the bottom of the economic heap and are unsure about whether a President Obama would be serious about alleviating white as well as black poverty.
That also goes for Hispanics who have historically embraced the Republicans. As the Democrats go on a final spending splurge today on the networks, they are devoting a huge chunk to targeting Spanish-speaking voters.
The other group the Obama team worries about is not racist but unfamiliar with Mr Obama and afraid of what it does not know. This part of the McCain strategy was hived off to Sarah Palin, who, in the presidential debates, emphasised at every turn that the Democrat candidate was "different" from ordinary folks.
Of course, McCain could not be more different himself by achievement, wealth and connections from his new Everyman friend, Joe the plumber.
But Mrs Palin is hinting at something Mr Obama has had to work hard to offset: the notion that his experience as an African-American bestows a kind of separateness from the mainstream. "I mean," says one pro-McCain blogger in (sort of) jest, "who else has to go all the way to Hawaii to see their granny?"
Some floating voters might well be having last-minute doubts on perfectly reasonable grounds, too. The real nature of "Obamapolitix" is still uncertain. That has been obscured by the speed and brilliance of his rise.
A short political resumé, which enables him to travel light, gives very little sense of what he would deliver, beyond a tax cut targeted on working families cobbled together as a response to the financial crisis.
Mr McCain's campaign has gone negative in branding its opponent as a dangerous socialist because it is in trouble: that is no secret.
It is not wrong, however, to ask what a candidate's definition of redistribution of wealth is, from whom and to whom. It is one of the oldest questions in politics and it gains new salience when there is not very much left in straitened times to re-apportion.
Mr Obama does not always help himself by sticking to some too-familiar tunes on subjects like the education deficit. He supports more "every child matters" programmes but allows no dalliance with vouchers or more experimentation with choice.
His speech to the party convention was pitched to its core to heal the divided Democrat clan but in the process it reinforced confusion about whether he is running as the reformer of his own party, in the manner of Bill Clinton in 1992 or Tony Blair in 1997, or whether he is likely to go with the grain of its preconceptions. Mr McCain can't be blamed for pointing that out.
A less-than-attractive Democrat trait is to believe that when they are beaten, someone else is at fault the "stolen election" thesis run wild.
What they prefer to forget about Al Gore and the "stolen" election of 2000 is that he badly underperformed as a candidate, which allowed the contest to run away from him long before it came down to the lawyers-at-dawn, chad-hanging recount in Florida.
For all the concerns about race swirling around this campaign, the sheer drama of the "first black President" has secured a vast amount of media attention for Mr Obama. Only Mrs Palin challenged him briefly for news coverage, before she fizzled and fell to earth.
This contest is about race, in the sense of showing the US uniquely capable of making the leap from having no serious ethnic-minority candidate to one nearing the leadership in a few short years. No European democracy has done or is close to doing that.
It brings out the best and the worst of America along the way. Mr Obama knows that well enough and looks well equipped to deal with it. That is why he has got so far, so fast, to start with.
Reader views (2)
The Dems are the most evil, corrupt, immoral bunch I've ever seen. Then comes Obama, who's only accomplishment is organizing riots in Chicago, with mega-millions of overseas money- running for president. What is going on? How is the regular working guy suppose to raise a family here? The Dems and all their money are destroying this country economically and morally, and it is only going to get worse with the Dem congress getting a Dem president. Lord please help us all during this dangerous, evil experiment.
- Ken L, Phila. USA, 30/10/2008 06:45
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How can Britons look at their own governments with a wary, even cynical eye but swoon over Obama and his say-nothing-of-substance campaign with such gleeful naivete?
Obama is well-equipped? Based on what? Experience? Even his own supporters admit there's not much of a track record.
Saying Palin received only brief news coverage is simply untrue. Saying she 'fizzled' is even more untrue considering the all-out assault on her record and character carried out by the Dems arm-in-arm with their media cronies.
Obama may indeed win but polls are well within the scientific margin of error. Calling it over is premature and since it remains possible that the media's darling may not win it's foolish as well.
- Buddy L Moore, WV USA, 29/10/2008 21:02
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