A lunar eclipse. A World Series victory after 86 years for the Boston Red Sox. For the Democratic faithful, it was an unmistakable omen: John Kerry, locked for weeks in a dead heat with George Bush, now had the stars on his side.
Kerry certainly seemed to think so on Thursday as he bounded on stage in baseball cap, shirtsleeves and striped tie in Toledo, Ohio, much more relaxed than usual, and visibly happy.
”I’m feeling great,” he told the crowd in a voice raspy from cheering on his team. He recalled the right-wing radio host who had taunted that he would never be president until the Red Sox won the title: a notion once dismissed as impossible for a team famously seen as cursed.
”We’re on our way, we’re on our way,” Kerry gloated.
The good humour was infectious and the rumbustious crowd of students, boiler-makers, steelworkers, auto-workers and other union members stamped their approval. Kerry even loosened up enough to admit having Vietnam flashbacks, saying the thunder reminded him of bombing raids, and the audience liked him even more.
”If there was any doubt I had, I don’t no more,” said Jennifer Hawkins (27) a restaurant manager and part-time student. ”He was just awesome.”
Nobody on the Democratic campaign dares speak of a wave, but with just four days left there is a sense that Kerry is rising to the occasion.
Campaign staff often frustrated by their candidate’s difficulty in connecting with ordinary Americans are now enjoying a discernible satis faction. Someone has painted ”Red Sox rule” on the windows of cars in the motorcade.
On Thursday, Kerry’s famously convoluted sentences were tighter. The aloof New England demeanour softened, and his message rang more clearly. The candidate with the reputation in baseball parlance of a ”good closer” is growing visibly stronger the finish line approaches.
This week has been an exercise in endurance and star power. On Tuesday he travelled 4 800km in a single day. On Wednesday he enlisted Carole King and Bon Jovi, and on Thursday night it was Bruce Springsteen, whose No Surrender Kerry has adopted as his signature tune.
At every stop in the midwest he has relied on the same top line, assailing Bush for the disappearance of nearly 400 tonnes of explosives in Iraq.
He soon returns to more traditional Democratic terrain, presenting himself as a ”champion for the middle class” as he tacks a populist line on jobs, healthcare, and tax breaks for the rich. But his focus on the missing explosives has been unblinking, with the Democratic challenger clearly believing the debacle will amplify his larger arguments about Bush’s conduct of the war.
”This week’s news about the missing explosives speaks directly to the president’s mistakes in Iraq,” he said on Thursday.
On Wednesday he went even further, accusing Bush of putting US troops in greater danger. ”The missing explosives could very likely be in the hands of terrorists and insurgents, who are actually attacking our forces now 80 times a day on average,” he told a rally in Rochester, Minnesota.
As the crowd hooted in delight, he drove the knife in still further, saying: ”I know that President Bush doesn’t like to deal with facts, and doesn’t like the truth to get in his way.”
The strategy has had some success. Bush waited two days to respond to the charge that the White House was to blame for the wayward explosives. Once he did, Kerry pounced again, accusing him of shirking responsibility for the misdeeds of his administration.
Kerry’s decision to campaign this week in the states of the upper midwest – Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa — is a defensive one. They narrowly favoured Al Gore in 2000, but this year the Republicans see them as an insurance policy in case Bush fails to hang on to Ohio and Florida. Kerry must protect his flank.
For days now the two have traced each other’s footsteps across the American heartland, and Bush is due to do his turn in Toledo on Friday.
That gives Kerry a double-edged task. He is going to pockets of uncommitted voters and soft Republicans, such as Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Tuesday: a town which has suffered serious job losses. At the same time he has to gee up Democratic bedrock towns such as Toledo.
There was good news for the Democrats in Ohio, where a Los Angeles Times poll gave Mr Kerry a six-point lead. But there is a statistical tie in Wisconsin, where Mr Kerry made his second stop in two days yesterday, and in Minnesota, where he was thought to have a tiny edge, there was worrying news in a University of Minnesota poll that showed Ralph Nader siphoning off most of his support, giving Bush a three-point lead.
”It’s a very very close election,” the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Jim Doyle, said. ”We need to make sure even in areas that are heavily Republican that they are coming out to vote for John Kerry.”
It is an election at which voter sentiment has proved almost impossible to gauge. Registration drives have brought in tens of thousands of potential new voters. Deep anger at Bush has given Kerry thousands of new volunteers.
A Democratic strategist in Ohio was not ready to give Kerry victory. ”Most of the states are still on the cusp,” he said. ”But there are more states on the cusp and leaning towards Bush than on the cusp and leaning towards Kerry.”
What the Democrats now hope is that the Red Sox win, and Kerry’s ebullient mood, will tip the balance their way. – Guardian Unlimited Â