After a lacklustre debate, John McCain now has less than four weeks to turn the race for the White House around, as observers on Wednesday began to wonder aloud whether the Republican — who once dubbed himself the comeback kid — can win.
One day after McCain faced off in the second of three debates against Barack Obama, political observers said the exchange failed to up-end the frontrunner status of his Democratic rival, as the contest ticks down to the November 4 vote.
”Despite John McCain’s best efforts, the Arizona senator didn’t knock Mr Obama from his cool evasion or even do much to rebut the Democrat’s talking points,” the conservative Wall Street Journal wrote the morning after the debate.
”This isn’t enough to change the dynamics of the race.”
Snap polls by US television networks awarded the debate — the second of a trio of presidential clashes — to Obama.
Democrats now are optimistic that — with two of three rhetorical contests over and both won by Obama according to opinion polls — the Illinois senator is an increasingly good bet to clinch the November 4 election.
”The race is over,” crowed Howard Wolfson, a former spokesperson for Senator Hillary Clinton, one of several Democratic rivals vanquished by Obama en route to the sealing the nomination.
Long-time Washington pundit Roger Simon pronounced neither McCain nor Obama the winner, saying that, from his vantage point, both failed in ”delivering a knockout punch”.
”The trouble for John McCain, however, is that he needed one,” wrote Simon, a writer for the Politico daily newspaper.
The day after Tuesday’s outing, Obama continued to sound an upbeat note on the stump in the Midwestern state of Indiana, promising Americans ”better days ahead” despite plummeting global stock markets, rising job losses and dark clouds of economic gloom.
In an interview with ABC News, Obama bemoaned the ”irrational despair” afflicting tumbling stock markets, and said President George Bush was too weak to mend the crisis.
”I do think that the administration is hampered by the fact that people don’t have a lot of confidence in the president,” he said, and by extension threw doubt on a McCain administration that promises more of the same economic policy.
Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, accused his Republican rivals of ”injecting fear and loathing” into the campaign, including stoking rumours that Obama has terrorist ties.
Speaking on CBS television, Senator Biden dismissed as ”malarkey” Republican allegations of unsavoury ties between Obama and William Ayers, former leader of ”The Weathermen”, a domestic terror group. He was reacting to Sarah Palin’s comments last week that Obama had been ”pallin” around with terrorists.”
‘Inappropriate rhetoric’
McCain, at a rally along with running mate Palin in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, reined in his aggressive campaign, admonishing a local Republican activist’s repeated reference to ”Barack Hussein Obama” — a deliberate invocation of a given name the Democrat shares with late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
”We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric, which distracts from the real questions of judgement, character and experience that voters will base their decisions on,” said McCain spokesperson Paul Lindsay.
Meanwhile, despite the generally civil exchanges of Tuesday’s encounter, observers continued to remark upon the markedly nasty tone between the two candidates.
The New York Times excoriated McCain and Governor Palin of Alaska for the tone of the Arizona senator’s campaign.
”Ninety minutes of forced cordiality did not erase the dismal ugliness of his campaign in recent weeks, nor did it leave us with much hope that he would not just return to the same dismal ugliness on Wednesday,” it lamented.
”We certainly expected better from Mr McCain, who once showed withering contempt for win-at-any-cost politics,” it said.
A CNN national poll after the debate found that 54% of those asked thought Obama won and 30% said McCain was victorious.
A CBS survey also gave the debate to Obama — 40% to 26%. — AFP