KEY POINTS:
Standing next to his street stall of glassware in downtown Denver, Jim Butcher was delighted that Barack Obama and the Democrats were holding their convention in his city this week.
He hoped to make a killing selling his wares to the 50,000 visitors, including 15,000 journalists, who are descending on Colorado's state capital. But Butcher, who is a registered Independent, did not intend to vote for Obama in November.
"I think at the moment I am going for [John] McCain," he said.
Asked if there was anything Obama could do this week to persuade him to change his mind, Butcher quickly replied: "Not really. Not much chance of that."
The reason, he said, was Obama's lack of experience. When asked, he said his decision had nothing to do with the colour of the candidate's skin: "I don't care about his race." Then he added a rider that will dismay those who watch with mounting anxiety as McCain steadily gains ground on his Democratic rival for the White House: "There might be some people who do."
This week's events in Denver are fast turning into a critical moment in Obama's bid to be America's first black president. What was once seen as an anointing of his candidacy is becoming a chance to right a campaign facing a series of unexpected crises.
The Democrats are starting to struggle in a presidential race which they should be dominating. America is beset by economic troubles, mired in an unpopular foreign war and facing an unpopular Republican Party. A stunning 80 per cent of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction. Yet Obama and McCain are virtually tied in the polls. The possible explanations are multiple. The Democratic campaign is being daily assaulted by withering Republican attack ads. At the same time, there are still deep scars in the party left by the ferocious battle between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.
And then there is the issue of race. It gets much less attention, yet it might provide the key to understanding the strange inability of the Obama campaign to achieve lift-off in the polls.
"The question of this election is race. The answer we are looking for is, how much will it matter?" said Professor Shawn Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside.
America will soon find out. When Obama speaks on Friday he will reach a television audience of millions of Americans. They will look into the face of a man who could be their next president and for the first time it will be a black face.
By the end of this week, America will finally be facing up to the question that might truly define the 2008 presidential race: is America ready to elect a black man to the White House?
Obama's speech will take place in the most historic of circumstances. On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech, delivered at the height of the civil rights struggle, Obama will face an adoring crowd to whom he will preach a message of unity and change.
"It is hard to overstate the historic nature of this speech," said Professor Seth Masket, a political scientist at Denver University.
The campaign tries to portray Obama in terms of America's history as a melting pot of different ethnicities: black and white, and everything in between. That is going to be writ large at Denver in a carefully packaged message. Denver will paint an all-American picture of Obama as an everyman, defying pigeonholing.
That is a laudable aim and politically astute. It is also difficult. For the fact of race is always present.
It is hard to imagine the Obama phenomenon if he was a white politician. Then he might just be another one-term senator from Middle America with a gift for oratory and little experience. But Obama's mixed racial background and its deeper meaning propels him to a different level. It also makes it harder for him to avoid addressing the issue of race.
But America itself is often engaged in the same experience; not talking about race even though everyone is thinking about it.
The polls certainly seem to suggest that some white Americans do have a problem with Obama. His popularity is huge among blacks and strong with Hispanics and young white voters. Yet his support struggles among older white voters, including many Democrats. Among Clinton Democrats, one fifth say they are backing McCain rather than Obama. It may be these voters care about "experience" or other issues more than black or Hispanic or young voters. Or it might be that they are simply resistant to voting for a black man to be president, whether they know it or not.
Whatever the truth, there is little doubt that race is going to play a starring role in the election after the convention season. "It has not been too much of an issue so far. Or, at least not talked about. But that is not going to last," said Bowler. It is already getting a lot of play on conservative talkshow hosts and in books. Rush Limbaugh, the "shock jock" who is hugely popular with white conservatives, has stepped up race-baiting on his broadcasts. "I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy," he told his millions of listeners. "You can't criticise the little black man child."
Polls last week showed Obama's lead over McCain narrowing to just a few points. Suddenly, people were realising a simple truth: this election is close and the Republicans could win it.
McCain, with his new aggressive strategy, is now settled into the "happy warrior" mode. He is the insurgent underdog taking chunks out of a more favoured opponent. Yet such an analysis is unfair to Obama. A study of the electoral coalition shows just how narrow Obama's margins of victory are. His levels of support among blacks, Hispanics and young voters are already squeezed close to their likely maximum. In order to win in November he undoubtedly needs to persuade white, working class and elderly Americans to back him in much greater numbers.
McCain needs to keep them away. That alone will ensure that the issue of race cannot remain underground. For, in the heat of the fight ahead, it could actually become the main battlefield itself.
- OBSERVER
