As global investors lost more than US$3 trillion in market value this week, US Senator Barack Obama saw his own stock gaining among US voters.
The crisis rocking financial markets has upended the US presidential campaign, taking the focus off Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain and moving the debate to Obama’s turf: the economy. The Democrat blamed both McCain and US President George W. Bush for the turmoil, calling for more regulation and casting himself as the agent of change.
McCain escalated his own rhetoric, vowing to oust the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and attacking Wall Street and “an outdated patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight.”
PHOTO: AFP
Still, national polls this week showed Obama rising.
“Clearly, Obama is gaining,” said Jim Pinkerton, a Republican strategist.
McCain has to distance himself from the Bush administration to avoid being pinned to the crisis, Pinkerton said.
“When consumer confidence falls, it’s not good for the perceived incumbent,” he said.
The Sept. 15 to Sept. 17 Gallup Poll Daily tracking update showed Obama with a 48 percent to 44 percent lead over McCain among registered voters, “marking the first time that Obama has held a statistically significant lead in two weeks,” the polling and research organization said yesterday.
Obama had a 5-point lead over McCain, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted from Sept. 12 to Sept. 16 and posted on the CBS Web site on Sept. 17. McCain had a 2 percentage-point lead among registered voters in a CBS News poll released on Sept. 8, just after the Republican National Convention, CBS said.
Obama’s earlier lead had evaporated as McCain announced his vice presidential pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the Republicans held their national convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, early this month.
Sensing a chance to regain his lost momentum, Obama has told crowds they should look at the way McCain is handling the market tremors, citing his Republican rival’s Sept. 15 comments that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
Yesterday, Obama used McCain’s call for SEC Chairman Christopher Cox’s firing to tie his rival to the Republican establishment.
“Here’s what I say: In 47 days, you can fire the whole trickle-down, on-your-own, look-the-other-way crowd in Washington who have led us down this disastrous path,” he told a crowd of 9,500 in Espanola, New Mexico. “Get rid of this philosophy, get rid of the do-nothing approach to our economic problems and put somebody in there who is going to fight for you.”
That message underlined how Obama is trying to use the growing anxiety to promote his call for change, said Michael Dimock, associate research director at Washington’s Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
“Reminding people of how worried they are about the economy increases the value of the change mantra that Obama has been focusing on,” Dimock said.
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