Barack Obama still needs all the help he can get

Last night in Denver, Barack Obama gave a strong, fighting speech that reassured an edgy Democratic Party that he is ready to trade blow for blow with John McCain, his Republican opponent. His tone of decorous pugnacity probably calmed those fearful that the party had saddled itself not just with a black presidential candidate but one who was turning out to be a high-minded wimp.

Obama's 45-minute speech before an 80,000 crowd in the Denver Broncos' football stadium, and a large national TV audience beyond, was competently designed to knock such doubts firmly on the head. In its wake Republicans howled that Obama had gone 'negative', evidence that his shots at Bush and McCain had drawn blood. 

Even before his speech, heavy emphasis on the white portions of his ancestry in the filmed bio preceding his address may have soothed the segment of Americans - unknown in its dimensions - at best deeply nervous at the prospect of an African-American couple taking up residence in the White House; at worst, adamantly opposed. The rhetorical undertow in all the introductory speeches was that in Obama is reborn the spirit of that earlier Illinois politician, Abraham Lincoln.

Only a few minutes into his speech, Obama was talking tough: pro forma homage to McCain's military heroism rapidly gave way to punchy jibes that he's a tired old retread of George Bush who just doesn’t get it. "I get it", Obama assured the cheering crowd. 'It', of course, is the rotten shape America is in, with jobs gone to China, troops needlessly slaughtered in Iraq, middle-class homes foreclosed and credit cards maxed out.

In answer to McCain's criticisms that his policies have been heavy on 'hope' but void of substance, Obama outlined his programme: a tax cut for "95 per cent of all working families" and a cut in capital gains for small business.

Obama followed this with a call - one of many from Democrats at this convention - for "energy independence" from Middle Eastern oil (although the US actually gets most of its oil right here at home in the Americas, from Alaska, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela). His specifics are an environmental nightmare: nuclear power, 'clean coal' and offshore drilling. Not since the birth of modern American environmentalism in the late 1960s has any Democratic candidate dared make such public commitments to the big energy companies.

The rest of Obama's laundry list was achingly familiar: health care reform (vainly pledged by every Democratic presidential candidate since Harry Truman in 1948), equal pay for women, closing of corporate tax loopholes, trimming of fat from the federal bureaucracy and so forth, including a change in the bankruptcy laws to protect the little people.

CNN's cameras had the good manners to stay away from Obama's vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden, whose role in passing some of these same iniquitous bankruptcy laws and tax breaks for big corporations has not been small.

Biden is the senior senator from Delaware and the first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. For 30 years Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task, apparently a disinterested one since his net worth – about $150,000 – is the lowest in the US Senate.

Aside from ritual mention of Israel and Georgia as two states he would stand up for, Obama mostly steered clear of foreign policy, except to assert that he could carry just as big a stick as John McCain.

As the first black couple in American history with a serious chance of inhabiting the White House, Mr and Mrs Obama rose to the occasion in Denver. With her self-possession and poise Michelle Obama won the convention's heart on Monday night. But how realistic is the prospect of victory? The polling numbers from crucial states - Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado - make the race too close to call, particularly when one factors in the likelihood that a significant fraction of those being polled are concealing racial antipathy. 

It may well be a very close run thing - perhaps as close as the tiny margins of Bush vs Gore in 2000. Obama needs all the help he can get, and despite the dutiful homages they paid him in Denver, it is uncertain how much assistance he will actually get from the Clintons.

The specific proposals Obama put up in last night's speech exposed another problem. Once the message shifts from diffuse sermons about national unity to concrete proposals on tax cuts for the middle class and closing of corporate loopholes,  the 'Haves' will roll out their heavy artillery against this 'divisive' spokesman for the 'Have-Nots', a preacher-cum-populist radical rabble-rouser who has finally ripped off the mask of 'bipartisanship'.

And, of course, if Obama is ever going to try to alter the distribution of income and wealth in America, 'bipartisanship' will indeed have to be tossed aside. But then Obama will need a constituency, a powerful movement, to carry him forward and overwhelm an implacable opposition.

Eight years of Clintonism mostly voided the Democratic Party of any such potential, with the added irony that the constituency Obama needs is to be found precisely among those Hillary Clinton Democrats who will have the most difficulty in voting for him.

But Obama may have God in his corner. The Colorado-based conservative radio preacher James Dobson prayed for rain to swamp Obama's speech last night. God ignored this request and appears to have set Hurricane Gustav on a course to hit New Orleans in the opening hours of the Republican convention next week in St Paul. ·