Published: September 07, 2008 02:39 am            

Historic race alters landscape, breaks mold

ST. PAUL, Minn. — They embody four uniquely American stories. They offer messages of transformation with two distinct world views. They pursue one goal.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama and their respective running mates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, begin the final eight weeks of their historic and remarkably close presidential contest ready to rewrite national politics.

Race, gender and age barriers are at stake. A shifting political landscape will take the fight to previously ignored states. Advertising will suffocate the airwaves with intensely negative exchanges. Debates could be as decisive as the final Carter-Reagan debate of 1980. And more money will be spent by the hour in politics than ever before.

Armed with a bigger bankroll and a partisan Democratic advantage, Obama is competing in more states than John Kerry did in 2004, including typically Republican states like Virginia and North Carolina.

Soon, strategists predict, the number of states in play will narrow to nine or 10, resembling past elections with Virginia the new battleground in the mix.

As election day closes in, they say, McCain needs to shore up his position in previous Republican states and hope the only states left in play are Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

“Whoever wins two out of those three will probably win the election,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign and is close to the McCain camp.

Obama and McCain march into the fall campaign with their parties newly unified — tasks they accomplished by each reaching out to a female political figure. Obama joined hands with former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and sealed the deal with many of her supporters. But McCain’s selection of Palin proved most stunning and has the potential to change the game.

Obama sits atop a mountain of advantages. President Bush and the Republican Party remain highly unpopular, Democrats have displayed greater intensity, Obama has expanded the electorate, and he has set huge records for political money.

McCain, however, has managed to remain far more popular than his party or his president. Independent voters and even some Democrats remain unsure about Obama, either because of his race or his rapid rise from obscurity.

And while Obama’s election would represent a monumental milestone for the nation by putting the first black man in the White House, Palin gives voters a chance to make history, too, by electing the first woman as vice president.

The economy is a driving issue in the election and both candidates are making direct appeals to the working class.

“I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market,” McCain said, using the kind of populist language usually heard at Democratic conclaves.

And Palin, upon introducing her husband, Todd, to the delegates, defied the party’s antipathy toward big labor by describing him as “a proud member of the United Steelworkers’ Union.”

“The underlying reality of this election is the nation is fundamentally convinced we are headed on the wrong track,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who was a senior adviser to Kerry ’s 2004 campaign. “The person who convinces people they are about change will win.”

In casting themselves as change agents, both candidates also are creating caricatures of each other. McCain brands Obama a mere “celebrity,” and his ads say Obama represents “old ideas masquerading as change.”

Obama, in turn, ties McCain to the unpopular Bush.

“My friend John and George Bush are joined at the hip. And we need a hip replacement,” Biden said Saturday while campaigning at a Philadelphia union hall.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.