Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the Republican Party have had a constant uphill battle to reach the election.
It wasn’t that long ago that McCain’s financing had dried up and he was reducing his campaign staff and nearly dropped out of the race.
There were several rivals on both sides for the first election in a long time that didn’t involve an incumbent president or a vice president running.
This has been a long, grinding, expensive two-year contest.
Lately, McCain has had to overcome the mixture of a bad economy, an unpopular sitting president, two misunderstood wars and conservative factions within his own party.
Fold into that mix Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic candidate that is erudite, well-funded and well-liked.
Blend in a hoard of hostile liberal Web sites and an openly biased press willing to print everything negative about the McCain campaign and hardly any serious investigation on Obama. Stir the pot with attacks on Palin’s reputation and fitness to lead. Add a pinch of racism and a dash of class envy and you should have a recipe for disaster.
But the polls are not nearly as ugly as it may seem. Rasmussen Reports indicates only a five-point difference (Obama 51 percent, McCain 46 percent) on Monday, Oct. 29, just a week before the election.
Last week the Associated Press showed a one-point lead for Obama (Obama 44 percent; McCain 43 percent).
It seems Obama can’t seal the deal and his chance encounter with Joe the Plumber has become the October Surprise.
When asked about his tax plan Obama told Joe Wurzelbacher from Ohio:
“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off, if you’re gonna be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
That was not exactly a ringing endorsement for capitalism. McCain finally had that crucial ingredient. He had a face to put on the American small businessman and has used Wurzelbacher’s situation to hack away at Obama’s lead.
Nothing is set in stone. In 1980 Ronald Reagan trailed President Jimmy Carter by five points in the week leading into the election. Reagan defied the polls to receive a landslide. On Dec. 1, 1980, Time mc agazine’s John F. Stacks had an article entitled “Where the Polls Went Wrong” which said:
“For weeks before the presidential election, the gurus of public opinion polling were nearly unanimous in their findings. In survey after survey, they agreed that the coming choice between President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan was ‘too close to call.’
“A few points at most, they said, separated the two major contenders.
“But when the votes were counted, the former California governor had defeated Carter by a margin of 51 percent to 41 percent in the popular vote – a rout for a U.S. presidential race. In the Electoral College, the Reagan victory was a 10-to-l avalanche that left the president holding only six states and the District of Columbia.”
History could easily repeat itself.

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