As Barack Obama closes in on his bid to become the first African-American US president, racial politics have burst into mainstream media with the release this month of two "news" shows anchored by black comedians. But while some applaud the emergence of minority viewpoints in prime time, others worry that even in jest, the negative stereotypes show just how little has changed when it comes to racism in America.
MCCAIN SHOWS DEFIANCE; CLINTON HAILS OBAMA AS AMERICA'S FUTURE: Republican John McCain sought to revive his White House hopes in the symbolically named town of Defiance Thursday as grim new figures on the US economy boosted Democratic rival Barack Obama.
With just five days of campaigning left, McCain launched a bus tour of the crucial battleground of Ohio seeking to rally support in a state which has suffered nearly 100,000 job losses in the past 12 months. The former Navy pilot exhorted supporters gathered at a high school to fight for every last vote on November 4.
"We're a few points down, but we're coming back," McCain said, as polls showed Obama enjoying a formidable position in a slew of highly contested states the Republican needs to win. "I've been fighting for this country since I was seventeen years old, and I have the scars to prove it," McCain, 72, said. "I'm not afraid of the fight, I'm ready for it."
But McCain's tour got underway in this picturesque Midwest town against a backdrop of gloomy economic data which suggested a recession may be looming, as the government reported a 0.3 percent contraction in the third quarter. His campaign warned Obama's economic manifesto would make things worse.
"Today's announcement ... confirms what Americans already knew: the economy is shrinking," McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said in a statement. "Barack Obama would accelerate this dangerous course." But Obama, 47, pounced and said at a rally in Sarasota, Florida that his rival would pursue what he sees as failed Republican economic policies.
The issue was the dominant theme of Obama's 30-minute infomercial which aired on a string of US television networks Wednesday night, pulling in almost 22 percent of US households, according to preliminary figures by Nielsen Ratings on Thursday.
The Democratic nominee followed up immediately with a late-night rally with former president Bill Clinton, who is highly popular in swing state Florida, and Obama was spending Thursday sweeping through normally Republican territory. Latest polls showed Obama with a solid lead nationally, and across the electoral map, and even pushing McCain in his home state of Arizona.
Rasmussen's daily tracking poll Thursday put Obama up five points, 51 to 46 points, reversing a tightening which cut the gap to three points on Wednesday. Another new survey by Mason-Dixon for MSNBC found that Obama was surprisingly pulling within reach of McCain on his home turf of Arizona, with the Republican leading 48 to 44 percent.
Obama's campaign meanwhile announced that former vice president Al Gore, who many Democrats believed was cheated out of the White House by the 2000 recount debacle in Florida, would campaign in the state for the Illinois senator on Friday. Earlier, at Tampa, Republican John McCain questioned Democratic rival Barack Obama's readiness for the White House and Obama issued a prime-time television appeal on Wednesday calling the election "a defining moment" as a bruising presidential campaign hit the final stretch.
McCain kicked off a tour of the must-win state of Florida by warning that Obama would be bad news for small businesses and workers, and by casting doubt on the Illinois senator's judgement and ability to handle a security crisis. Obama made his first joint campaign appearance with former President Bill Clinton at a late-night rally before more than 30,000 cheering supporters at an open-air sports complex in Kissimmee, Florida, after an expensive prime-time television address on three networks.
There were no signs of any bitterness from the primary campaign in which Obama defeated Clinton's wife, New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Obama and the former president strode together to the microphone with arms draped on each other's shoulders.
With Obama at his side, the former president heaped praise on the Democratic nominee for what he said was a calm, reasoned response to the financial crisis, saying that showed he would be a good manager in the White House. "If we have not learned anything, we have learned that we need a president who wants to understand and who can understand," Clinton said, taking a veiled swipe at Bush.