Countdown begins for real in America's first billion-dollar presidential campaign

In five days most Americans will begin enjoying their long Labor Day weekend - the traditional end of summer - in the usual way: barbecuing, a final trip to the beach and watching sport.

A strange group of nearly 20, however, will fan out across Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states in the presidential nominating process. They will trudge through cornfields and scamper from diners to town halls and school gymnasiums. They will lavish praise on their audiences and tell voters in each state - two of the whitest and least populated in America - why they are the most acute political judges in the nation.

Labor Day also marks the traditional start of the presidential primary campaign, when voters choose their Democratic and Republican candidates. Although the race to succeed President Bush has in effect been in full swing for almost a year, this is the moment when many voters begin to focus on the candidates and the issues.

Already the longest and most expensive campaign in US history - it will be the first $1 billion election - this phase will also likely have one of the earliest finishes. With a series of big states voting on February 5, or “Tsunami Tuesday”, America is probably only 20 weeks away from knowing who its two main candidates will be.

The 2008 race is the first since 1928 in which both parties have genuinely open primary contests, with neither an incumbent president nor vice-president running. Although Hillary Clinton, on the Democratic side, and Rudy Giuliani, on the Republican, have solidified significant leads over their rivals in their parties’ national polls, they are far from sure bets for the nomination, let alone the White House. As things stand, there are still six or seven candidates who could conceivably become the next commander-in-chief.

History, and the current political environment, weigh heavily against the Republicans. In four out of five times in the post Second World War era - 1960, 1968, 1976 and 2000 - the party holding the White House for two consecutive terms has failed to win a third. The Iraq war and President Bush’s low approval ratings have also left Republicans dispirited and Democrats resurgent. In 2002 party identification split evenly between the two parties. Now only 35 per cent of Americans call themselves Republican - compared with 50 per cent who say that they are Democrat.

The leading Democrat contenders - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards - have raised considerably more money than their leading Republican rivals: Mr Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson.

However, in head-to-head match-ups with the Republicans, although all three Democrats win, they do so by narrow margins. Mrs Clinton fares the worst. She is in a statistical tie with Mr Giuliani and just ahead of Mr McCain. This is feeding Democratic fears that although she is a prohibitive favourite for her party’s nomination, she will prove too unpopular and polarising to win a general election. She has the highest “negatives” - unfavourable ratings - of any candidate.

The match-ups also suggest that, despite Republican troubles, 2008 could be another close election. There will still be roughly 12 key states that Mr Bush and John Kerry, his 2004 challenger, split between them with winning margins of less than 5 per cent. They will again be pivotal. If the “surge” in Iraq achieves real progress, the anti-Republican dynamic could be reversed significantly.

Nevertheless, Mrs Clinton must today be considered the favourite to succeed Mr Bush. She has run an utterly disciplined primary campaign. In debates she has been relaxed, confident and clearly the most knowledgeable and experienced. Her “negatives” have also started to inch downwards. She has been a better candidate in the skills of one-to-one retail politics than most predicted. Her closest adviser is America’s shrewdest political tactician: her husband.

Nationally her lead over Mr Obama is 16 per cent, 38 per cent to 22. That has edged down from 20 per cent from two weeks ago, and in the early nominating contests of Iowa and New Hampshire it is far closer. Mrs Clinton, Mr Edwards and Mr Obama are in a statistical tie in Iowa. She leads Mr Obama by eight points in New Hampshire.

Mr Obama - only in his third year in the Senate - has in contrast appeared surprisingly cautious and at times flat-footed after his meteoric rise and early comparisons to John F. Kennedy. The undeniably clever and charismatic son of a Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, his greatest challenge is to convince enough voters that he has the gravitas to lead America in a time of colossal foreign policy uncertainty.

That challenge - and Mrs Clinton’s relentless exploitation of it - has dominated the campaign of late. Mr Obama recently made two foreign policy statements that she seized upon: that he would talk to America’s enemies, such as Iran and North Korea, as soon as elected president; and he would take military action inside Pakistan if he had actionable intelligence against al-Qaeda, even if Islamabad opposed it. Mrs Clinton called such remarks naive and dangerous.

But Mr Obama has raised more money than Mrs Clinton, and is campaigning as a fresh face who, unlike the New York senator, had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war. He remains a formidable candidate.

Mr Edwards, Mr Kerry’s 2004 running mate, has been stuck on about 11 per cent for months. The Democrat race has thus been a relatively stable two-horse contest.

The Republican contest, by contrast, is impossible to predict. All the candidates have significant flaws. Mr Giuliani, the former New York mayor, has confounded pundits by maintaining a solid lead nationally. But his positions on abortion and gay marriage are at odds with conservatives, a key constituency in the primary campaign.

He is also in danger of running on a single issue: his widely praised performance in the days after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. But he is well funded and in the best position to benefit in the nationwide multiple primaries of “Tsunami Tuesday”.

Mr Romney is running as the true conservative candidate. But as Governor in a heavily Democratic Massachusetts, he was pro-abortion and socially liberal.

His recent pro-life, anti-gay marriage conversion has brought charges of rank opportunism. But with a personal wealth of $250 million (£125 million), he has invested heavily in an early-state strategy and, although trailing in national Republican surveys, is well ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has gone a long way to dispel concerns about his Mormonism. He has raised more than his rivals. He is a hugely successful venture capitalist who rescued the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. He desperately wants to be president. He is the Republican most on the rise.

Mr McCain, the party’s frontrunner in January, suffered a near-fatal implosion to his campaign earlier this summer. His funds are low. He has lost all his senior advisers. He has been greatly damaged by his support for immigration reform - anathema to conservatives - and his support for Mr Bush’s Iraq strategy. But he is still roughly third with Mr Romney in national polls. He is a tough man, surviving five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He cannot be written off.

Mr Thompson, the former senator and Law & Order star, is expected to finally declare his candidacy next week. As a Southerner and a conservative, many on the Right, unhappy with the current field, hope that he will be the true heir to Ronald Reagan who will save America from a Clinton restoration. Without even declaring that he is polling a healthy second behind Mr Giuliani. There are, however, worries that he lacks the fire in the belly - and the in-frastructure - to sustain a challenge. A possible entry by Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, this year will shake up the already volatile Republican race even further.

There is one other Democratic big beast who has not totally ruled out running: Al Gore, the former Vice-President, who has become an Oscar-winning global-warming campaigner. There is no love lost between him and Mrs Clinton. He looks unlikely to run but a late entry would transform the contest.

One thing is clear: US presidential politics is a mercurial and brutal affair where conventional wisdom is often turned on its head. Michael Dukakis warned his party this week how quickly things can change. He should know. In July 1988 the former Democratic nominee held a 17-point lead over George Bush Sr. Three months later he lost in a landslide.

Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York City, raised $43.9 million (£21.9 million) during the first six months of 2007

Mitt Romney, multimillionaire Mormon who also lent his campaign $8.9 million from his pocket. $35 million

John McCain, the Vietnam War veteran who had to fire staff because his campaign is short on funds, has raised $24.3 million

Barack Obama, the senator who would be the first African-American president of the US if elected. $58 million

Hillary Clinton, senator and former First Lady, who would be the first woman president of the US if elected. $53 million

John Edwards, who ran for vice-president in 2004 and has been criticised recently for getting a $400 haircut. $23 million

What’s so bad about a billion-dollar campaign? That’s 3 bucks and change for every American, pretty cheap for more than a year’s enertainment.

That’s probably one of the more surprisingly balanced ones we’ll see from the British press. I mean to say, that’s probably as good as it gets, from a British vantage point.

I wonder if anyone there will launch another letter-writing campaign, telling voters who they would elect if they were voting in our election :)

“two of the whitest and least populated in America”

The natural Lib guilt - In this case to feel SO guilty for belonging to a race (”whites”)that has been so unforgivably successful in the world - is enough for me to stop reading at that point.

I simply don’t care about a Libs take on any of this, especially a British Lib. Reading the confused ramblings of Libs trying desperately to string together coherent thoughts on any subject is simply a waste of time.

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