Democrats panic in the face of Palin-mania

Democrats, exquisitely sensitised to the footfalls of defeat by the debacles of 2000 and 2004, caught the first menacing chords of impending disaster last weekend and have been panicking ever since.

The hours they were able to revel in the apparent success of their Denver convention and Obama's big speech were pitifully brief. The very next day John McCain picked as his running mate a virtually unknown governor from Alaska and the country has gone Palin-crazy ever since.

Contrary to Obama's appeals for unity, America has become joyously divided. Evangelicals, braced by Palin's Christian faith, have risen spryly from the bed of their indifference to McCain, a man whose relationship to the Holy Spirit is remote. Now their champion is an accredited

bible-thumper, Palin the Pentecostalist.

Liberals, particularly women, maddened at the spectacle of attractive Governor Sarah embodying everything they loathe, flood the internet with frantic oaths and seize on every particle of gossip from Alaska suggesting that Palin is a hypocrite, a mismanager, a would-be burner of books, a bad mother and 'Untrue to her Man'. Those scoffing only a few short weeks ago at the National Enquirer's 'mere unverified gossip' about John Edwards's affair, now hasten to the supermarkets to buy the Enquirer's latest allegations about Palin and her family.

As the political news circuits began to buzz with news of improved polling numbers for McCain-Palin in the battleground states, Obama's ascent towards the status of a Sure Bet abruptly stalled. After the triumphs of Denver, the candidate relapsed into the nerveless mode of early August.

He had the poor judgment to go on the cable news show of Fox's Bill O'Reilly and make the extraordinary statement that the so-called 'surge' in Iraq had "succeeded