There is the adage that to be a winner you must look like a winner, I wonder if this extends to talking like a winner or claiming you can win by a landslide? This is something that has been said by Obama's team, if not Barack himself, and is being widely reported across the world's media. But the question is will saying you will win by a landslide guarantee that victory. The contrast could not be more stark than between Obama and Conservative leader David Cameron. Every time I have seen him face the question of winning the next general election he plays down his poll standing. Although his could be argued to be a much more assured victory than that of Obama, albeit further away in time, he is cautious about saying anything. So who is the most sensible?

There is a danger with claiming victory before election day, events can scupper your chances anyway, but saying 'I will win' can have an impact on the result. While the Sun claimed victory in 1992, I wonder how much impact the Sheffield rally had? The celebratory event where Labour's Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley put on a US convention style event for their supporters. This was broadcast a week before the election, so what impact could it have had and why should Obama beware saying he will win by huge margins?

For your own voters it is demobilising. A campaigner needs every loyal supporter in the key geographic areas to turn out for them as if every vote is crucial. If there is a perception that the win is going to be a foregone conclusion, why trudge out on a cold night in Ohio or Worcester?

For the floating voters there are two potential effects. Firstly they may see it as a sign of arrogance and decide to 'burst his (or her) bubble'. Secondly they may act in the same way as the loyalists, and this depends much on their political leanings and their involvement in the contest.

But it is actually your opponents you have to beware most as they begin to consider life under a government led by Obama/Cameron etc and decide to try to prevent it. In the US the two-party system largely prevents a massive swing, however with the UK on the cusp of three-party politics and election deals previously having been struck between Labour and Liberal Democrat activists, the Conservatives do not want a combination of the supporters of both opposition parties campaigning against them.

So for Obama it may make him appear to be a winner, but it may also have a negative impact on the outcome for him. Cameron, on the other hand, is telling supporters he needs them while not appearing arrogant or complacent. Therefore, he is not saying to anyone that the contest is a foregone conclusion. Brown will of course help him all the way, as there is only one thing worse than saying you are guaranteed to win: saying you are guaranteed to lose. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The McCain campaign always wanted to keep the race centered on foreign policy, and for good reason; Obama can't touch McCain on the issue. But as ever in politics, external events have militated to change the landscape dramatically. The race is now centered around the economy, and without putting too fine a point on it, that means McCain is in serious trouble.

Accordingly his campaign has taken the dramatic step of asking for the first debate, a debate on foreign policy (scheduled for tomorrow evening), to be postponed. On the one hand it's a bold move that feeds into a growing media narrative that says McCain and Obama should be in the Senate, helping to steer the country through choppy waters. On the other hand it's a blatant political play that couldn't be more transparent.

Regardless though McCain has turned a disadvantage into an advantage by forcing the Obama campaign to engage on McCain's terms. Like it or not, they have to address his call for the debate to be postponed.

McCain may be forced to play out the rest of this campaign with a poor hand of cards, but as we've learnt over the past year, that's no reason to count him out.

On Channel 4 News on Friday Alastair Campbell gave his take on the government's poor poll ratings and what needs to be done to turn them around. His answers show that his famed prescience for the key issues hasn't left him.

In a sentence Campbell's strategy is that Labour must destroy the 'time for a change' narrative and stress the political choice facing voters - the reading being the starker that choice is the better Labour's chances. A surprisingly large number of voters do indeed consider their vote an opportunity to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the sitting government every 5 years with little consequence beyond that - a vote for someone is often just a proxy vote against someone else. There is polling evidence that the Tory lead is heavily dependent on disaffection with Labour rather than any tremendous affection for Cameron and while that's always the case I suspect it's more so this time than it was for Blair / Major in 1997. That presents Labour with an opportunity.

So expect things to get very nasty if Campbell's view prevails. Labour's revamped website already hints at this shift with widgets for bloggers and supporters highlighting differences in minimum wages and maternity leave from when the Tories were in office - a perfect example of elevating the 'choice' theme above the 'change' one. In his first speech as leader last year Gordon didn't mention David Cameron or the Tories once - I suspect things will be different this afternoon...

Telephone canvassing in the UK has a chequered history. There were a variety of comments about call centres ringing up prospective party supporters and annoying them at the last two elections, equally there has been criticism of parties using publicly funded lines to campaign. Is it unclear whether it works and on whom, it may be useful for firming up support but not for conversions.
But how about this for an alternative. Registered members of the Obama 'movement' can access a huge online database of names, addresses and numbers. They are then asked to ring some of these floating voters to convince them Obama and Biden are the men to run the country. I have no idea what the data protection issues are, if any, but the notion is simple: an endorsement from an ordinary member of the community is far more powerful as a persuasion tool than any piece of advertising or PR.
The Neighbour to Neighbour 'tool', introduced here on the Obama homepage, gives the activists all the resources they need: the data, a script, training opportunities, flyers for door-to-door distribution, and a reporting back function. This kind of thing used to happen a lot in the UK when parties had large bases of supporters. In the last 15 years I have only ever been contacted by Liberal Democrats using these devises (though not scripts), would this work, is it happening but is all hush hush?

Gordon Brown seems unable to get anything right, maybe it is because he has lost most of his key communications team, maybe it is just his leadership ability, it is hard to tell. But every bit of news about Labour is essentially another nail in his coffin. Perhaps the current story is the most damning, that internal Labour party democracy has been ignored in order, it appears, to prevent a challenge to him as leader. What is surprising is that, if this was intention as opposed to oversight, this was thought to be a good idea .

It seems fairly obvious the media would find out, that members of the NEC and others within the party who either value the democratic procedures or think Brown needs replacing are going to make noise about it. What has appeared offers the wider public a further piece of evidence that Brown is trying to hold on despite the tide being against him. Whatever the truth of the matter, and whether this was a deliberate strategy, it has been an almight PR gaffe that damages a brand that is already on its last legs. Brown seems to see campaigning as about elections only and perhaps he sees that nothing needs to be done for a while yet. But the reality of modern politics is that he is prime minister in an era of permanent campaigning. He may have wanted to reject the image of being over-spun associated with the Blair government, but his lack of any concern for image means he will find it hard to recover without his opponents imploding. This may not seem like it, but it is a serious nail in his leadership's coffin and lets face the top is almost tight down at the moment.