Top 12 turning points in the campaign For White house

12 Obama's $150 million haul

Perhaps the first clue that Barack Obama was a serious contender came in the spring of 2007, when he started raising more money than Hillary Clinton. As the first billion-dollar election has rumbled on, Mr Obama has tapped more than four million donors, mostly for small amounts. After the primaries, Mr Obama controversially abandoned his commitment to the public funding of elections and the cap on spending that goes with it, freeing him to raise whatever he could. That decision was vindicated in spades in September, when he pulled in a staggering $150million. As the election enters the most critical period, Mr Obama is outspending John McCain by three to one on advertising in swing states.

11 Obama blows his nose

It was mid-February, the night Mr Obama beat Mrs Clinton in the Wisconsin primary, and the night, in retrospect, after which it was impossible for her to catch his total of pledged delegates.

In the peak of early Obama-mania, the Democratic candidate, who was suffering from a cold, paused in the middle of his victory speech to say "Gotta blow my nose here for a second."

The audience, which the Obama campaign said totaled 17,000 supporters, broke out in applause. When the faithful applaud your sneezes, you know things are going your way.

10 McCain's Paris Hilton advert

Hoping to poke a hole at the tidal wave of Obama-mania this summer, Mr McCain launched an attack advert calling his rival a celebrity candidate, comparing the Illinois senator to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. However, the message was eclipsed by a video response from Hilton on the website Funny or Die. In the clip, the 27-year-old socialite, reclining on a pool lounger in a skimpy leopard-print swimsuit, says: "Hey America, I'm Paris Hilton and I'm a celebrity too. Only I'm not from the olden days and I'm not promising change like that other guy. I'm just hot!"

While flipping pages of a glossy magazine, she adds: "But then, that wrinkly white-haired guy used me in his campaign ad, which I guess means I'm running for president. So thanks for the endorsement white-haired dude, and I want America to know I'm, like, totally ready to lead."

9 The surge in Iraq

The success of the surge in Iraq gave foundation to John McCain's campaign. As an early supporter of sending reinforcements to Iraq, when the policy worked he was able to claim credit for sound judgment and sticking his neck out. Having risked a great deal by backing the surge early on, unfortunately for Mr McCain the surge peaked too early and was swamped by the bad news to the economy. In a recent poll only seven per cent of respondents said Iraq was their number one issue.

8 The Rev Wright show

In February video emerged of Mr Obama's recently retired pastor ranting and raving about evil white folks and damning America. Mr Obama distanced himself but did not disown Jeremiah Wright until he surfaced months later at the National Press Club. In front of country's media, Rev Wright delivered a preening, paranoid and unapologetic performance in which he said Mr Obama's criticism of him had been mere politics.

In a way he did Mr Obama a favour, leaving the senator no option but to disown him and leave his Trinity United Church a few weeks later.

7 Obama in Berlin

The biggest event of Barack Obama's campaign did not come in Florida or Ohio, Missouri or Colorado, or any of the other stopoffs on the swing state merry-go-round, it was an appearance in Berlin in July on the European and Middle Eastern tour. 200,000 Berliners, who had hit the streets for JFK and Reagan in decades past, went bananas for what most people regarded as a pretty dull speech. If Europe could vote, Mr Obama would not just be elected president by a landslide, he might be chosen to run the EU and the Vatican, too. But the grandiloquent episode went down rather less well among the working classes of Appalachia, who felt he should have spent the summer trawling for votes on Main Street, Armpit Hole, USA instead.

6 Sarah Palin's convention speech

Sarah Palin, a virtual unknown in national politics, was John McCain's shock choice as vice-presidential running mate. Her speech at the Republican convention in St Paul was electrifying as the self-styled hockey mum ad-libbed a joke about being like a pitbull with lipstick, mocked Barack Obama as being all style and no substance and cast herself as a maverick outsider prepared to ride into Washington with Mr McCain and shake things up. During convention week, internet rumours circulated that Mrs Palin's daughter Bristol, 17, was the true mother of her baby Trig, who has Down Syndrome. The ugly allegation forced the McCain campaign to reveal another secret - that Bristol was pregnant and that she was keeping the baby. Democrats rejoiced, convinced that the Palins would be condemned by the Religious Right. In fact, Christian conservatives embraced Mrs Palin and her daughter, holding them up as examples of women who upheld the sanctity of life in the womb.

5 The view of Russia from Alaska

In her first major interview as vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin told ABC's Charlie Gibson that she had some "insight" into Russia because "they are our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." The governor expanded on the theme in a second, disastrous interview with Katie Couric. That interview provided Tiny Fey with her most devastating line in a series of impersonations of Mrs Palin on Saturday Night Live: "And I can see Russia from my house!"

4 Joe the Plumber

During a walkabout in Toledo, Ohio, Barack Obama happened upon a plumber called Joe Wurzelbacker tossing a football with his 13-year-old son. Voters were asking questions, so Wurzelbacker - a Republican - decided to pitch in with an amiable but pointed query about why he might be taxed more if he owned a small business. Mr Obama gave a long and involved answer, ending with the notion that it was good to "spread the wealth around". Mr Wurzelbacker, a plumber who earns considerably less than the $250,000 a year that would have qualified him for higher taxes under an Obama administration, pronounced this "socialism". Seeing an opportunity in the third and final presidential debate, John McCain brought up "Joe the Plumber" and soon Mr Wurzelbacker became the central focus of the discussion - and an instant TV star. Approaching the final week of the campaign, Mr McCain began a "Joe the Plumber tour" across Florida, using Mr Wurzelbacker as an example of ordinary Americans who would suffer under a President Obama.

3 Obama's bitter moment

Recorded without his knowledge at a California fundraiser, Barack Obama said that economically downtrodden rural Pennsylvanians were "bitter" and "clinging to their guns and religion and antipathy to others" to vent their frustrations.

Hillary Clinton exploited the comment for all it was worth, calling her then-rival "elitist". Sarah Palin made play of it at her convention speech. Mr Obama apologised for any offence caused, but for his opponents, the remark has lingered as evidence of Ivy League condescension and urban disdain for small town Americans.

2 Obama wins in Iowa

The night of the Iowa caucuses, many shrewd observers thought Hillary Clinton still might pull it off. Those in her own camp could not quite believe that the Clinton organisation would not be good enough to do the job. Rural Iowans were warming to John Edwards and his blue collar bromides. All that Barack Obama had going for him were a bunch of pesky kids; kids who had campaigned there for months; kids who had promised to vote for him. Kids never vote in numbers in Iowa. But they did. They lined up in sports halls and schools and village halls in their thousands. In the end, Iowa was the slaughter of reputations and conventional wisdom and, in retrospect, was the death of Hillary Clinton's ambitions; her third-place finish was a fatal knife blow from which it took her five more months to fatally bleed. It was Barack Obama's singular triumph. As the man himself likes to promise, it may just have changed the world. And for those who were there, it was his acceptance speech that night, not his speech on race, or his oration on winning the nomination, not his grandiose address to 76,000 Coloradans at the convention, that will stand as the moment when history was made.

1 'The Fundamentals of the economy are sound'

On Sept 15, as the Wall Street crisis gathered steam, John McCain, reading from a prepared text, stated that "the fundamentals of the economy are sound". The assertion, often used previously by US government officials to prevent a dramatic loss of confidence during times of uncertainty, made Mr McCain look out of touch with what was happening in the American heartland and unable to address the economic crisis. The same day, his campaign ran an advert stating that "our economy is in crisis".

This mixed message was disastrous and it took weeks for McCain to recover his footing on economic matters as he lurched from one proposal to another without seeming to have an overall framework. Having briefly edged ahead in the national polls in early September, Mr McCain's ratings slipped steadily by 10 points. If he does lose on Nov 4, historians will look back on Sept the 15 as the day he brought about his own defeat. source>>>

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