These have been a terrible few weeks for the Democrats – so bad that Republicans are feeling faint flickers of hope.

Damaging revelations about Barack Obama – and his own and his wife Michelle’s ill-chosen words – have opened the way for John McCain to rerun the Republican presidential campaign of 1988. That year, George H.W. Bush mauled Michael Dukakis, his Democratic rival, as a hopelessly feckless liberal. Mr Bush seized on three symbolic facts about Mr Dukakis: he had vetoed a law requiring the pledge of allegiance in school. He described himself as a “card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union”. And he furloughed Willie Horton, the rapist-murderer. Lee Atwater, Mr Bush’s campaign manager, is supposed to have chortled: “By the time we are finished, they are gonna wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”