Barrack Obama’s wife says that when he is president “he will make you work.” Well, it looks like it is Obama himself who will have to work to be president.

The coronation has been put on hold.

The latest Zogby/Reuters poll ^[1] shows McCain leading Obama by five points–the first time that the GOP candidate has been in the lead since Hillary dropped out.

Support for Obama seems to be sinking across all categories:

The dip in support for Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, cut across demographic and ideological lines. He slipped among Catholics, born-again Christians, women, independents and younger voters. He retained the support of more than 90 percent of black voters.

“There were no wild swings, there isn’t one group that is radically different than last month or even two months ago. It was just a steady decline for Obama across the board,” Zogby said.

Notice how Reuters works in the first black president bit? That gambit has two prongs: If Obama is winning it shows that he is a different kind of leader and can’t be held to ordinary standards and if he is losing, liberals can blame the voters for being racists.

I’ve met dozens of liberals in the past few weeks who bring up the race issue. Is America ready for a black president? they ask portentously, like their crystal ball is showing them something they don’t want to see. Or America is such a racist country, they say. Look at all the hicks in West Virginia and Kentucky that voted for Hillary. And so on. (Of course, the real racists are liberals living in major coastal cities running “affirmative action” programs for colleges, corporations and city agencies. But I digress.)

Strangely, I hear none of this America-is-racist-and-not-ready-for-a-black-president talk from black Democrats. A concert promoter, who is politically independent, says he is proud of Obama, the way the Irish were proud of Kennedy. That sounds right to me. I remember my older Irish relatives fondly talking about Kennedy in the 1970s and 1980s–long after he had been killed in Dallas. As for the racist bit? Well, Obama is going to win, he says, and then we will see how racist this country is.

At the Capitol Hill Cigar Lounge, a nearly 100% black establishment on Florida Avenue, I took an informal poll. Everyone supported Obama, except for one off-duty policeman. No one thought that racism was going to cost Obama the election, though a few ventured that some racist might shoot him before he is sworn in. (Kennedy again.) Yes, they thought racism was a problem. But it hadn’t stopped them and wouldn’t stop Obama. Okay, it is not a scientific survey. But it is interesting how black liberal opinion in D.C. differs from white liberal opinion in D.C. — and which one is the more fatalistic.

So why is Obama slipping in the latest Zogby poll? Its not racism, it is the economy. McCain leads by nine points (49-40%) over Obama on that issue, which is the no. 1 issue for a large plurality of voters this year.

Unfortunately for Obama, gas prices have become a proxy for the economy. The higher pump prices climb, the more people think the economy is sinking. McCain’s flip-flop to support offshore drilling showed sympathy. It was translated as: He is willing to fight the establishment to improve the economy for average people.

By contrast, Obama couldn’t depart from liberal orthodoxy (which openly favors high gas prices because it will force us to change the type of fuel we use in our cars). He finally managed to say something along the lines that while he favors higher prices, he thought prices climbed too fast. Huh? Later, he favored some sort of drilling as part of package involving more subsidies to alternative energies. … His flip-flop wasn’t dramatic enough and was weeks too late. Hence Obama is losing on this issue.

Reuters wants to attribute McCain’s rise to his attacks on Obama. McCain’s “attacks” have been gentle. It is just that anything short of worshipful deference strikes liberal reporters as harsh. It is a shame they don’t treat him that a regular candidate; the criticism might make Obama better.

Still, the Zogby polls shows that issues matter more than most journalists want to admit.

And this year, so far, high gas prices are the issue and Obama is on the wrong side of it.