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AS BARACK Obama took the podium before 27,000 cheering supporters at Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium, he was so tired that just speaking looked like a Herculean effort. His usually rich baritone sounded weak and reedy as he stumbled over the names of local worthies and garbled phrases from his stump speech he has repeated hundreds of times.

As Mr Obama spoke, senior staffers stood nearby, leaning against anything they could find to stay upright, struggling to keep their eyes open after weeks of sleeping three or four hours a night. Despite his exhaustion, Mr Obama seemed cheerful as he looked out on the vast crowd in Ohio's Hamilton County , traditionally solid Republican territory in the state that swung the 2004 presidential election to George Bush.