Rubbertopia

Chris Quigley

A lot has been written about the sheer amount of cash Barrack Obama's team has thrown at his campaign.  Having raised over $600 million, Obama has been like a real life Brewster from Brewster's Millions - trying to spend all his cash in time to win the ultimate prize.

So it's been interesting traveling around the US over the last 10 days, seeing what the impact of all this campaigning cash has been.

And the answer is big.  From local radio ads, to billboard ads to prime time TV slots, it's been difficult to escape the Obama marketing machine.  Most powerful of all, however, has been his grassroots campaigning.  With houses from Venice beach to Beverly Hills to New York's Greenwich Village being plastered with Obama's iconic Hope posters, and streets teams out in force handing out stickers and leaflets.

Perhaps the most bizarre encounter of Obama's campaign came last Sunday morning in the Playboy Hotel, Las Vegas, when we bumped in to 3 Obama foot soldiers getting ready to go about their business.  We didn't ask what they were doing there, however it showed that even in Playboy heaven there was no escaping the Obama machine.

Given its heritage of sex-fuelled hedonism, maybe Obama's team thought the Las Vegas Playboy hotel was a strong symbol of his liberal democratic values.  Or maybe he had a few last million to spend and thought splashing a grand a night on Playboy bunny suites was the quickest way of spending his way to the White House.

Whichever way, the Playboy bunny strategy seems to have paid off, as I write this Obama has sealed the Presidential deal - and even hauled in Nevada, a real coup for a Democrat candidate.