Alamy Gracious in victory

ON JUNE 11th Barack Obama hit his first reverse since securing the Democratic nomination the previous week. Following five days of bad publicity, he was forced to dispense with the services of the man he had chosen to help him select his running-mate. James Johnson allegedly received favourable treatment from a mortgage company while he headed Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored agency that was a big customer of the company in question. He denies any wrongdoing, but the row was hurting the candidate.

That bump aside, Mr Obama has been keeping up the pace. Hillary Clinton held out for four days before conceding, but finally did so gracefully on June 7th. Having spent months insisting Mr Obama is under-qualified for the Oval Office, she changed her mind and said that, on reflection, he would put the country back on the path to peace, prosperity and progress.

Mrs Clinton said her campaign left “about 18m cracks” in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling”. But some of her feminist fans seethe that their heroine worked hard for decades, only to be shoved aside by a pushy, flashy, inexperienced young man. This group may be reluctant to support Mr Obama, although Mrs Clinton urged them all to do everything they can for him.

Mr Obama is using all his charm to coax disaffected Hillaryites onto his side, praising Mrs Clinton for running an historic campaign that shattered barriers on behalf of “my daughters and women everywhere”. Meanwhile, his campaign reached out to Mrs Clinton's, partly to poach talent but mostly to encourage her donors to start giving money to him.

Mr Obama is reportedly on track to raise an astonishing $100m in June, which must surely tempt him to opt out of the more parsimonious public-financing system he once promised to use. Mr McCain, who has not raised nearly as much money as Mr Obama, will accept public funds for the general election. Whether or not backtracking on his promise will hurt Mr Obama remains to be seen.

After the briefest of breaks following his primary victory, Mr Obama began a tour of swing states to court wavering independents. He has reprised some of the populist tunes that worked so well for him in the primaries, such as the riff about the man who lost his job but can't afford the gas to drive around looking for a new one, but now that he is courting the whole electorate, not just Democrats, he is sounding a bit less populist about trade.

Mr Obama is receiving energetic assistance from Democratic interest groups. Labour unions are picketing John McCain's speeches and distributing a booklet called “McCain Revealed”, which reveals the senator to be—wait for it—economically conservative. NARAL Pro-Choice America, a lobby that favours legal abortion, has launched a “Meet the Real McCain” campaign to remind voters that he does not.

Mr McCain, who had all but won his party's nomination by mid-February and has been campaigning for the general election ever since, carried on much as before. His latest television spot reminds voters that his father left to fight in the second world war when he was five, that his grandfather came home from that war and died the next day, and that Mr McCain himself was a prisoner of war for five years. “I hate war. And I know how terrible its costs are,” Mr McCain tells viewers in swing states. “I'm running for President to keep the country I love safe.”

Mr Obama has yet to agree to Mr McCain's suggestion that the two of them hold joint town-hall meetings and take questions from ordinary voters together, but sounds open to the idea. Such an exercise would illuminate the contrasts between the candidates: one eloquent, thoughtful and mostly focused on domestic affairs, the other affable, pugnacious and interested mostly in national security. Who wouldn't want to see that?