WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Giving up on Michigan hasn't helped John McCain's fortunes. Now the Republican presidential nominee is staring defeat in the face in Ohio, too -- and worse is to come.

As Democratic political strategist James Carville famously said in the 1992 campaign that elected President Bill Clinton, "It's the economy, stupid."

The Washington Times' Joseph Curl reported Monday that Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., is now trailing Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by a disastrous 7 points in crucial bellwether Ohio.

As Curl rightly notes, no Republican has ever won a presidential election without carrying Ohio, which produced generations of GOP presidents between the Civil War and the Great Depression. And in the present political constellation, it is quite simply impossible for McCain to win the presidency if he loses Ohio with its 20 electoral votes after he abandoned Michigan Friday with its 17 votes in the Electoral College.

Incredibly, the McCain campaign is trying to duck the financial and economic crisis that has torpedoed the U.S. economy and is now grimly spreading across Europe at epidemic speed. This is a recipe not just for defeat but for a traumatic whipping.

The economy is indisputably the central issue of the campaign. It can't be finessed away, and when people are losing jobs, they aren't going to be distracted by negative campaigning, however powerful and focused it is. If the McCain camp goes negative on Obama now without producing a credible and reassuring economic program far beyond the old conservative cliches and bromides it has dished up until now, its defeat is assured. And it could be as epochal as it was for Herbert Hoover in 1932.

The McCain campaign may want to avoid the economic issue, but it can't. McCain is falling behind in Ohio on exactly the same issues that led him to pull out of Michigan, and he is fast running out of states to reach the 270 Electoral College votes he needs to win the White House. McCain's combination of passivity, complacency and plain silly statements on economic issues has allowed Obama -- no paragon of fiscal literacy and rectitude himself -- to take the economic high ground.

It was insane -- and a mark of intellectual bankruptcy as well as complacency -- for McCain to retain former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, as his chief economic adviser after Gramm made his notorious "whiners" comment to try to shrug off the gathering storm over the American economy. McCain's continued obvious bewilderment on economic issues since then has made grimly clear that neither he nor his advisers have a clue what to say or do about the crisis, and that quite simply throws the election to Obama.

McCain operatives have even suggested they want to avoid talk of the economy. That is as inane a strategy as walking out into the middle of Hurricane Katrina and saying you don't need an umbrella.

In this economic and political climate the new Republican "strategy" -- if one can dignify it with the name -- of attacking Obama's past associations has the smell of desperation. McCain's vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, made the first bow shot of this ploy Saturday. McCain's campaign will be watching the polls to see how that was received.

If Palin's attacks played well, that could set the tone for Tuesday's debate, which is to be a town hall-style that McCain favors so much. And that tone would be ugly. But it reflects McCain's plight that only four weeks before the election, he needs to resort to this.

In 2004 voter registration was the magic bullet that the Democrats were sure would push them over the top, but it didn't. They appear to be having a lot more luck this time.

Large increases in voter registration have been reported in areas that Obama has targeted as possible pickups from previous presidential elections. The Washington Post reported Monday a 6-to-1 advantage for Obama and the Democrats in voter registration in North Carolina. John Kerry lost big in North Carolina in 2004, even with the state's outgoing senator, John Edwards, as his running mate. Now Obama looks set to pick up North Carolina without Edwards on the ticket.

The Post also reported a 2-to-1 voter-registration advantage for the Dems in crucial Florida -- another "must have" state for McCain -- and a 4-to-2 advantage in Nevada and Colorado -- also important battleground states.

For all the continued Democratic obsession with voter registration, however, their growing strength in that area is a symptom rather than a cause of their rising fortunes.

The bottom line is that, as we warned in these columns last week, McCain needs an urgent rethink and restructuring of his core economic message -- by the end of this week, in fact. He and his team quite simply have offered nothing that has proven credible with the American public mainstream on how to turn the economy around and preserve and protect the financial system of the United States. The real message they have been sending, loud and clear, is "We don't have a clue."

Going negative, sending Palin out on doomed "attack dog" missions or whining about liberal media bias won't solve that problem. The Republicans either have to renew their minds and souls and come up with something credible fast, or face the fact that in four weeks they are going to go out into that long political night, and there won't be any dawn for them after it either.

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(Commentary by Martin Sieff)