Barack Obama and John McCain have abruptly stopped talking about themselves and their running-mates, with the shocks on Wall Street at last grounding both campaigns in the lives of American voters.

This is an election that veered from cultish adulation for Mr Obama to racial smears about his background and then – after a biopic on Mr McCain’s military service – became dominated by the soap opera of Sarah Palin. But yesterday the focus shifted to ordinary people and policy detail.

Mr Obama believes that he has the edge here, arguing that the financial turmoil is a consequence of the low-regulation economic policies pursued by President Bush and supported by Mr McCain. He said that wealth had not trickled down but, instead, “the pain has trickled up – from the struggles of Main Street all the way up to the crises on Wall Street”.

Mr Obama’s problem is that as a Harvard-educated lawyer whose supporters include hedge fund managers and Hollywood liberals, he must work hard to demonstrate his empathy with the problems of middle-class America.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the vastly wealthy Democrat who had supported Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid, announced that she was transferring her affections to Mr McCain because Mr Obama did not connect with average Americans.

The Democratic nominee was back on the campaign trail in Nevada yesterday having returned from scooping a record $9 million (£5 million) at a series of fundraising events in Beverly Hills.

Mr Obama began a television drive across battleground states with a sombre, two minute-long advertisement complaining that too “much of this campaign has been consumed by petty attacks and distractions that have nothing to do with you or how we get America back on track”.

“In town halls, backyards and diners across America, our troubled economy isn’t news,” he said, citing 600,000 job losses since January, as well as falling home values or the difficulty people had paying for petrol, groceries and health insurance. “The truth is that while you’ve been living up to your responsibilities Washing-ton has not.”

He urged viewers to read his 3,300-word economic plan which includes pledges to give “a $1,000 tax break to the middle class instead of showering more on oil companies and corporations that outsource our jobs”, crack down on lobbyists and introduce “real regulation that protects your investments and pensions”.

Mr McCain is offering a similar package of regulation and oversight measures to address the crisis on Wall Street and – like Mr Obama – issued a statement on the $85 billion federal bailout of AIG that insisted the management should not receive help.

The Republican nominee has begun railing against “the greed and casino-culture” of Wall Street, saying that the Government’s focus “should be to protect the millions of Americans who hold insurance policies, retirement plans and other accounts” with AIG.

Yesterday he travelled to a car plant at Grand Rapids, where he said: “We are not going to leave the workers in Michigan hung out to dry while we give billions in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street.” He was also running an advertisement, saying: “I won’t tolerate a system that puts you and your family at risk. Your savings, your jobs.”

But such populist language is being used to conceal a record in which he has usually sided with deregulation of financial institutions and the philosophy of low taxes, small government. Most analysts believe the candidates’ plans to cut taxes are unrealistic in the midst of such market chaos and a surging federal budget deficit predicted to be at least $438 billion next year.

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