News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday predicted a Democratic landslide in the U.S. presidential election against a gloomy economic backdrop over the next 18 months.

Murdoch has yet to endorse a U.S. presidential candidate but considers Barack Obama very promising, the media magnate said in an interview by two Wall Street Journal reporters at an annual conference for high-tech industry insiders.

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Murdoch said Obama and John McCain, the expected nominee of the Republican Party, both have a lot of problems, but McCain will be hurt by his party and his close ties to Washington. Race will be an issue for Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, but "it looks like he overcomes that, overcomes that totally."

Sens. John McCain and Chuck Hagel have long been friends. Fellow Republicans and Vietnam War veterans, their Senate offices are just across the hall from each other.

But at least during the presidential primary, Hagel's wife, Lilibet, is helping McCain's likely Democratic rival, Barack Obama.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Mrs. Hagel donated twice to Obama's campaign in February for a total contribution of $500. The contributions were first reported by the Washington Post

Distraught by congressional spending, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said that Republicans have lost their courage to clamp down on waste and deserve to lose seats this year.

"Those people who are fiscally conservative, Republican or not, we don't have many years left that we better fix this, and we better be about it now," said Coburn on CNN Headline News Wednesday. "So [it's about] holding the Republicans accountable. And we're going lose some seats. There's no question about it. We deserve to."

Not long ago, the John McCain campaign dropped a prominent Arab-American businessman from its Michigan state finance committee because of allegations that the man was an “agent” of Hezbollah. The charges, made by a right-wing blogger, were unsubstantiated, but fears of being associated with Arab terror caused Republican knees to jerk, and cost Ali Jawad his position. All politics, even national politics, is local, and Jawad’s abrupt dismissal may cost McCain many votes among Southeastern Michigan’s large Arab-American community. But more important, Arab-Americans across the country are looking for changes in domestic and international policy that McCain seems unwilling to pledge — and they are concentrated in swing states that he will need to win this fall. Does John McCain have a problem with Arab-American voters?

Recent polls show a tight race between either Democrat and McCain in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, all states where Arab-Americans account for an appreciable percentage of the vote. Such polls have limited utility with November so many months away, but that it will be a close election in those key states seems clear. In a tight election, the votes of a well-placed minority — Arab-American votes — can be crucial.