As the 2008 election cycle comes to a close it looks increasingly unlikely that Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama will address the 2008 Irish American Presidential Forum.

Obama's campaign, which received the request to attend from former New York State Assemblyman John Dearie, who created the first presidential forum in 1984, has yet to accept the invitation.

Asked if he still held out hope that Obama would address the forum before the November 4 election, Dearie told the Irish Voice, "The silence from the Obama campaign is deafening. Both Congressman Joe Crowley and myself have sought in every way to communicate our flexibility with them. We told them we would provide a flexible forum. But now we're already in the diminishing days of the campaign."

Dearie said that while he believed that the Obama would win the election handily, the voting group he called the "white ethnic voters" would be the last to evaluate the current candidates. "It baffles me why they have resisted. We have indicated that as long as the Obama campaign - in the person of either Senator Barack Obama or Senator Joe Biden - attend and give their positions on the six questions we will put to them, then we are prepared to wait right up until the last minute," he said.

Noting that a telephone conference call given by the Obama campaign this week acknowledged how close the polling numbers still are in Ohio, Dearie claimed that the large Irish American population centers in the state were just waiting to hear from the Irish forum.

"We have said back to the campaign, tell us where - for 20 minutes - either Obama or Biden can attend, and even on short notice we'll put together a room. We still want to hear what their positions are. We're going to down fighting up to the last minute to make this happen. Right now it feels like shouting into the Grand Canyon - you're not sure who's hearing you, if anyone."

Dearie added that his own questions were not addressed by the Obama campaign's recent statement on Irish issues given to the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish American Unity Conference.

"I'm very glad the Obama campaign responded to any Irish organization. I think that's probably as a result of Senator John McCain and Senator Hillary Clinton participating in the Irish presidential forums in the past few months. I do believe that it moved the Obama campaign. I am happy anyone gets responded to.

"But very frankly, we have a 24-year history of presidential forum and we're a far more visible platform. We have answers from two of the candidates and we glaringly do not from Senator Obama. I've got to call it like I see it in regard to the way this campaign has responded to the efforts and the stature the forum has earned over two and a half decades."