Pre-debate thoughts

I have another, longer set of thoughts in my head about the Presidential race which I might type up tonight while watching the debates. The gist of them is this: the race is all but over.

There is no longer anything McCain can do to win the race; he needs Obama to lose it. It is possible that if you went back several months you could roll out a campaign strategy that would have put McCain over the top despite the largely uneven playing field and all the impressive things Obama’s campaign has done. That window has pretty much closed, however. McCain can talk about Bill Ayers, and Reverend Wright, and race-bait and terrorist-bait to his heart’s content. If he were behind 49-47 and he needed to move one or two percentage points in a few states to put him over the top, it might work. But he’s down 49-43 in an environment of great hostility to the GOP and concern about issues (e.g. the economy) where voters (by a large margin) favor Dems.

To win, McCain needs Obama and his campaign to commit one or more likely a series of very large, very public unforced errors. The debate tonight might be the last chance for this to happen early enough to shift the race as far as McCain needs it to shift to pull things out. If Obama accidentally lets slip tonight that he’s repeatedly molested little girls in exchange for allowing Al Qaeda operatives to smuggle explosives into the country for their next big strike, McCain has a chance to change the dynamics of the race and close some ground. If Obama turns in another cool, collected, presidential-looking performance in a debate in which both candidates do fine and nothing much momentous happens, McCain is toast.

An analogy to which I’ll probably return: It’s the middle of the 4th quarter of a football game. The superior team has dominated both sides of the ball all game, and now leads 27-10. The inferior team has been unable to move the ball much on offense or stop the ball on defense. They have gone to their best plays over and over again, and all of them have failed. The superior team has the ball and is slowing moving down the field on a long, clock-killing extended drive that (regardless of the outcome) leaves no room for the other team to score points. The announcers are struggling to come up with new, interesting things to say.

Short of something earth-shattering tonight, it’s over

Something earth-shattering happens tonight, it might not be over until next week