Though it will be a few days before the polls really react to last night's debate, it seems like a good time to take stock of the election in the wake of the candidates' last scheduled public appearance together. The conventional wisdom, such as it is, is that McCain had his best debate of the season but appeared angry, erratic (erotic?) and a bit incoherent, while Obama, though not in the same top form as last week's town hall debate, performed well enough to earn the win -- the insta-polls and focus groups give it to him -- and maintain his image as a steady, moderate politician and not some kind of radical.
In the final weeks, barring some kind of major surprise, be it a terrorist attack, further financial crisis or who knows what, the dynamics favor Obama. The battle will now be fought on the airwaves, where Obama has more money, on the campaign trail, where Obama simply has more surrogates, and on the ground, where the Democrat's field campaign continues to be strong. As Politico reports, Obama is still on offense, expanding the map in red states where McCain is trying to hang on. As has been a theme since the primaries, the Obama campaign's strategic understanding of the metrics that measure victory has been better than their opponents', and it gives the Democratic nominee a wide variety of options to win in the electoral college. McCain, on the other hand, can only win -- at this point -- by the skin of his teeth, somehow hanging on to the Bush coalition.
Nothing's over till it's over, of course, and there are plenty of pessimistic memes going around about whether the polling is actually representative of the electorate, from the Bradley effect to Shy Tories to, well, basic paranoia. But I'm not sure any of those hold up to scrutiny. McCain could score a win but he needs to find a message that resonates. The personal attacks didn't work, and last night he lost the biggest platform he had to offer a more compelling narrative. No presidential campaign has ever come back from a deficit as large as McCain's -- Gerald Ford came close under very different circumstances but didn't make it. The race could very well tighten, but it may be instructive to consider the polls of 2004, when some folks, including myself, thought John Kerry might have a chance to make up ground. He wasn't as far behind as McCain is now.
-- Tim Fernholz
