Debate, etc
Even I’m not cynical enough to say that the recent Palin interviews were a dastardly way of setting low expectations for her going into the debate. Whether they intended it or not, the Republicans won the expectations game. Honestly, Palin would have had to have been a drooling, nose picking moron, a slack-jawed yokel, in order to have lived down to the expectations that were set for her in the last week. The woman ain’t qualified to be President, but having surpassed expectations last night, it’s likely that the coverage won’t shift back into “should McCain drop her” mode until her next major gaffe.
I worried that having beaten expectations like a red-headed step child, she might also come off as having won the debate simply because she looked like she could walk and talk at the same time. Thankfully, the debate watching public is a little savvier than that. Most of the polls seem to show that Biden won it. Many of them show that by a large margin. Even the Fox poll has it Biden 61, Palin 39 on the question of who won.
The McCain campaign, by the way, pulled out of Michigan. Whatever the spin may be from the McCain campaign on this, it’s a sign that his people don’t see them as having a real shot there. I would expect to see McCain pulling out (or all but doing so) of some other states in the next ten days. The feel, the momentum of this election seem to be moving toward an Obama victory. McCain’s people really need to fight hard in the true swing states in order for him to have a chance. This election is turning into another confirmation of Howard Dean’s “50 state strategy”. The one area where I’ve appreciated the Obama campaign from the beginning was their adherence to that line of thought. After what happened in the 2006 congressionals, if Obama wins and the Dems pick up larger majorities (looking likely) in the House and Senate, we may have a permanent shift away from the way elections have been run for the last several cycles.
