Democracy Corps has a particularly cogent analysis of last nights debate. The overview follows:

John McCain entered tonight’s debate needing to halt Barack Obama’s momentum and fundamentally change the dynamic of the race. Not only did he fail to achieve this goal, McCain dug himself an even deeper hole.Undecided voters watching the debate felt McCain gave a decidedly un-presidential performance, appearing rude, negative, and easily flustered – a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s cool, commanding presence. Obama was seen as the clear victor in the debate, and a group that was much more disposed to support McCain at the outset instead shifted decisively toward Obama (42 to 20 percent) after viewing the debate.

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If you’re not religious yourself, and derive your impressions of Christianity in this country from the news media and the shouting of self-appointed Prophets, you’d be excused for thinking that Christians are pretty much all divided into Catholics and conservative evangelical Protestants. Sure, you might be dimly aware that there was once a large group of people called Mainline Protestants, but they’re a relic of the past, decimated by their wishy-washy liberalism and reluctance to leap into politics to defend infallible truths.
But despite many predictions by both secularists and religious conservatives that they are a dying breed, the fact is that Mainline Denominations (as measured by affiliation with that quintessential “liberal” institution, the National Council of Churches) represent 45 million Americans, which is a lot more than a few. They’re a diverse group, to be sure, including denominations like the Eastern Orthodox churches which are quite conservative on many cultural issues. But by and large, they have dissented conspicuously from the Christian Right movement, and its alliance with conservative politicians.
According to a new analysis from Beliefnet’s Steve Waldman, this election cycle may represent something of a watershed for Mainliners, particularly those “whitebread” Protestants (the original WASPs) who have had an attachment to the Republican Party that goes right back to the Civil War and the Prohibition movement.
Here’s Waldman on the subject:

This used to be a solidly Republican group. In 2004, they went for President George W. Bush 54%-46%. This summer, John McCain was leading Sen. Obama among these voters 43% to 40%, according to a study by John Green of the University of Akron.
But an ABCNews/Washington Post poll released Monday showed Sen. Obama now leading among Mainliners 53%-44%, indicating that the undecided voters are breaking heavily for the Democratic candidate.
Why? The superficial answer is, as with so many other questions, the economy. In Beliefnet’s Twelve Tribes study, 68% of centrist Mainliners (what we called “White Bread Protestants”) said the economy was the No. 1 issue compared with just 4% who said social issues….
The Mainline shift to Sen. Obama may be partly an unintended consequence of Sen. McCain’s efforts to energize evangelical Christians, including through the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Though fiscally conservative, mainline Protestants are socially liberal – so they would be unimpressed by the Republican Party adopting the most antiabortion platform ever. Mainliners may be irritated or scared by Gov. Palin’s religious language and beliefs – including her attendance at a Pentecostal church espousing “End Times” theology (that we’re approaching the end of the world and Christ’s return).
In general, Mainliners have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the role the “religious right” has played in the Republican Party. According to a new survey by a progressive group called Faith in Public Life, Mainliners – by a margin of two to one — believe public officials are too close to religious leaders. Evangelicals, by a two to one margin, think politicians should pay more attention to religion.

For a long time, the GOP was able to count on the residual loyalty of Mainline Protestants while devoting virtually all of its religious outreach to conservative evangelicals and “traditionalist” Catholics. But shirking these Mainline believers, while allying themselves with religious spokesmen who frequently speak of Mainliners as little more than pagans who like singing hymns, is a gamble that has finally caught up with the Republican Party. And this backlash has not been helfpul to John McCain, a Mainline Episcopalian by birth who now calls himself a Southern Baptist.

Going into last night’s final presidential debate, John McCain was regularly getting two diverse bits of advice from conservative gabbers. Some urged him to forget negative attacks on Obama and present a fresh “solution” to the economic crisis, foreswearing conservative orthodoxy if necessary. Others (the vast majority) wanted him to pound Obama on every conceivable front, while clearly articulating conservative principles on every conceivable issue.
It’s pretty clear the latter point of view won out with Team McCain, perhaps because they went through all the file cabinets and didn’t run across some brilliant new approach to the economic crisis. And if nothing else, last night’s debate should help us all avoid a massive amount of post-election second-guessing from conservatives whining that McCain never really waged the culture war or explained how conservatives think about economic policy. We got to hear McCain relentlessly promoting the old-time-religion of growth-through-marginal-tax-rate reductions, spending freezes, attacks on “pork,” etc., etc., while arguing that such conservative chesnuts would somehow represent a sharp break from the policies of the Bush administration. And he certainly gave the ol’ college try to the Ayers Connection, along with a deafening echo of conservative whining about media favortism and double-standards.
In that connection, the two most memorable things in McCain’s presentation were (1) his sneering reference to the “health exception” from permissable abortion bans set out in the original Roe and Doe decisions; and (2) the whole Joe the Plumber litany, repeated endlessly as though it were a campaign-changing silver-bullet.
On the first point, you have to understand that it is an article of faith among conservatives that the “health exception” has turned the balancing act represented by Roe (no bans on early abortion, some bans on late-term abortions) into “abortion on demand.” They may even have a point, from a strictly empirical point of view. But the problem is that a majority of Americans agree with a “health exception,” and won’t react well to the suggestion that “women’s health” is just some sort of self-indulgent excuse for abortions that ought to be banned.
On the second point, much of the economic policy debate of the last three decades has revolved around conservative efforts to sell regressive tax rates, mainly benefitting the very wealthy, by dragging, or pretending to drag, as much of the middle class as possible into the tax-cut bonanza. Hence the central focus on Joe the Plumber (sort of a well-heeled Joe Sixpack), who sounds a lot more sympathetic a figure than Joseph the Investment Banker.
The idea that a three-percentage-point increase on marginal profits above $250,000 among the handful of small businesses that fit Joe’s profile is the difference between socialism and free enterprise, and between depression and recovery, is pretty stupid. But from the historical perspective of conservative efforts to promote trickle-down-economics with a human face, it makes sense. (McCain definitely overkilled it, though. And the only thing worse than listening to McCain mention the heroic Joe twenty-one-times last night was listening to Sarah Palin redundantly yammer about it this morning; she came close to an abandonment of sentences altogether in favor of an incantatory repetition of the Sacred Monniker).
I don’t have much to say about Obama’s performance, other than to note his efficient rebuttal of the Ayers nonsense, and his predictable but effective response to McCain’s “I’m not Bush” zinger. And I’m not the best judge of style points, but the decisive reaction of focus groups and the instapolled to the debate, in Obama’s favor, suggest that McCain’s frantic efforts didn’t go over very well.
In the end, McCain fell back on the exotic but strongly felt conservative belief that the errors of the last eight years were a combination of bad luck, insufficient conservativism, perceptions based on “liberal media” bias, and tactical mistakes in the culture wars. Nobody’s much buying it, but nobody can say any longer that it was the “path not taken” in this campaign.

In the CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll undecideds chose Obama by a margin of 53 percent to 22 percent, with 25 percent for a draw.
Independents preferred Obama 60 percent to 30 percent in the Media Curves poll.
The CNN/Opinion Research poill of “debate-watchers” gave the win to Obama by a margin of 58 percent to 31 percent. Among Independent debate-watchers, the margin favored Obama 57-31.
Democracy Corps ‘dial and focus groups’ survey of 50 undecided Denver voters said Obama won the 3rd debate by a 50 to 24 percent margin. After the debate 42 percent of the respondents said they would support Obama, compared to 20 percent who supported McCain.
A majority of the 23 uncommitted Arlington, VA voters in Frank Luntz’s Fox News focus group said Obama won the debate, while zero chose McCain.

It’s hard to scan conservative opinion outlets these days without running across monotonous attacks on the incompetence of the McCain-Palin campaign, typically for failing to throw anything at Barack Obama that might even conceivably stick. But Mike Gerson of the Washington Post took a different approach in his column today: claiming that McCain’s just a victim of bad timing. He’d probably be winning, Gerson suggests, in a campaign focused on Obama’s “character,” if it hadn’t been for the financial meltdown.
Well, if I had some ham, I could make a ham sandwich, if I had some bread. While the desire of Republicans for a substance-free presidential campaign this year is perfectly understandable, I don’t have much sympathy. Gerson writes as though the meltdown just happened, with nobody in particular to blame, and as though incumbent parties don’t benefit as well as suffer from circumstances not entirely within their immediate control (remember George W. Bush’s poor public standing and aimless agenda before 9/11?).
Sure, it’s painful for McCain to try to run away from his own party and policies when they are unpopular, and it’s even more painful when said party and policies are making voters want to punish somebody, anybody, with an R next to his name. But let’s remember John McCain had every opportunity earlier this decade to leave the GOP, to become a Democrat or an independent, and chose otherwise. This idea that he is, as Gerson suggests, a “great man” whose services as president have been denied by a twist of fate is simply ludicrous. He’s dancing with the one that brung him.

Via Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, Survey USA has some pretty remarkable numbers from polling early voters in five states. Obama’s up by 23% in New Mexico; 18% in Ohio; 6% in Georgia; 34% in Iowa; and 34% in North Carolina. Those polled represented at least 10% of each state’s overall likely voters everywhere other than NC (5%).
Notes Silver:

Obama is leading by an average of 23 points among early voters in these five states, states which went to George W. Bush by an average of 6.5 points in 2004.
Is this a typical pattern for a Democrat? Actually, it’s not. According to a study by Kate Kenski at the University of Arizona, early voters leaned Republican in both 2000 and 2004; with Bush earning 62.2 percent of their votes against Al Gore, and 60.4 percent against John Kerry. In the past, early voters have also tended to be older than the voting population as a whole and more male than the population as a whole, factors which would seem to cut against Obama or most other Democrats.

Looks like Obama’s much-vaunted ground game is already producing some results. And it’s worth remembering that even if the race tightens down the stretch, these early votes are already in the bank.

You couldn’t say it any better than did Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman, when he responded to the shared lament of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin while she was being interviewed on his radio program that the MSM was trying to shut her up. Bookman replies:

No, Gov. Palin, the media don’t want you to shut up. To the contrary, every media outlet in the country is begging you to appear on their show. If you want to go on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, Late Edition, if you want to hold your first actual press conference, if you want to join the free-for-all tomorrow night spinning the aftermath of the presidential debate, the media would welcome you with open arms.
Speak, Sarah. Speak. If you care so much about this great country, tell the McCain campaign to stop stifling you and speak.
And yet she doesn’t. The “pitbull with lipstick” runs and hides.

There may well be some discussion about Senator Obama’s relationship with former domestic terrorist William Ayers in tonight’s presidential debate. McCain has said as much, although he would be smart not to bring it up, contrary to the sage advice of Rudy Giuliani, whose political judgment earned him a poor showing in the primary season early on. Better for McCain if debate moderator Bob Schieffer brings it up, if it must come up at all.
No doubt, McCain’s prep team is hard at work on creating an Ayers zinger or a ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’ type question for Obama. Senator Obama’s prep team is undoubtedly working on possible responses. But it shouldn’t be too hard. Their candidate has handled the Ayers distraction exceptionally well thus far, pointing out that he was eight years old when Ayers committed his crimes and quickly adding that the Ayers fuss is just another irrelevant distraction to get voters off the economy, health care Iraq and other issues that actually affect their lives.
I agree with TNR‘s Christopher Orr that it’s hard to envision a scenario in which McCain gets much leverage out of talking about Ayers. It’s already been discussed ad nauseum, and the shrinking pool of swing voters left — at least the thoughtful ones — could not be blamed for going to the bathroom during that part of the debate. If McCain goes on too long about it, he will look trifling, stuck in the past and even more desperate.
McCain might even pass on it altogether, on the theory that he will get some respect from fence-sitters for sticking to the important issues and getting back on the high road. Recent polls have shown that his attacks on Obama have been counter-productive. Letting the ads do the dirty work might be his preferred strategy going forward. It’s likely that the sort of voters who think Ayers is still relevant are already supporting McCain anyway.
Schieffer may also pass on asking an Ayers-related question. He has expressed an eagerness to make this debate the most substantial one yet held, with more detail on policy. That would leave very little time for distractions, especially given the complexity of issues like the economy, Iraq and health care, which voters care more about. The more interesting question is whether Schieffer will be even-handed enough, if Ayers comes up, to ask McCain to account for his close relationship with G. Gordon Liddy, who has reportedly urged political violence. McCain is said to have received funds raised by Liddy on several occasions and he has complimented Liddy lavishly.
The Ayers “issue” is most likely a wash-out, helping and hurting both candidates in equal measure. Neither candidate will gain or lose much because of it. But the public will be a big winner if the time is more productively spent exploring solutions to improving health care, getting out of Iraq, restoring economic stability and creating prosperity for all citizens.
My one unsolicited bit of advice for Obama in tonight’s debate: I’ve noticed that he tends to tilt his head at a 45 degree angle in sit-down interviews, like Meet the Press. Tonight is also a sit-down format, so maybe make an effort to keep his head more vertical to help convey confidence.

In this frantic stage of the presidential contest, there have been some significant conservative opinion-leader defections from the McCain-Palin ticket. George Will all but condemned McCain in the midst of the financial market crisis. David Brooks (a 2000 McCainiac, lest we forget) has gone south. Christopher Hitchens, though hardly a conservative, made some waves with his endorsement of Obama, given his previous monomania about Islamofascism and the Iraq War Cause (a holy cause to some, but something different to the militant atheist Hitchens).
But from a symbolic point of view, the most remarkable defection has been that of Christopher Buckley, humorist, novelist, son of WFB, and until this week, a columnist for WFB’s magazine, National Review. At the Daily Beast blog (a creation of the irresistable lowbrow Tina Brown, alluding to the equally irresistable highbrow Evelyn Waugh), Buckley endorsed Obama. In a follow-up post, Buckely disclosed that he was resigning from his NR column.
Symbolism aside, Buckley’s rationale for endorsing Obama is interesting, particularly since he (like David Brooks) used to be a McCain enthusiast, and even a McCain speechwriter:

John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Citing Barack Obama’s “first-class temperament” and “first-class intellect,” Buckley concludes:

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for

Christopher Buckley’s defection is signicant because he’s precisely the sort of conservative public figure that would normally tow the party line with no enthusiasm, or remain sllent or neutral, in this sort of election cycle.
Buckley is already one of those rare conservative writers with crossover appeal. He didn’t need to take a walk on the wild side by endorsing Obama. He seems to believe what he says, and his willingness to say goodbye to his father’s magazine is another sign that heresies abound in the ramshackle political party represented by John McCain on the ballot.

Note: This item is cross-posted from TPMCafe, where it appeared in response to a Todd Gitlin post urging Democrats not to get overconfident about victory
Todd Gitlin is right, of course, in suggesting to progressives currently giddy about polling trends in the presidential campaign that overconfidence is a bad idea in politics, as in any other competitive endeavor. And every Democrat of a certain age remembers past elections where we managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
But though Todd doesn’t come right out and say it, I suspect much of his fear is from the most immediate bad memory: Election Night 2004, when many of us were half-convinced we’d already won a week or so out, and then, on reading those first exit polls, threw caution to the win and declared victory.
It’s important, though, to remember why those expectations turned out to be unrealistic, and distinguish caution from superstition.
In the home stretch of the 2004 campaign, expectations of victory among progessives were partly attributable to a projection of our own belief that George W. Bush was a failed president pursuing failed policies which no reasonable person could support. We rationalized the terrible midterm election results of 2002 as an aberration attributable to the proximity of 9/11, and whatever we thought of John Kerry (I happened to like him a lot), figured he was a sufficiently acceptable candidate to harvest the inevitable backlash against Bush.
On a more analytical level, the factor many of us fixated on was the political science truism that undecided voters in the late stages of a campaign tend to break decisively against incumbents, particularly if they are sour about the condition of the country. With undecideds exhibiting very high levels of “wrong track” sentiment at this point four years ago, the thinking was that Kerry would win if he could keep the contest close in the polls, which he did. And that’s why those flawed early exit polls had many of us calling friends and relatives and fatuously urging them to ignore the red tide on their television screens, because we had actually won. We were predisposed to ignore adverse evidence, even in the face of actual returns.
Sure, there are three weeks to go in the current campaign, and weird stuff can still happen. But unless you believe in the Bradley Effect (which as Todd notes, is mostly a myth or an anachronism), or really do think the GOP can contrive a terrorist attack or get away with voter suppression or vote-stealing on a vast scale, the situation for Democrats is undoubtedly better than it was in 2004. Polls aside, the “fundamentals”– including the issue landscape, party ID and registration trends, the unprecedented levels of unhappiness with the incumbent, and the political impact of the economic crisis–are decisively better. And even if you don’t drink every drop of koolaid about Obama’s “ground game,” I don’t know a single person in politics who thinks McCain’s operation is superior to Obama’s. That’s totally aside, of course, from the dynamics of the campaign itself, wherein the central contradiction of the McCain candidacy–his effort to simultaneously pose as a supra-party “maverick” while bending to the conservative “base” on every major subject–is blowing up spectacularly almost every day.
Does that mean Democrats can or will start “coasting” and giving the GOP an outside chance to catch up? I don’t think so.
We should focus relentlessly on the fact that there’s all the difference in the world between a narrow Obama win and mixed “downballot” results, and a big Obama win with House and Senate gains that give Democrats an actual working majority in the former chamber, and a filibuster-proof majority in the latter. It could well be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful Obama administration, and its ability to reverse some of the more toxic Bush-Cheney policies. If you want to dwell on bad memories of elections past, save some mental space for 1994, when the Clinton administration”s early struggles contributed to a disaster that we are only now beginning to overcome.
Avoding irrational optimism is essential right now, but so, too, is avoiding a superstitious pessimism that could obscure the big challenges just ahead.