Is It Over? Debate Reveals That Dynamic Of Race Is Fixed In Obama's Favor

By Greg Sargent - October 16, 2008, 12:05AM -- Yesterday's debate reveals as clearly as you could want that the dynamic of this race is fixed, perhaps irrevocably, in Obama's favor, with little to no time left to change this fact.That dynamic is this: People have decided that Obama is the guy who's offering real solutions for the economy; and they've rejected McCain's basic argument that Obama is unprepared for the gig of President. That has put McCain in an ever shrinking box: Anything he says that doesn't try to explain, in the most direct and substantive of terms, why his plans for the economy are better than Obama's come across as noise at best and stunts at worst.Worse for McCain, anything he says that's off-topic allows Obama to reinforce the race's overall dynamic, by pointing out that McCain is desperate to avoid the subject that, judging by every poll, is foremost on the minds of voters right now.This basic dynamic was fixed nearly two weeks ago. It's a product of the extraordinary depths of public anxiety created by the meltdown and the enormous gaffe McCain's advisers subsequently committed when they admitted that they were looking forward to moving the conversation past the economy and back to character attacks on Obama. This was a self-created bear-trap for McCain, and he's been trying to shake it off his leg ever since. But it's only getting tighter. The signs of this were everywhere tonight. Despite an enormous amount of hand-wringing over whether McCain would score points by bringing up William Ayers tonight, his reference to Ayers passed with barely a ripple -- it was quickly subsumed in matters of serious import. Obama pushed back on the Ayers attack ably enough -- but the real point is that he didn't even need a slam-dunk push-back. The whole conversation sounded as consequential as a momentary diversion into an argument between Trekkies over the relative merits of Captains Kirk and Picard. And consider McCain's frequent evocation of Joe The Plumber. This attack from McCain was clearly labored over heavily by his aides. But it fell flat for a very simple reason: It didn't change the basic underlying policy disagreements between the two men. It didn't change the fact that people agree with Obama's solutions to our economic crisis, and reject McCain's ideas. In the face of that overwhelming reality, the constant evocation of Joe The Plumber just came across like a stunt. Finally, consider McCain's "big moment" -- the moment when he dramatically told Obama that if he wanted to run against President Bush, he should have run four years ago. If anything, this reveals the extent to which McCain and his advisers are out of touch with what this race is really about. No one doubts that McCain is his own person, with his own story. But polls have shown over and over that voters have concluded that McCain represents a continuation of Bush's economic policies, and Obama represents a change from them. The notion that a "dramatic" moment such as that one can change that basic fact represents the McCain team's basic delusion all along: That they could make this race about McCain's biography, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. There's been a lot of punditry to the effect that McCain was too angry or, alternatively, that McCain succeeded in landing more punches than he did in previous debates. Maybe either one of those things, or both, were true.But who cares? That's all background noise. Let's keep our eyes on the big picture: Voters are basically fixed in their decision that the economy is the defining issue; that Obama is the person to fix it; and that despite McCain's claims, Obama is prepared for the overall job. Nothing changed that tonight, and there may be no more time left to change it. SOURCE:TPMELECTIONCENTRAL