Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Monday punditry. McCain is losing and it's just starting to sink in.

Hugh Hewitt: Why McCain will win. My remarkably upbeat "ignore the polls", "shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic" world view, based on the American people's innate fear of terrorists and Marxists. I am, of course, referring to Henry Paulson and George Bush. I do note, though, that my commenters seem worried for some reason I can't put my finger on.

Harold Meyerson:

But if the McCain people want to rummage through presidential candidates' associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain's own economic guru.

Simon Tisdall:

In election races, pollsters habitually look for the "tipping point" - the moment when a contest shifts decisively in favour of one of the contestants.

Such moments are elusive; sometimes they never happen. But four weeks before US presidential and congressional elections, a consensus is emerging among analysts in both main parties that 2008's tipping point was reached last week - and the Republicans were left up in the air with their legs dangling.

Neal Gabler:

As Sarah Palin "aw-shucks-ed" her way through Thursday's debate, she repeatedly played the one card that has become her stock in trade: She is a real American. Her rural roots, her lack of sophistication and worldliness, her bare bones education, her plain-spokenness, her moose hunting -- all of these seemed to brand her as a typical American, one of us us. She has even taken to calling herself Jane Sixpack.

Ridiculous though it may be, there are historical roots for this. Not all of them admirable.

Cynthia Tucker: "Voter fraud" is a GOP tactic. Don't be fooled. But this description is priceless:

The base of the Republican Party — a dwindling but still significant group — clings to a handful of pseudo-facts that don’t hold up to serious scrutiny but that still occupy a central place in GOP ideology.

Michael Tomasky: Substance trumps style this year.

Likewise with the debates. McCain had more zingers and one-liners than Obama did and generally speaking was the aggressor that night. And Sarah Palin, with her repeated winks at the camera, had far more of a folksy, I'm-just-like-Joe-Sixpack approach than Joe Biden did. One-liners, aggression and emotive warmth are supposed to win these contests, we are told, and they usually do. But literally every poll I've seen shows that voters think Obama and Biden - who were direct and substantive and between them barely said one zingy or folksy thing - won the debates, and handily so.

Mark Steyn: The fact that the polls clearly show Palin lost the debate on the merits? Forget it. I'm smitten, just like Rich Lowry. She's Xena Santorum Palin, the Culture warrioress. Who cares about a little thing like reality when you can have pseudo-facts? And who cares what the eggheads think?

William Kristol: Well, I just got off the phone with her (she winked at me over the phone), and I agree. And I must say, I really enjoy pretending that she's competent and capable enough to be a heartbeat away from my being president.

Rod Dreher:

John McCain is probably going to lose this election. The economic crisis, which he is ill equipped by training and interests to handle, threatens to wipe out his campaign. Though Barack Obama has shown no greater insight or skill in handling the looming disaster, Mr. McCain's personal deficit on economic policy redounds to his opponent's benefit.

But here is the speech his supporters, supposing he really does put country first as if Sarah Palin wasn't his VP choice, pretend that McCain is capable of giving.

Naomi Alderman:

Another possible explanation of the increasing importance of identity politics that occurs to me is the decline of trust in politicians. In a survey carried out in 1964, about 75% of Americans said that they trusted the federal government. More recently, surveys have shown that around 75% of Americans now do not trust their government. Perhaps people were simply too naive 40 years ago, or perhaps we're too cynical now. One conclusion is clear to me, though: if you can't trust politicians to keep their promises, then policy statements lose some of their force to motivate the voter. If you believe that politicians will simply break their election promises, then what's left as a rational way to choose between them?