It’s fairly unusual for a candidate to have such a sustained run of momentum so deep into the campaign cycle. And it does appear to be real momentum, with some real feedback loops: the worse McCain’s poll numbers become, the more desperate his campaign looks, and the more desperate his campaign looks, the worse his poll numbers become.

McCain now has to go on a run of his own, a large enough run to wipe at least 8 points off of Obama’s lead, and perhaps more like 9 or 10 to cover his inferior position in the Electoral College and the votes that Obama is banking in early and absentee balloting. It is imperative that McCain does not just draw tomorrow night’s debate, does not just win a victory on points, but emerges with a resounding victory, the sort that leaves the spin room gasping for air.

There’s always the possibility that McCain might make the “one term” promise that’s supposed to have been tossed around in his campaign for a long time, as a final attempt at one of his crazybrave “game changers”, but with Palin now very much on the nose with independents and swing voters, that doesn’t look too clever. Meanwhile, Obama may have set a bit of a trap for Walnuts by claiming he’s too yella to raise William Ayers to his face. McCain says he’ll bring up Ayers. Given that most people think the Obama hangs with terrsts card is a big downer, except with the more rabid elements of the base and Fox News and the right wing bloggers, this may be a very bad move.

Update [by Mark] Liveblogging at FiveThirtyEight.com, Feministe, Feministing, Crooks & Liars, Think Progress and this girl called automatic win.

A couple of discussion starters – Nate Silver:

Are John McCain’s negative attacks succeeding in eating into some of Barack Obama’s support? They certainly aren’t yet. In fact, Barack Obama has had perhaps his strongest individual polling day of the year.

And my favourite blogger evah (well, up there anyway!), Michael Bérubé:

…if the first debate is any indication, Obama’s going to go for the cool deflection, not the red-hot direct reply. In so doing, Obama will no doubt disappoint his partisans who want him to play Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots with the vast right-wing noise machine. Yes, I know, it’s better to play it cool when your opponent is an incoherent growling curmudgeon and you’re up by eight or nine nationwide. But I do think that McCain is at the boiling point, and that if Obama says anything tonight that calls into question McCain’s one-hundred-percent truthiness and integritocity, or if Obama says anything that suggests that McCain should treat him as a peer (like “as a fellow Senator”), however gently and genteely he says it, the game might finally be over.

Because up to this point, the one thing McCain has been most willing to sacrifice—his reputation for integrity, the backbone of his carefully-crafted public legend—has been the one thing he most fiercely defends. It’s almost as if he knows precisely how much he’s lost in the bargain, and has decided (consciously or unconsciously) to devote his campaign to his own self-destruction: attacking his media base and slingin’ the shit while dedicating himself to a frantic defense of his reputation for country-first integritude and steadfast truth-telling maverickiness. If Obama touches on this dynamic tonight, however lightly, his opponent might implode.

No, it probably won’t happen. But it would be great fun to watch.

His attempts to game this dangerous situation, his waffling between bipartisanship and ideological rigidity, his shiftiness on the real issues and his obvious lack of concentration on the problems that must be resolved — suggest that he is in fact unfit to serve in the office he desires. Once again he has proved that his claim to put country first is hollow. He was more than willing to take America down as he gambled for that prize.

Do feel free to use this thread to reflect on the debate as well.

Update: I always think Jane Hamsher’s take is worthwhile – here she is at firedoglake on the debate:

The idea that you can run against a Republican for national office and remain above the fray was a nice one, but it isn’t realistic. Obama needs to stop agreeing with McCain and reinforcing his message. It doesn’t make him look statesmanlike, it makes McCain look right.

McCain really has nowhere to go except to get more obdurate and bellicose. If Obama can get his footing in the next debate and decide on a tactic for getting under McCain’s skin, the cranky old hothead won’t be hard to pwn.

Update: Nate Silver on why voters think Obama won.