Be sure to look for the decision to be mentioned, if not in a McCain ad directly, by McCain supporters as a reason to not elect a Democrat to office. Be just as sure to watch the effort fail miserably. We’ve got a ways to go yet, but public opinion has already shifted enough that this simply isn’t a big enough issue to swing an election like it did in 2004. Anti-marriage amendments are already in place in the states where they can pass. If a state doesn’t have one, it’s because there’s not enough votes to pass it. If there aren’t enough votes to pass it, there are not likely to be enough votes to swing the state election results. Whatever energizing of the GOP base this creates is going to be meaningless in the larger picture. That’s one of the biggest victory of today’s news; Connecticut says gay people can marry and, if I’m right, Americans (more concerned with their 401Ks and mortgages) are largely going to say, “So what?”

Electoral College Poll Trends

Now, I’m not a statistician, but to me this says that, for all the hoopla about this being such a close race, it’s really been anything but. McCain hasn’t gained anything that matters since the beginning of the campaign. I think it’s arguable that the “battleground states” have the most undecided voters (though theoretically they could just be the most polarized of the states). If that is the case then the trends on on the graph above seem to indicate that McCain hasn’t made any headway with undecideds at all; if anything, he’s lost them. Both candidates started this race with their base in the bag. Looking at the graph, 7 months later, McCain still has his base, and not much else. Obama on the other hand has been steadily converting undecideds into Obama supporters. Barring some major unexpected event, it’s gonna be an Obama landslide.

Palin didn’t need to do better than Biden, she only needed to not be the same Sarah Palin she was with Katie Couric. All she really needed to do to look good in this debate was speak in coherent sentences, and for the most part, she did. That’s the tragedy of this debate. Palin rarely answered the question asked of her. She didn’t even stay on the topic of the question asked (for instance, I believe it was when she was asked about health-care reform the first time, her response was, “We’ll I’d like to talk about energy…”). She used colloquial grammar and slang regularly (which would be appropriate if she was running for VP of The Baby-sitters Club, but not for the second highest office in the country), and her voice was shaking throughout most of the debate. If any other candidate had performed in that manner they’d have been laughed off the stage, yet we expected so little of Palin that her lackluster performance is being touted as “beating expectations” and “holding her own.” It’s scary that we have a VP candidate that is so inept that our expectations could possibly be that low. It’s scary to me that alot of people tuned into the VP debate not to hear the candidates take on issues or even to see the candidates take pot shots at eachother. They tuned in because there’s a candidate so woefully in over her head that a simple debate was largely expected to be an utter train wreck for her. That’s right, I said it. People tuned into the debate largely for one reason; to watch Palin fail miserably.

I feel bad for her about that. She’s been thrust in way over her head and she’s just struggling, no different than most of us would were we suddenly put in her position. Obviously she didn’t have to accept the offer, but I don’t really think she knew exactly what she was getting herself into. Campaigning in Alaska is nothing like campaigning on the federal level. One wonders if she could do it all again, would she?

Meanwhile, Biden was great. He avoided the trap of attacking Palin (which, right or wrong, would have been seen as the mean old man picking on the cute little girl). Despite Palin’s “Can I call you Joe?” comment when they first walked on stage, Biden was smart enough to stick with the respectful “Governor” title when address Palin directly. He aimed his attacks squarely at McCain and was able to throw quite a few in because Palin didn’t dare go off script to defend McCain (probably a good move on her part as it’s better to have a few attacks on McCain to go unchallenged and ultimately forgotten than to have another “Couric moment” which would have been headline news for the next week). He was confident, relaxed, and had his facts in order. Choking up when speaking of his son may or may not have been planned, but it was politically perfect. It connected him with mainstream America (especially those with children in Iraq and Afghanistan), and sharply contrasted him with Palin who (unbelievably) defied basic humanity by immediately going back right back to the “maverick” script.

The low point of the night was clearly when the two decided to at least agree on their opposition to gay marriage. Not unexpected but still disappointing, particularly so after Biden had (accidentally?) referred to long-term committed gay couples as “gay marriages” in his answer to the previous question. Palin’s response about giving gay couples the same rights (short of marriage) will likely be trumpeted by the Log Cabin Republicans, despite the fact that her record (and previous statements) shows an opinion that is quite the opposite of that which she gave last night.

First of all, the debate seems to have sparked some tightening of the race in a few key battle ground states where McCain was previously edging out Obama. However steady national polls may stay, gains in swing states are hardly nothing. I’m sure either candidate would happily take a slight hit in the national polls if it meant a boost in the swing states.

Just as importantly, Obama got his supporters excited during the debate (well some of them anyways, as I said, I thought the whole thing was boring as Presidential debates go). According to the Diageo Hotline Poll, enthusiasm from Democrats has rocketed from 60%-69% while GOP enthusiasm is all but flat-lined around 50% (it has gone from 48%-50% since the debate). The increase in enthusiasm is even more pronounced when divided by candidate instead of party with an 11% change (57->68) among Obama/Biden supporters and only a 1% change (45->46) among McCain/Palin fans.

Enthusiasm is remarkably important, especially in swing states, because enthusiasm is what wins votes. After all, the most important poll of all, the one that takes place on Nov 4, takes more effort on the part of the voter than just picking up the phone. An enthusiastic voter is also harder to sway. Obama may not have increased his lead with his debate performance but he’s surely solidified it. Polls can’t tell the difference between a barely-decided Obama supporter and a full-fledged Obama supporter. That difference is enthusiasm.

I also wanted to use the theme as a means to further familiarize myself with the wonderful javascript library, jQuery. Now I know I’m really late to that particular party, but while I’ve obviously known about jQuery for a long time, I’m a designer not a developer so I assumed jQuery would be a little over my head. Turns out, I was very wrong; jQuery is easy. If I’ve overdone it a bit here, then let that be my excuse. The best was to learn is to do, so perhaps in the interest of learning I’ve done a bit more than I’d have done sheerly in the interest of design.

The theme has been tested in IE 6 & 7, Firefox, and Safari. There’s the little bonus of getting to see the number of comments in the headline bar for each post if you are using a non-IE browser, because doing so broke the layout in IE and I’m too lazy to go and try to figure out the problem for nothing more than a comment count (which is duplicated in the footer of the post when you expand it anyways). As always, feedback is appreciated.

GOP constituents are noticing. It’s not just noticeable by what they’re saying, such as Kathleen Parker’s recent column, but in what they’re not saying. During the Palin fervor that followed her selection, conservatives were quick to brag about how Palin had won them the election and liberals (who were trying to point out all the things that are now making her unpalatable to the population at large) sure were “scared” of her. I haven’t heard anything like that coming from the conservatives I read for awhile now. The silence is deafening. I think it’s safe to say that if McCain could do it again, he wouldn’t have chosen Palin.

That said, it’s not easy to get rid of a VP choice. First of all, for all the independents she puts off, she IS still popular with the Republican base. The only issues they care about is squashing gay rights and abortion, and Palin is squarely in their camp on those issues. Had McCain chosen a less extreme VP candidate in the first place, he may have still won those votes by default (who else are they going to vote for? Obama?), but if he replaces their darling now, it’ll be a slap in the face. It won’t send them running to Obama, but it might well make them stay home or vote for a purely theocratic ticket (with no chance of winning) like the Constitution Party.

Even if he can get the base to stick with him through such a maneuver, there’s not likely to be an immediate polling bump like he received with Palin, regardless of how popular or qualified a potential new choice might be. Any choice he made would be viewed through the lens of being the second choice, the one after the mistake. For a man who has heavily based his campaign on judgment, that could be a devastating blow. Still, if it happened in the next day or two, there might be enough time between now and the election for those feelings to wear off and a brilliant pick could give him a boost towards the end.

There’s a lot to gain and a lot to lose by replacing Palin. On the other hand her very selection in the first place was a great risk. If nothing else, no one can deny that John McCain is willing to gamble (and I’m not talking about all his ties to Indian casinos). He’s willing to take wild risks if the potential payoff is high enough (I’ll leave it to each person to decide if that’s an admirable trait for a presidential candidate, but look how it worked out for Wall St). I still doubt that McCain will drop Palin from the ticket, but I’m not as sure as I once was.