Eight points up and one debate to go

Tomorrow, Melbourne time, is the third and final debate between Obama and McCain. I’d hoped a week ago that McCain would go into this one with his negative tactics having failed miserably and with the polls looking bad for him. It has come to pass. When last I checked he was trailing by more than 8 points in the RealClear poll averages and was five points down even in Florida and Virginia. The Democrats haven’t won Virginia in a Presidential election since 1964, and even that was an aberration. Even Missouri is now looking quite possible for Obama.

I am trying hard to think of other things and not succeeding. As I said to my brother the day Howard called the election and a poll had him 18 points down and looking likely to lose his own seat, “it’s too good to think about but I can’t think about anything else.”

What an extraordinary thing the American system is. It doesn’t matter who gets the most votes but which states they win since each state elects people to the Electoral College which then elects the president. And since each state’s electors all vote the way the majority of the state’s voters have voted it can – and does – result in the winner of the election actually getting fewer votes than the winner. This most recently happened when Bush beat Gore in 2000 despite winning half a million fewer votes. Now this is terribly unfair and undemocratic and outdated and all BUT…it is heaven on a stick for political junkies. How boring it is to follow a direct election which goes like this:

Oh yes, he’s in front in the polls, he’s still in front, I think he’ll win, oh the gap has narrowed a bit, now it’s dead even, now he’s back in front, now he’s in front by a lot, now I really think he’s going to win…

But the states-based system makes it more like a parliamentary election where you can follow each seat and wonder who’ll hang onto what and who will win Eden-Monaro. I say to hell with democracy, give me a system that’s interesting.

Anyway, the second bit of my fantasy about McCain going into the last debate 8 points down and trailing even in Virginia and Missouri was that he’d lose the plot and do something horrendous that resulted in “McCain Meltdown” headlines and handed Obama the election on a platter. Not that Obama needs such help, more that the party of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld needs a good kicking and I hope they get one. Hell they might even end up with a government that believes we can do something about global warming.