For my money, no one bottom-lined last night's Obama/McCain debate better than James Carville who was taking part in the post mortem over on CNN.
"You can call the dogs in, wet the fire and leave the house."
In other words, it's over for McCain.
He pointed out that Obama has a five point lead. And in a presidential election, a five point lead is huge, according to Carville.
And what was up with McCain referring to Obama as "that one?"
Back in April, I attended an event where Republican strategist Mike Murphy, who worked for McCain back in 2000, said that McCain has to avoid looking like the guy who's always yelling "get off of my lawn!"
Well last night McCain looked like he was playing Mr. Wilson to Obama's Dennis the Menace. And before you start saying "so what?" don't forget who the star of that show was.
It's not just the polls that indicate that Obama is ahead. The McCain camp is acting as if they believe that their candidate is way behind. A McCain supporter who wrote a letter that appeared in Tuesday's Daily Sound referred to the Democratic nominee as "Barack Hussein Obama," an obviously desperate attempt to whip up distrust and suspicion.
Besides the occasional letter to the editor in The Sound or Wendy McCaw's News-Press, the one media outlet in Santa Barbara that appears to be a reliable McCain stronghold is the Montecito Journal, where recently a letter writer described Obama as being a "street agitator" and a "troublemaker."
Notwithstanding the code words, there are no indications that Obama's popularity is slipping here in our sleepy little town. In these parts a McCain/Palin bumper sticker is about as rare a sighting as a dodo bird.
But perhaps the most accurate harbinger of an Obama victory is the " 7-Election Poll." That's where people buying coffee at 7-11 stores can choose either a blue Obama cup or a red McCain cup to indicate their presidential preferences. When the coffee purchase is rung up, so is the customer's "vote." The results are fed into a computer and tallied every day.
As of this morning, Obama was leading nationwide 58 percent to McCain's 42 percent. In California the margin is an amazing 63 percent to 37 percent in favor of Obama.
Don't laugh, the poll has been correct in the past two presidential elections.
And just think, the poll doesn't even account for the "latte liberals" like myself who bypass the convenience store coffee to get our high-priced cappuccinos at the Daily Grind, the Coffee Cat or the Good Cup on the Mesa.
