Let's be honest. With a 500MM budget deficit, neither candidate has much room to move. Here is what's at stake:

Obama, as we know, wants to cut the deficit slightly with a tax on high income earners, but then even it out with tax rebates not dissimilar from the 1K checks handed out this summer by Bush and Congress. He no longer appears to support national health insurance -- Hillary mentioned it in her convention speech, but Obama did not. He also wants to build some wind mills and expand college scholarships for AmeriCore type service. He wants relatively more war in Afghanistan but relatively less in Iraq. He would appoint pro-choice people to the U.S. Supreme Court.

McCain, by contrast, has no clear plan either to raise or reduce taxes, or raise or reduce spending. His ear mark phobia would make little dent on federal spending. He also favors wind mill spending, along with increasing permits for off shore drilling. He wants relatively more war in Iraq, and probably Afghanistan as well. He would probably nominate pro-life people to the U.S. Supreme Court, but if they are too overt about it, they might not get confirmed by the Senate.

The race is also about firsts. With Obama, you get the first self-described African American (notwithstanding he is bi-racial and was raced exclusively by white relatives). With Palin, you get the first woman VP and the first non-millionaire since Truman.

For years, Republican leaders have had to act as ambassadors to conservative voters on their right. Some, like George Bush Sr., seemed to detest them. McCain gave off the same aura until recently. George W. Bush came the closest to a real relationship -- he famously observed his father's campaign in Iowa c. 1988 first hand and told others he knew exactly how to relate to such conservatives.

Well, Palin is sort of the opposite -- an elected evangelical who must build bridges to establishment republicanism. We saw some of that on display in the Charles Gibson interview. True blue conservatives are thrilled to have one of their own on the ticket. Given the snubbing they typically receive from their own party, the joy is understandable.

Finally, Palin is part average person, part figure of beauty, and part subject of intense empathy (with her son going off to war and her disabled child). Fans see in her a cross between Lech Welesa (the mechanic turned president of Poland) and a right wing version of Eva Peron. She really is a force to be reckoned with.

Two quick points in response to prior posts.

First, the idea that McCain has "lost his honor" since 2000 is not a credible talking point for people who follow politics closely. To review, McCain cuddled up to the media in 2000 by bashing Republicans and openly calling for Democrats and independents to vote him over the top in open primaries of New Hampshire and then South Carolina. "Straight talk" was synonomous in the media for anti-conservative positions. It didn't work. McCain had a choice in 2008: retire or move right. He chose the latter.

Now, we all know apolitical people who watched McCain on the Today show and other light fare c. 2000, are watching him now get hit by the media for his supposed honor deficit, and have asked: what happened to McCain? Again, close observers know this is a ruse, but are happy to benefit from it among the less informed. My only suggestion: no one should take this point too seriously.

Second, a short word about pro-life voters. The only two times a Democrat has won since 1976 were in 1992 and 1996, and in both cases, pro-lifers were very dispirited. It became clear by both elections that efforts to change the Supreme Court were failing, and the candidates offered them little enthusiasm. Some stayed home; others cast protest votes. This time around, the pro-life vote is almost certain to come out in force, just as it did in 2004 when Chief Justice Rehnquist announced his grave illness on the eve of the election (thus signaling two open seats -- it was already widely reported that Justice O'Conner would be stepping down soon). My point is: this is not likely to be 92 and 96, in terms of pro-life turnout. The question is: can the Democrats win when the evangelical rights is energized?

No offense to Mr. Shapiro, but it is a bad sign for Obama when left leaning publications begin to question whether racism is to blame for a Democrat's fade in the polls. It was right around this time -- mid September 1988 -- when Michael Dukakis began hinting most conspicuously that his non-WASP Greek background was the real target of George Bush's Willy Horton / pledge of allegiance campaign against him. It never seemed to occur to him that voters might have substantive disagreements with prison furloughs or siding with Boston school teachers who refused to lead elementary school students in the pledge. Obama's left wing troubles re: Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayres could just as easily afflict a white liberal as a black one, as John Kerry found out with his infamous insistence that his fellow Vietnam veterans were all war criminals unworthy of the so-called Nurnberg defense. The problem with using race as an explanation for the polls is that it did not seem to hurt Obama until very recently. That, in turn, suggests politics --not race -- is to blame, at lesat for the recent differential.