Abrabanel: Musings on the Jewish condition

NBC’s excellent FirstRead website notes today that McCain is falling seriously behind in polls, and could suffer an Electoral College landslide loss.

In full:

McCain heads into tonight’s debate here down in the polls and in need of a game-changer. Three weeks after the Wall Street crisis began, the latest NBC/WSJ poll has Obama up six points, 49%-43%, which equals his biggest lead over McCain in the survey; two weeks ago, Obama was up two in the poll, 48%-46%.

As NBC/WSJ co-pollster Peter Hart (D) put it: “John McCain finds himself in a hole no candidate wants to be in” — behind with less than a month to go. Remember, while six points might seem like a small lead, it can translate into an Electoral College landslide if this is what the margin is on Election Day.

What’s more, while pundits (including us) couldn’t agree who won the first two debates, the poll makes it crystal clear who won: Obama-Biden. By a 50%-29% margin, voters said that the Dems bested their GOP counterparts at the first two debates. In fact, it appears the combination of the economic downturn and the debate performances have just served as a double stomach punch to McCain. What will be the verdict for Debate No. 3? And just curious, are voters grading the debates on a curve, meaning McCain and Palin have more to prove with voters while Obama-Biden get the “change” benefit of the doubt which then translates into easy debate poll victories?

McCain did choose a woman, as we were told he would, but not the one we thought was the front-running contender. Sarah Palin, we believed, was too inexperienced, too new, too provincial. After a few years in small-town Alaskan politics, she catapulted to the governor’s mansion in 2006, where she’s served no more than two years before McCain chose her for his VP this week. If it’s at all possible, she’s even less experienced than Obama.

Then there’s the personal story: mother of five, the youngest child, Trig, with Down’s Syndrome, the oldest son, Track, serving in a US Army infantry brigade that will deploy to Iraq in a month.

Her degree is from the University of Idaho, as opposed to the East Coast credentials of the opposition. She likes hunting and fishing.

At left, Palin looking like any hometown girl on her way to the gym. But she’s not. This picture is of a governor visiting her state’s National Guardsmen in Kuwait. Human touch, anyone?

This comes down the grapevine. A good friend, well-connected in Washington, tells us this week that McCain’s VP announcement on Friday is almost certainly going to be a woman, and signs are pointing to former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. Not everyone will be happy about this development – reactions were mixed in April and May when her name was floated – but it’s an interesting idea: a woman, an economist, taken from outside politics to shore up McCain’s economic credentials and, well, to be a woman.

As our friend noted, “Joe Biden got 9,000 votes in the primaries. Hillary Clinton got 18,000,000. Lots of people, lots of women, are wondering why Biden got picked as the VP.”

If McCain fields a serious female running mate, an outsider who neither attracts nor angers the conservative wing of his party, his chances suddenly look extremely good come November.