James Forsyth

The atmosphere in Washington today is very different from it was four years ago. Then, everyone was on tenterhooks. Today, I haven’t spoken to a single person who thinks the result is in doubt (and that includes several McCain supporters). The conversation has moved on to Obama’s appointments, the future of the GOP and whether Obama is winning what amounts to a two-term mandate. One thing worth thinking about is how Obama will handle a Democratic Congress with comfortable Democratic majorities in both chambers. For instance, the rationale for Obama’s health care plan—which is not universal in the way that the one Hillary presented was—was that it stood a better chance of being passed.

Here’s Americano’s guide what to watch for hour by hour on Tuesday night  / Wednesday morning: 7 pm (Midnight UK Time) Polls close in six states. The battleground states of Virginia and Indiana won’t be called instantly but watch to see if Georgia and South Carolina are. If they’re not, that suggests that black turnout has soared. If Virginia is called within the hour for Obama, that means that he is almost certainly on course for victory and quite comfortably.  7.30 pm Ohio’s polls close. This state is an absolute must win for McCain but they don’t count their votes quickly here. 8 pm 15 states and the District of Colombia cease voting.

I must admit that I left McCain’s rally in northern Virginia today more convinced that ever that this American hero will, sadly, lose on Tuesday. The bulk of McCain’s stump speech is dominated by an argument against redistribution. It is a classic right-left fight—and that’s what’s wrong with it. McCain is preaching to the choir but the choir is smaller than it has been in a generation. If in 2005, when talk began about a second McCain run for the White House, one had been told that McCain would have to win Pennsylvania to win the White House one could have sketched out a plan for how he would do it. It would have involved him running as part of the radical centre, a bold reformer.

The crucial number on Tuesday night is 270, that’s the number of electoral college votes needed to win the presidency. The Obama campaign has multiple options for getting to 270. Karl Rove’s map, which is based on public state by state polling, has Obama with 311 supposedly solid electoral college votes with another 70 too close to call. Realistically, it is hard to see McCain winning every toss up state and peeling off Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire from Obama’s column which is his quickest route to 270. McCain needs the race to change nationally, to be reframed around who would be an effective Commander in Chief—a question on which he still leads.

Last night’s Barack Obama infomercial was a typically high-quality, well produced Obama product. There wasn’t much in it that was audacious but it sold the Obama message effectively and made him appear a safe choice. But this morning, spirits will have been raised in the McCain camp by a new poll which shows him within four points in Pennsylvania, a blue state that McCain now probably has to win to get to 270. This is the first bit of good polling news the McCain campaign has had in a while. However, the other polling numbers out today are really grim for McCain—he is even trailing in North Carolina and another poll has him down by double-digits in the Keystone state.

Hamish McRae is one of the few economic commentators to have come out of this crisis in credit. His column today on how to avoid the stagnation that has gripped the Japanese economy for the past twenty years is well worth reading. Here’s the key section but do read the whole piece: “During the early 1990s the country escaped recession, unlike for example the UK, but the economy was flat and when the recession did come, in 1997, it was a biggie. Then until a couple of years ago it was back to stagnation. So while cheap money will help, and some increase in government borrowing is inevitable, they will not on their own fix things. Wasting money on ill-conceived public spending (which Japan did) is damaging in the medium-term.

Mike Allen reports that in conversation with him “a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description [of Palin], calling her “a whack job.” Now, this is—to put it mildly—unhelpful. The idea of Palin ‘going rogue’ is catnip to the press and this quote will dominate at least the first news cycle of the day. The McCain campaign is down in every key battleground state with a week to go. They are going to have to turn in one of the great final week performances in campaign history to turn this round. They cannot afford to lose news cycles to distractions like this.

James Surowiecki has a good primer on why nothing worked to counter the flurry of selling in the markets. Here’s the key part of his argument, but do read the whole thing: “Rating agencies and Wall Street analysts are always with us. But the most destructive procyclical force in today’s market is relatively new—hedge funds. There’s an irony here: hedge funds have been touted as a great countercyclical force. Because hedge-fund investors, unlike mutual-fund investors, usually can’t pull their money out on a daily basis, the funds were supposed to be able to take a longer-term view and pursue contrarian strategies (like the hedge-fund manager John Paulson’s huge bets against the subprime bubble).