With the presidential election campaign clearly breaking toward Barack Obama with less than a month to go, John McCain is running out of tools in his bag to turn the race back into his favor. The fact that McCain has left some tools unused just makes his job that much more difficult.
Here are the remaining plays in his playbook, as I see it.
1. Remind people of the type of change they want in their leadership. Voters want a different way of doing things in Washington, DC, not a change in ideology. McCain brings the procedural change and Obama brings the ideological change. The GOP candidate has failed to clearly delineate that difference. Now he has to make it a central theme.
2. The federal government, Congress in particular, bears at least half the responsibility for the economic crisis that's struck Wall Street and shrunk the investment portfolios of voters. Unless something changes drastically, the Democrats will not only retain their rule in the next Congressional term but probably expand it. With Obama in the White House, that means Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank -- among those chiefly responsible for the disaster -- will have unchecked power. McCain needs to get voters to think hard about whether that's such a good idea.
Unfortunately, it's doubtful that either of these strategies will be adopted. The McCain campaigns assaults on Obama's associations with William Ayers came too late in the game and smelled of desperation. Attacking Congress at this point would also present difficulties since he is a member of the Senate. Besides, in the debates, all the GOP candidate has ever done is blame Wall Street greed.
Assuming McCain takes neither of these suggestions, GOP chances in the presidential race will become like those of a second-place NFL football team in December. That's when fans are calculating just what combination of factors needs to come through in order for their teams to make the playoffs. The McCain campaign very soon could be like an NFL club that no longer controls its own destiny and needs the teams ahead of them to be defeated by someone else. McCain will need Obama to make a serious gaffe -- unlikely based on his performance in the first two debates -- or for a world event akin to the Russian invasion of Georgia to remind people what a dangerous world we're in.
While I don't see Obama making a major mistake that could tilt the race toward McCain, I can envision a scenario where the Illinois senator suffers from friendly fire. No one wants Obama to win more than the Bush-despisers at the Daily KOS, Code Pink and the Huffington Post. It wouldn't surprise me to see someone get overconfident and in their special vitriolic way share plans for what they'll do beginning next Jan. 20. Something like that would damage Obama in a way he'd never do to himself.
