Pride Goeth Before the Fall Elections

Just a few weeks ago, Barack Obama was leading in all the state polls and he had an estimated 300 electoral votes, according to some sources. Today, if you check the Votemaster, McCain leads with just 270 votes, but that is enough to be elected President of the United States.

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that I never believed that Obama's large lead was valid and that I predicted the race would be close, with a possible Obama victory with between 272 and 278 EVs.

In an excellent assessment earlier this week,here, Howard Fineman quoted one Democratic heavy-hitter on Obama's problems:

...if I were an Obama partisan I would be worried that his mistakes have a common thread - pride.

Obama seems to want to do things on his own, and on his own terms. It’s understandable. Obama has his own crowd – from Chicago, from Harvard, and from a new cadre of wealthy, Ivy-educated movers and shakers.

“He’s an arrogant S.O.B.,” one of the latter told me today. “He wants to do it his way, and his way alone.” But politics doesn’t work that way. And has Obama should know, or is about to find out, that everyone needs a little help.

According to Fineman, Obama has committed six major errors:

Declining to take federal financing for the general election

Declining McCain’s offer to hold ten town hall debates

Failing to go all the way with the Clintons

The 22-state strategy

Failing to state a sweeping, but concrete, policy idea

Remaining trapped in professor-observer speak

Failing to attack McCain early

It's not too late for Obama to make some significant changes in his approach, but that would require both a degree of flexibility and an intense and manifest hunger for the presidency and I have not observed either of these qualities in the candidate. On the other hand, McCain is demonstrating a typical Republican approach: Stop at nothing to achieve the biggest prize in the world.

To some extent, the world is playing into McCain's hand. Russia's move into Georgia has stoked those old Cold War fears and I perceive a lack of confidence in the electorate that Obama is up to the task of confronting KGBer Vladimir Putin or Iran's Mahmoud Ahmdinajad and that country's desire for nuclear weapons. Despite the economy, global warming, health care, education, and all of the other domestic issues that the democrats should, and do, own, none of these can be tackled unless the people feel safe. The belief is that the strong McCain is more capable of dealing with safety, and national security issues, and that he should answer that 3a.m. phone call.

A week is an eternity in politics and, that being said, we have about seven eternities before the election. But, along with burning autumnal leaves, I'm starting to smell a McCain victory.