The metaphor of the two candidates as maneuvering, dogfighting fighter airplanes fails to depict a role for the voting masses. The crowds of voters coming to the voting centers will decide who wins, no matter how the debating points are scored.

It seems that a clear majority of the voters is ready and eager to disempower the Rupublicans and to empower the Democrats. That is the most important phenomenon to understand. There has been a massive, significant shift in the electorate’s attitude.

I wish I could say that McCain might turn back that tide, but so far I have not seen him compelling the dissatisfied voters to reconsider fundamental issues. He is not compelling any fundamental debate about the future budget, about future military needs, about the government’s proper role.

Instead, he is talking about himself being honorable and about Obama being a celebrity. There are only four months left to argue the issues effectively, and it looks like McCain might fritter all of them away. McCain doesn’t impress me as a clever, daring dogfighter. He seems to me to be mentally exhausted, reduced to hoping that Obama will make enough mistakes for Obama to lose.

Obama might lose for all the reasons that the above comments point out, and I hope he does lose, but that result will happen only because a significant portion of the electorate decides to split its votes — voting for Democrats in every position but preferring McCain over Obama for President.

That would hardly be a victory for the Republicans. It would hardly be a victory for McCain. Rather, it would merely be a mass decision by the voters to apply some brakes to the Democrats’ momentum for the next four years.