Looking ahead to the final debate

The Obama campaign's pre-debate talking points for surrogates were accidentally leaked this morning. Politico's Ben Smith reports that the underlying goal that seeped through the memo was a desire "to raise the stakes" and emphasis that is McCain's last chance to turn it around.

The talking points are iterative on the subject of McCain being erratic, and one can expect Obama to push that line tonight. It also seems that the Obama camp is practically goading McCain into mentioning William Ayers. They've obviously concluded that the Ayers strategy has been a miserable failure- hardly a groundbreaking thought- and therefore have little to lose from McCain mentioning it and allowing Obama to appear wronged. McCain indicated recently that it would be raised. However, considering he did not do so in the second debate, while his campaign was in anti-Obama overdrive, it would be peculiar for him to do so now, after he has tempered the tone of the campaign in the face of a public hardened towards political attacks.

McCain is clearly in a losing position overall though, and it is unlikely he'll have as promising a stage to launch a game-breaking move again. It all depends on what he designs. His campaign "reset button" earlier this week was an absolute failure. It had no impact on the polls, it didn't address economic concerns coherently, and, above all else, it was in no way new or original. With that in mind, and McCain's history of spectacular Haily-Mary gambles (Palin, campaign suspension etc), expect the maverick to throw a final pass tonight. Just don't expect anyone to catch it.

As MacArthur said, "old soldiers never die, they just fade away."