Sarah Palin is going to win Thursday's debate

Sarah Palin is going to win Thursday's debate. Expectations for her performance are rock-bottom after the disastrous Katie Couric interviews. If she appears on stage and manages not to vomit all over herself, the press (and the public) will pronounce her the victor. McCain will surge in the polls, and the race will be a tie by Sunday.

Why do I think this will happen? Because it's happened before. It happened three weeks ago, in fact. Anybody remember "The Speech"? The low expectations for Palin running up to the Republican convention? McCain up by 5 nationwide a few days later? The "Palin-McCain ticket"? And it happened 8 years ago with Bush. The Republicans are masters of the expectations game, because they are dumber than the Dems but they have smart speechwriters.

Which is not to say Obama's campaign doesn't realize this. They've taken some steps to try to increase expectations of Palin's skill, and play up Biden's reputation for gaffes. But they won't win that game.

The good news (if you agree that "electing Obama"= "good" and that "what Noah says" = "news") is that this Palin bounce will probably be smaller than the last one. And this is the only vice presidential debate; next week, it's back to "angry but confused" McCain vs. "a lot more forceful than we expected" Obama. And the economy continues to flounder, and McCain and the Republicans continue to make fools of themselves on the national stage. And Palin still probably has a few TV interviews to do before election day.

But if Sarah Palin is not judged the winner of Thursday's debate, I'll eat large gulps of crow.


PS - on a totally unrelated note, this is an interesting Washington Post article.