Boston

Yesterday I watched a rather old and fumbling John McCain on "Meet the Press", and was treated to further slips of the tongue (following "Senator Government"), such as "Joe the Biden". I found him rather flat and uninspired, except on two subjects: the need to lower taxes and his "pride" in Sarah Palin (imagine Obama saying he was proud of Biden).

He was in a difficult position - the interviewer challenged him about the polls which show Obama now having a significant lead in both the popular vote and electoral college votes (Real Clear Politics puts this at 7.3% and +149 respectively). But I was surprised at his line of defence: to flatly deny the credibility of any of these polls, preferring to quote a single poll by Zogby which suggested the Republicans were only trailing by 3-4% ('though if you look at the website you will see the difference was actually 5.3% yesterday, and 4.8% today).

And he talked the talk of a campaign that still believes it can win, even if his doubts about this did seem to come through in his slightly lethargic manner. He claimed that recent rallies had been the most positive and enthusiastic of any he had ever seen, and insisted that his campaign was growing in strength. It gave me the impression he was desperately trying to reassure his core voters, and perhaps even those working on the campaign: there have been reports that Republicans are already beginning a post-mortem on the campaign, and trying to decide who to blame for its failure.