Nixon-Kennedy II: The Rematch

I don't really have a sense of whether you guys are liking the recent focus on the Democratic primary or whether people just want me to get back to monkey news already—but one way or another I think the primary will be over tonight. There are only really four ways this primary can go from here:

* Knockout punch on Super Tuesday from Barack
* Long hard slog into March, which Barack wins
* Knockout punch on Super Tuesday from Clinton
* Long hard slog into March, which Clinton wins

I may be overly optimistic, but I'd put the likelihood in roughly that order, given that a) we live in a hyperattenuated media environment where the pace is constantly sped up and minor events have huge effects and b) the requirements for the perception of a knockout punch by Barack next Tuesday are much slimmer than a knockout punch for Clinton and as noted yesterday all the trends seem to be going his way.

(What do I mean by the requirements for a perception of a knockout punch? Barack's been down for months in all these states; he's still down in a lot of them. Good results nationally will look like a coronation, especially if he's somehow able to tie or beat her in California and the Northeast. Clinton, on the other hand, needs to beat him badly to be perceived as anything less than a collapsing front-runner.)

However, I have serious reservations about this informal ranking, because there's still at least one huge gamechanger in play: tonight's debate. If Barack does what he needs to do tonight—i.e., look tough, look presidential, stick to his positive tone while still pointing out that the Clinton administration in the 1990s was a pretty colossal failure and that Clinton probably can't even win this November against John McCain, much less win in a blowout like he can—then I think the last undecideds on Super Tuesday break for him and he'll get his knockout. But Barack is notoriously bad at this, and it makes me very nervous for tonight. In nearly every debate thus far his answers have been too cerebral and too slow, and in particular he doesn't respond well to the nasty and usually unfair attacks that are randomly leveled at him by Clinton. I hope he's had a lot of prep, and honestly I hope that he's been playing possum all this time just so he can come out of the gate tonight and blow everybody away.

If he "wins" tonight—winning defined in that peculiar sense of winning the perceptions game in the press, which often reduces to "getting in that one great line that can be played on TV over and over"—I think Barack wins, either quick or slow. But if he loses tonight, I think the undecideds and the Edwards supporters break the other way, Clinton gets her knockout punch on Tuesday and it's all over.

(And I mean that: she wins the nomination and then loses in November, taking the prospects for a progressive political realignment and massive generational shift down with her.)

In other words, tonight's debate is of transcendent importance for American politics, surely the most important of these incredibly stupid and artificial rituals in my lifetime thus far. It's Nixon-Kennedy II: The Rematch. So if you want to see history in the making, for good or for bad, find yourself a place in front of CNN tonight, and hope to hell that Barack brings his debatin' pants.