It's a good point. Right now, actual world events don't favor Republicans--the number one real world event being Bush's low approval rating, but the other being the crashing economy and the tanking market and so on.

But, historically, it's actually the low approval numbers that have the greatest corrolation to future electoral results. While I'm not expecting a landslide for Obama--Obama doesn't quite have the new deal going for him, or Hoovers powerful-but-aliented former supporters switching to FDR, or FDR's optimistic campaign, cigarette holder always pointed up, "Happy Days Are Here Again" playing in the background. But how can the incumbent party win in this kind of environment, where the president--and his party--are often held responsible for poor economic conditions?

Still, is this a permanent banishment to the wilderness for conservatism and Republicans? I doubt it. The party in power has limited control of the real world events they are held responsible for, especially in a global market, and cannot turn it all around on a dime, or even a stack of them, no matter how good their policies are. And policies dealing with complicated, often unique, events are difficult to craft in such a way that they solve current problems without creating new ones.

And so, no matter what sort of problems Republicans have had alienating the intellectual classes or the business classes or the lower classes or the young, they will win the presidency again at some point in the not too-distant future, and may return to power in the house and/or the senate before that, as, historically, the party in executive power tends to lose seats in the legislative branch during each interim election. And, like her or loathe her, the broad support and even adoration of Sarah Palin from conservatives tends to indicate that conservatism itself is not on the decline, so much as there is currently a conclusion amongst conservatives that neither our current president, or our current candidate, is all that conservative.

Let's just not lose sight of the fact that, whatever the "structural" elements of an election -- and, honestly Ezra, I'd be curious in a definition of just what that little buzzword is supposed to mean -- it is, and was, McCain's choice to advocate for policies that don't play well in this environment. He's not being buffeted by the cruel winds of fortune here, this is the real world repudiating his worldview.

Kevin, I think you're right on this - Obama hasn't turned the economic discussion into a total political success because his own response has been somewhat tentative (and unrealistic: those tax cut proposals are dead dead dead, as is much of his spending plans).

But let's be clear - Republicans aren't going to be in the wilderness, they are in the wilderness. They've done been in the wilderness since probably Hurricane Katrina, and show no signs of getting out of it. McCain is losing, fundamentally, because of his efforts to unite a party that can't actually unite - not around a person, not around a policy, not around a notion of governing. What has happened over the past week - the uncorking of a simmering rage at losing - reflects, ultimately, the failure to find anything, anything at all with which to unify the idea of a Republican Party. And so, all that's left is anger at the usual litany of "horrible libs" and scare mongering about Obama's otherness. More than being a losing strategy (or a strategy for losing)... it's really no strategy at all. The love of Srah Palin is a desperate, lcutching notion that someone, anyone, can embody the "conservative values" and prove them right. Except she, like most conservatives, can't articulate them... she can only present herself as solid, practical, down to Earth... hardly the most uniquely defining elements of a political concern. Republicans - not just conservatives - have put off this reckoning for years, as George W. Bush destroyed the Presidency, his country, and the party. The bill is now due. And unless Repblicans can retrench, find a new sense of purpose, and a better set of ideas and proposals, there will be many more years of wilderness. And the things, I don't think a lot of Democrats weill be especially sorry about that... though I think they should realize that a thoughtful engaged opposition is something our party, and this country needs, desperately.

I'd like to point out two things on this:

1. It's true that McCain's struggles are largely due to being a Republican in an atmosphere that punishes Republicans. But it's not like these are random events -- this crisis was CAUSED by the terrible policies of the Republican administration. McCain is just reaping what Bush sowed.

2. Who knows what's going to happen? Heck, if the current polls are accurate Obama *would* win a landslide. And for all the FDR praising, don't forget that in '32 he ran on a platform of balancing the budget. He wasn't promising what he ended up delivering. So who knows what President Obama may do with his victory?

This reminds me of a question that occasionally comes to mind: what would the polling look like if Obama did not have such an enormous money advantage over McCain? If they had equal money, I regretfully suspect that McCain would be the leading candidate.

i think it's worth pointing out that much of the reason mccain is trading down is that every day he's behind it become a little more likely for obama to win. So, for example, if obama is 10 points ahead on election day, it's probably 99.5% or so for him to win the election and right now he's trading like 80% to win. With 20 days left, it's fair to assume that every day the polls stay where they are obama will moved something like 1% higher to win (with a little extra movement, probably, after the debate). This is all to say that it's true that the S&P and McCain are moving in the same direction, but correlation doesn't imply causation. it probably has something to do with it, but time diminishing until the election probably has a lot more to do with it.

Correlation is not causation, Alex... but the two may have this link: fear. McCain is failing because he can't either scare the American people about Obama, or because his lack of solid economic poilicies itself is scary. But that's also true of the financial markets: fear of the furture, of the unknown, of what either man might mean as President for getting out of our crisis... those are real fears investors are reflecting. And so the fall of McCain and the S&P may indeed stay in tandem - it's the sum of our fears.

I think after the Bush administration and this campaign, it's going to be a long, long time before either libertarians or Rockefeller Republicans willingly join hands with the modern Republican base again. Can you really picture the sequence of events that brings, say, John Dean back into the Republican tent?

Since their base isn't big enough to actually win elections (as McCain is now demonstrating), they're going to need a new coalition partner. The base's obsession with ideological purity (as well as other forms of purity) is going to hamper them here.

Personally I'd give about 50-50 odds that the Republican Party doesn't solve this problem at all, and just becomes smaller and more extreme until they create enough space for a third party to arise (either to the left of the Democrats if they continue to move right, or in the center if Democrats become liberal again). Our country consistently has two parties but it doesn't consistently have the *same* two parties.

The funny thing is that a conservative acquaintance of mine thinks that the causation runs in the *opposite* direction presented here, i.e., that the market is trending down because the odds of a McCain presidency are slipping. Hilarious.