By the end I was demoralized. I thought Obama had allowed himself to be patronized, of all things, regarding America's Middle Eastern wars, diplomacy (or at least, Dr. Kissinger's view of it), "Russia." It was McCain who spoke of building an "alliance of democracies," for God sake, not Obama, who had told 200,000 in Berlin that he was a citizen of the world. A friend sent me this lament by Nora Ephron, with which, at first, I sadly agreed:

I was, by the way, the least pessimistic person in the room where we watched the debate, a room full of blue-state pinkos, and our hearts had collectively sunk as we watched Obama miss opportunity after opportunity to score a knockout punch -- as the men in the room tended to put it.

But then I heard surprising snap polls showing Obama had (narrowly) "won." Without quite meaning to, I actually watched the debate all over again, from the beginning, saw how much better Obama came off than what I had feared--and realized my problem.

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So many have already circulated this wacky but uncannily profound piece by Sarah Silverman that Kmer Rouge bloggers have probably already started showcasing it. I want to use it to make a sober, hopeful point in advance of tonight's debate and while Obama is slightly ahead in most polls. In my piece "Obama's Jews" (in the current Harper's), I report that Obama is leading among young people in general (18-29 years old) by some 25 percent. The various pollsters I've talked with put it simply to me: if young people come out in large numbers, Obama can't lose; if not, he may not win, for all the "cultural" reasons and divisions we have analyzed to death since 2000.

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Three years ago, my brother-in-law Ira, an accomplished blacksmith in North Carolina, called to ask my advice regarding a home equity loan. He was considering buying an adjacent property and needed about twenty-five thousand dollars. Ira owned his own small house and forge, which were free of any mortgages or liens, and he was old enough to be pretty much on a fixed income. Now, equity lines go up and down with the prime. So I figured, why not a 30-year fixed mortgage? Then he would know precisely what he'd be obligated for, month-in, month-out, and might even pay off his credit cards.

Ira's local bank, Wachovia, was not willing to hold this kind of paper anymore, which did not exactly surprise me. I had been an editor at the Harvard Business Review in the late 1980s when the securitization of debt, including (after the S&L crisis) mortgage debt, was first being touted as the next big thing for retail banking and the word "global" began to mean something serious. So--purposefully, and with a certain pleasant curiosity about a maturing financial product I had seen at its conception--I started calling around to various mortgage companies: 800-numbers that got me to offices (with the background noise of call-centers) in Texas or Minnesota or Hawaii.

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