He's saved the world, just in time! What a hero! Let's hope the good people of Oxford Mississippi give him the welcome he deserves.

I got a little over-excited last night, and posted the word 'landslide' in the same sentence as 'Obama'. So I better try and stand it up.

Okay, the polls have returned to pretty much where they were before the conventions, but actually everything has changed. Elections are built on strategy - you get that wrong, in a battle as tight as this one, you're going to lose big time.

McCain had one reasonable game plan -  to play the sheriff, the steady hand etc. etc. And he's completely, irrevocably blown it. If this is a game of chess, McCain has done the equivalent of giving away his queen. The moose gambit was a dreadful move, and would probably have lost him the election anyway. But in the context of a Wall Street meltdown, it's nothing less than catastrophic.

I'm not talking mass conversions among the McCain crowd - how much convincing do these people need?! - but I do think there's a real chance that an awful lot of them might oversleep on election day. And maybe that's all it will take?