Will Obama accelerate to a landslide victory or has he peaked?

To govern effectively and foster the kinds of "change" that he has talked about, Barack Obama really does need a landslide victory to secure a true "mandate", and recently it has started to look as if support is accelerating in that direction and some of his supporters have hinted about the possibility of a landslide, but most recently it looks as if his advance in the polls has been starting to lose a little steam and level off.

Much of his recent gains may simply have been due to a rush of concerns about the economy and negative attacks by the McCain campaign, but all of that is now yesterday's news.

For Barack to widen his lead the economy would have to worsen a lot, the bailout would have to fail or at least peter out, and McCain would have to go even more negative and look even less appealing. The economy is certainly mushy, but I am not so sure that the data will get a lot worse in the next three weeks. The bailout is actually starting to gain traction and may in fact start to show fairly stunning results in the week before the election. McCain will probably continue with negative attacks, but probably somewhat less harsh since he has succeeded in planting the seeds of doubt and now stands to gain more by going at least a little positive. McCain had a fairly decent showing in the final debate and Barack seemed a bit on the defensive. The polls over the next week will tell all.

As things stand now, Barack is still likely to win with a modest margin, but he is not likely to get the kind of landslide that would let him push through a fully Progressive agenda starting on day one.

In essence, he will have four years to earn his spurs, and maybe then in four years he may have a shot at the kind of landslide that can really open the gates to change. For example, we will have four years of tinkering with health care reform and then finally people will realize that a national mandate for universal health care coupled with a public and private partnership for implementing that mandate funded via a payroll health-care tax at zero out-of-pocket cost to consumers really is the way to go and makes sense on all fronts for all parties.

-- Jack Krupansky