Exactly why I think McCain won

Because I think people like Joe Klein are exactly wrong

We've been conditioned by thirty years of certain arguments working--and John McCain made most of them last night against Barack Obama: you're going to raise our taxes, you're going to spend more money, you want to negotiate with bad guys, you're associated somehow--the associations have gotten more tenuous over time--with countercultural and unAmerican activities.

Again, these arguments have "worked" for a long time. The Democrats who got themselves elected President during most of my career were those most successful at playing defense: No, no, I'm not going to do any of those things! And so the first reaction of more than a few talking heads last night was that McCain had done better, maybe even won, because he had made those arguments more successfully than he had in the first two debates. I disagreed, even before the focus groups and snap polls rendered their verdict: I thought McCain was near-incomprehensible when talking about policy, locked in the coffin of conservative thinking and punditry. He spoke in Reagan-era shorthand. He thought that merely invoking the magic words "spread the wealth" and "class warfare" he could neutralize Obama.

But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now.

I think this notion that wrong-headed conservative ideology has suddenly become "anachronistic" is a misguided toy for the chattering cheerleading children to chew on. This is not fashion we're talking about here but the ideas and prejudices people were raised with and which they never really shed.

Just like I don't think we're going to be finished fighting the "counterculture wars" in our politics until all the Boomers are dead, I don't think we'll be rid of the residual hateful conservative ideology (if we ever are) until the children of the Boomers are all dead.... and I am currently 34 years old.

I'll allow that the critical economic circumstances make Obama worth listening to for certain "persuadable" voters, but ultimately I expect that his race and the late election barrage of lizard-brain conservative dog-whistling will bring enough of those voters back home. McCain did an excellent job of sounding the dog whistle last night. We'll see how many heard it on November 4.

Update: Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson, who is also 34, has an opposing (and incorrect) take.