(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Step back. Take a breath. Try to imagine how, come December, Tuesday night's debate will look in hindsight.

If Sen. Barack Obama is then the president-elect, tonight's debate will be seen as a nothing-burger. It's a year in which the Democratic Party is expected to win, a year in which Democratic partisans think they have their most attractive candidate in many years, and he's been leading in the public opinion polling almost continuously since long before either he or John McCain officially wrapped up their respective nominations.

If Sen. McCain is the president-elect, this debate will be seen as Barack Obama's next-to-last — and tragically failed — opportunity to seal the deal by delivering either a knockout blow to McCain or by finally, permanently vanquishing the doubts about himself.

If he had not already mortgaged it to the hilt through his past dealings with the likes of Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama would gladly sell his RAW political soul just for the election to be held tomorrow. The opinion polling suggests that he now has a lead in both the popular and electoral college votes. But he had huge momentum and a big lead during the Democratic primaries, too — and still managed to barely win his party's nomination, despite the fact that his early delegate lead was banked and not subject to the erosion of new doubts.

The canaries in the coal mine here are the secondary post-debate headlines, the ones on the "analysis" pieces, from his very bestest of friends, the websites of the mainstream media:

• The Washington Post: Showdown Is More of a Letdown.

• The Washington Post: New Crisis. Old Ideas.

• The Washington Post: Hunting Small Game.

• The Los Angeles Times: Economic Issues Dominate Second Debate, Yet McCain and Obama Battle Mostly to a Draw

• The New York Times: Downturn in Decibels, Too.

Doncha know, friends and neighbors, that they want to write "Obama Obliterates McCain: Old Guy Led Drooling from the Stage"?

"He should be leading by twenty points by now — in this economy, after eight years of George W. Bush, this should be our year for a blow-out!" This is the secret whisper of every politically knowledgeable Democratic partisan. They worry that too many late deciders will decide against him.

They're right to worry.

Expect the canaries to take a deep collective breath and begin singing songs of hopey-changitude again, all about how there's a golden unicorn coming down the rainbow. But some of them, in their hearts of hearts, don't quite believe in unicorns, and the thing about rainbows is that you can see them both from the Left and the Right.