The McCain campaign is in big trouble. Following its post-convention bump, the McCain-Palin ticket has fallen precipitously. Sarah Palin’s negatives are way up. Some polls show McCain-Palin 9 points behind Obama-Biden. Polls indicate that the American public overwhelmingly trusts Obama more than McCain on economic issues, which means that the ongoing financial crisis plays right into Obama’s campaign narrative. In what may be a desperate bid to inflate his reputation on the economy, McCain has “suspended” his campaign in order to “deal with” the emerging financial crisis. And he now wants to back out of Friday’s debate. This isn’t going to help him at all, I think. Has any candidate ever in the history of presidential elections “suspended” his campaign? The first debate, which was on national security, was perhaps McCain’s only hope for a dramatic recovery from his decline in the polls. By asking to suspend the debate, McCain has basically ceded that potential gain to Obama, who needs only remain firm on the debate. If McCain opts out of the debate, Obama can claim that McCain doesn’t take his presidential bid seriously; if McCain backs down, it looks as if he has blinked in the face of Obama’s firmness. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end — the final, dramatic implosion of the McCain campaign? Perhaps the only remaining question is whether Obama can win by a margin greater than ten points. That, and what Obama should prioritize after he wins.