Sarah Palin stole the Republican show last night with a crowd-thrilling speech in what has become a Republican tradition: defensive, mocking, resentful, pit-bullish, divisive, blaming the press, and stirring up the old "culture wars." In the process, she most likely did John McCain at least as much harm as good. Palin's speech, along with Giuliani's and Romney's and the party platform, defined this ticket as partisan, hostile, and ideologically hard line, the same Evangelical-Neocon melange that's run the country for the past eight years. McCain's own promises tonight to run a respectful, cross-party campaign sounded awfully implausible.

I still believe that McCain's one chance in this election was to build on his old reputation as something close to a trans-party candidate, the Republican that Democrats can like, or at least not fear and loathe so much. Had the right wing let him run with Joe Lieberman he may have had a chance to pull that off. As it is, it will be very, very hard for him to convince moderates that he isn't beholden to the Bush-Cheney-Rove government. Palin will help him with fundraising, and probably with turn out among Evangelical voters. But she's also going to help Obama with fundraising and turnout. And based on what I'm hearing from my moderate Republican and independent friends, she's going to cost him most of the center.

The choice of Palin also underscores McCain's determinaton to run as a "reformer." But "reform" is a luxury issue. In American politics, reform as McCain defines it has always been the province of rich conservatives. When the economy is rolling along healthily and the world feels fairly safe, then middle-class voters may feel a bit of moral and ethical cleaning up is worth the effort. (The working class? Can't afford it.) If the nation has been profoundly wracked by scandal, as it was by Watergate, ethics may rise up as one of our larger concerns, but even with all the sleaze of the past several years that's not really where our minds are now. Ethics, scandal, reform aren't even showing up on the list of major issues bothering us. The deficit-hawk fiscal conservatives want reform, devout Protestant conservatives want reform, but the rest of us want jobs, health care, and peace.

Of course McCain still has a shot, and those of us who support Obama have a lot of phone calling and fund raising and voter registering ahead of us. But the Republicans have made our campaigning a lot easier for us.