The meme late last week was that Sarah Palin’s speech was an appeal to the Republican base that wouldn’t play well with independent and crossover voters (see: James Fallows, Matthew Yglesias, Mike Murphy, Josh Marshall). In a Democratic year, several of them argued, the GOP’s traditional anti-elite rhetoric won’t work. That may yet prove to be true, but the apparent size of the Republican bounce suggests otherwise.

The problem with these analyses is that we don’t know how effective Republican appeals to resentment against cultural elites will be against a black presidential candidate. Even in an election year, if these critiques take on an explicit or implicit racial tinge (as they often do), it’s possible that they will damage Obama more than pundits anticipate. Remember, the fundamentals predict a close race. All it would take is for Obama to underperform by a couple of points and he will probably lose.