It's the economy, stupid

Larry Bartels explains why John McCain is unlikely to win in this climate:

Voters often misperceive what life has been like during the incumbent's administration. They are inordinately focused on the here and now, mostly ignoring how things have gone earlier in the incumbent's term. And they have great difficulty judging which aspects of their own and the country's well-being are the responsibility of elected leaders and which are not.

This election year, an economic downturn turned into an economic crisis with the dramatic meltdown of major financial institutions. John McCain will be punished at the polls as a result. Whether the current economic distress is really President Bush's fault, much less McCain's, is largely beside the point.

Does all of this make voters stupid? No, just human. And thus -- to borrow the title of another popular book by behavioral economist Dan Ariely -- "predictably irrational."

That may be bad enough.