John McCain has been throwing “Hail Marys” for weeks. Now it’s time for him to start reciting them.

And throw in a few “Our Fathers” while he’s at it.

Might also toss in Sarah Palin’s voodoo preacher to save him from witchcraft.

As the lyrics to the classic “September Song” say, “the days dwindle down to a precious few” and little may be left for him but the power of prayer.

McCain’s numbers have been on a slow, steady decline for a couple of weeks now and Barack Obama’s continue on the way up. Sunday’s Gallup tracking poll, which included one full day of polling following the first debate, showed Obama with an 8-point lead, 50-42 percent.

All the other trackers have Obama up by at least 5 points, including the Republican-leaning Rasmussen Report—a favorite of the unctuous conservative commentator Larry Kudlow.

As to the debate itself, regardless of the “even-handed” commentators who called it a tie, the real people out there gave it handily to Obama. Flash polls by CBS and CNN plus a focus group by Fox—yes, Fox—on Friday all showed “uncommitted” voters going to Obama by double digits. Ditto another full Gallup poll taken Saturday.

There is also increasing evidence that most pollsters are using models that may seriously underestimate the number of new voters who will participate in this election, especially in the 18-29 year age group. A pollster using a more realistic model—upping the proportion of younger voters from the standard 17 percent to a more likely 19 percent, consistently shows an additional 2 point advantage for Obama.

Obama’s admittedly superior ground game is good for, minimally, 2 more points on election day.

Yes, there is always the probability of a “Bradley effect” where people lie to the pollsters because they don’t want to admit they are voting against a black person—but the best guess about that number is perhaps 2-3 points—wiped out by the above pluses.

Along with the national numbers, the accumulation of state-by-state polls by numerous parties suggests Obama comes out ahead by substantial double digits—but I don’t want to start counting electoral votes until they’re stolen.

There are, of course, a few events yet to come that could

alter the trend: two more presidential debates, the vice presidential debate and, of course, the final vote on the rescue/bailout/nationalization plan to salvage American capitalism.

But if the first debate, on McCain’s strongest suit, went to Obama on style and substance, it is difficult to imagine any reversal of fortune in later jousts. Furthermore, unless Joe Biden gets too overbearing, it’s hard to imagine Palin will do anything except cling to her least damaging, rote statements. If they let her ramble, of course, she could make George W. Bush look like Demosthenes.

Comes the economic fix: the people are against anything resembling a Wall Street bailout, but some kind of package will be cobbled together so that sufficient Republicans and Democrats will unite to pass it. Obama will reluctantly go with it and McCain will be in a bind with half his party pro and half anti.

He’ll have to go for it, even more reluctantly than Obama, which makes it a non-event. Neither candidate wins, neither loses. The markets will love it.

On the other hand, maybe McCain will throw his last, desperation Hail Mary and go against it. If so, the long odds are it would be disastrous. He’ll be made to look as if he’s playing politics with the welfare of every American’s retirement program.

The far left of the Netroots will howl at Obama, but they’re not going to throw this whole election away on that count. Okay, some goofs will, just like some Hillariacs will go with Palin regardless of policy. But Obama is winning without them right now.

Am I predicting victory?

Not quite—but the temptation gets stronger every day. I just don’t want to have a premature expostulation.

**

Don Rose is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer