At Politico.com, Roger Simon asks a panel of Republican war horses if John McCain can still win, and die-hard loyalists to a man, they say “Hell yeah!” Gregg Muller, an advisor to Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan, says “McCain can definitely win the race. . . . He needs to define Obama’s agenda as dangerous to America.” Says Whit Ayres, a Lamar Alexander pollster, “Anybody who is talking about a race being over a month out has not been participating in very many campaigns. Of course McCain can win it. . . .On leadership, values, culture and ideology, McCain is far closer to most Americans than Barack Obama.” Ken Duberstein, a Reagan and Ford man, says “I think it is uphill for McCain, but a victory is doable. He needs, obviously, to raise questions about Obama, but he also needs to reassure the American people — and not simply the base — that he has a plan to get us out of this. . . .There are a hundred lifetimes yet ahead in this campaign.” Nice try, fellows, but it’s over. There isn’t a hundred lifetimes left in this campaign. McCain isn’t facing defeat; he’s defending the Alamo. All the defenses have broken down at once. The slim chance he had collapsed with the economy. I don’t think that even if he did the very best he can do tonight and Obama did his worst that it would make a difference. Obama has trended up from Day One. Nothing has stopped him; he has shrugged off every shot that his been taken at him. Subtract the two weeks of Palin Pandemonium, and McCain hasn’t had a good day since the spring, when he captured the nomination of a fractured and exhausted Republican Party. William Ayres? Jim Cramer is predicting double digit unemployment and we’re hearing about William Ayres? It’s over.
