US Politics / BePolitics.com / 22 October 2008 /

Both opinion polling and the Betfair market suggest that the election is as good as over for John McCain. Daniel Dolan at BePolitics takes a look back at what went wrong and how history might judge the Arizona Senator...

Let us assume that there will be no national security crisis to send American voters back into McCain's arms. No monumental gaffe by the Democratic campaign. No 'Bradley Effect', revealing previously undetected prejudice at the ballot box and erasing Barack Obama's poll lead. In other words, let us assume that whilst the candidates will fight tooth and nail until the polls close on the 4th, the contest will not be shaken by any game-changing shocks.

If these assumptions hold, John McCain is going to lose this election. The last 2 weeks of the campaign will be fought almost entirely on Republican turf. Despite the McCain campaign's tough talk, it has long since given up the ghost of winning Michigan or Wisconsin. According to RealClearPolitics state polls, it trails by at least ten points in both Minnesota and Pennsylvania. And even New Hampshire, with its majority of white independent voters and renowned soft spot for the Arizona senator, gives the Democrat a nine point lead.

With this in mind, and barring a dramatic political reversal, Barack Obama will win every Kerry state. He is also likely to take Iowa and New Mexico, which most polls have put firmly in the blue column for months. This gives him 264 electoral votes. RCP polling gives him leads in red states Virginia (13), Ohio (20), Colorado (9), and Florida (27), any one of which would put him comfortably over the 270-vote threshold. He is also ahead in Nevada, North Carolina, and Missouri, and is fighting hard for Indiana. The Democratic Campaign is playing an entirely offensive game.

This leaves Republicans scrabbling to keep the states Bush won in their column and praying for a late upset in New Hampshire or Pennsylvania. Whilst Obama tries to damp down expectations, and stop high profile Democrats looking too obnoxiously overconfident, John McCain has other priorities in mind. That October surprise may come, and he will fight as the underdog down to the end. McCain reminds voters that his campaign has been declared dead on arrival many times before. However, this is not January 2007, and Barack Obama is no Mitt Romney. On some level, the Arizona senator must recognise that he will likely never be President of the United States.

History is rarely kind to failed Presidential candidates. Kerry, Gore, Dole, Dukakis; Their faults appear larger in the rear-view mirror. Barry Goldwater, McCain's Arizona mentor, is credited with losing an election and beginning a conservative revolution. But the John McCain of 2008 is no revolutionary. Whilst Goldwater arrived too early to capitalise on the rightward shift in US politics, McCain's time came too late. Had he defeated George W Bush in 2000, things might have been different. Then he might credibly have run as a maverick and a mould-breaker. In 2008, however, he has become the candidate of a despised establishment.

Having reversed his opposition to the Bush administration's tax cuts, and talked enthusiastically about deregulation of financial markets, he has found himself cornered into advocacy of a broken status quo. Despite his prescience on the surge in Iraq, and his criticism of the war's early conduct, he has become tarnished by an air of aggressive neo-conservatism. His campaign began by running ads on climate change in Oregon and flirting with nominating a pro-choice running mate. As it nears its end, it has resorted to guilt-by-association attacks and the same 'robocalls' that were so infamously used against McCain in 2000's South Carolina primary.

At points in the last week, John McCain has appeared torn between avoiding the political low-road, and his wish to do what it takes to win. Having resisted enormous pressure from the Republican establishment, he has admirably taken Reverend Jeremiah Wright off the table as a campaign issue. However, he has spent the last two weeks attacking Obama for his loose associations with Weatherman Bill Ayers. He has defended his opponent from the wild accusations of his more extreme supporters, but allowed his surrogates to question Obama's identity, values and commitment to America. He has held his campaign back from the point of viciousness, only to let it sink into toothlessness. He has avoided both the low-road and the high road and found himself at a dead end.

So how will history judge John McCain? As a Senator he has shown independence, tenacity, and a commitment to the public good. But as a Presidential candidate, he has been inconstant and erratic. His campaign has lacked direction, and in attempting to simultaneously excite independents and conservatives has underwhelmed both. He has failed to effectively demonstrate his independence and never escaped the long, dark shadow of the Bush administration. John McCain is a good man. But one whose chance at greatness came altogether too late.

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