...once McCain picked his running mate, just about anyone who can speak in complete sentences could probably have beaten him.

except for Edwards.

Whomever won the D nom that year was going to be the next President.

I have a hard time thinking Gravel would, except maybe simply because of Palin. Without her on the ticket, I think it would have been a far tougher fight for any Dem.

The republicans cratered the economy and didn't have a clue how to fix the mess they made.

the fraudulent nature of the Bush economic policies. Once that happened, it was going to be very difficult for any Republican to defeat any Democrat.

I don't know where the race would have stood before that point. McCain's convention had just ended, so he probably would have been doing OK in mid-September. But once Lehman Brothers collapsed it was all over IMO.

I also don't agree with anyone who says that McCain would not have picked Palin had Hillary been the nominee. Here is why:

First, he might have felt MORE pressure to pick a woman, not less.

Second, the GOP would have been especially eager to pick a VP-nominee that demonstrated what a good and proper woman was supposed to be.

Third, Palin was a base pick--she was the first choice of talk radio listeners and the right wing blogosphere (like the Freerepublic) BEFORE McCain selected her.

Fourth, Romney would still have been knocked out by McCain's comments about no knowing how many houses he owned. That led to the story about McCain and Romney owning 12 houses between them.

Fifth, McCain didn't just pick Palin because she was a woman. He had other women to pick, including Meg Whitman. He picked her because in his mind she was a fellow Western States Maverick. She had cultivated that narrative in Alaska, and it didn't fall apart until after she had been selected.

The Palin who McCain picked had an 80% job approval rating. The Palin who Alaskans know today could never win an election in that state.

If Hillary Clinton had waited to run for the Senate and done so in her home state of Illinois (instead of rushing things and carpetbagging a seat in New York).

Would she have crushed Barack Obama and then gone on to win the 2008 nomination easily?


Then beating McCain easily also, since he ran a horrible campaign.