First, Palin will not leave the Republican Party.

"As independent-minded and anti-establishment as she is," says Villanova University's Lara Brown, "she seems to understand well one of my favorite quotes from political scientist John Aldrich from Duke University: 'The standard line that anyone can grow up to be president may be true, but it is true only if one grows up to be a major party nominee.'"

In short,...]]> Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Would one-party domination in any combination of Tuesday's off-year elections really indicate where this country is going politically?

You've got gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, a congressional special election in upstate New York, and a state Supreme Court race in Pennsylvania.

"I see no particular harbingers for 2010," says Purdue University's Bert Rockman. "While people are deeply unhappy about current conditions, they are also keenly suspicious of Republicans."

Perhaps so. But however these races turn out for both parties, the anti-incumbency mood is growing across the country.

Here's how these races are shaping up:

* In Virginia's...]]> Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 A poll of opinion polls shows Americans' attitudes are changing rapidly.

They are less and less thrilled about the country's direction and Congress, according to Tom Bevan, executive editor of national polling aggregator RealClearPolitics. He says independent voters are shifting away from the polices of the Obama administration and Democrats.

"Independents have flipped negative," warns Bevan. "That's not a good thing for any party."

The first gubernatorial races since Democrats took control of Washington, in New Jersey and Virginia, show voter angst and ire. Those races appear to be heading in different directions but are two sides of the same coin.

In...]]> Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Remember the city mouse and the country mouse who exchanged visits?

In the end, the gap between the cousins' worlds left both comfortable with their own choices and baffled by the other's.

That's not so different from how anyone who lives 15 minutes outside of Washington, D.C., feels about those who govern their lives and deliver their news.

"Absolutely," agrees John King, CNN's "State of the Union" host and chief national correspondent.

King spends considerable time outside of Washington's beltway, reporting the news. He says he's a better reporter because he's gotten to know the real feelings of people not tied to Washington or New York.

In fact, he...]]> Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Two political dangers have emerged in recent months for Democrats, Republicans, and the media that covers both. Those are the dismissal of protests by all three, and the crude overuse of the race card.

It’s disturbing that Washington really doesn't “get” the rest of the country that is beyond their bubble, says Villanova University political scientist Lara Brown.

Last Saturday’s “Tea Party” protest, spreading out across Capitol Hill, received little to no coverage; most news organizations wildly underreported the crowd’s size.

Later, former president Jimmy Carter said racism is behind the rhetoric of President...]]> Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Former President Bill Clinton quipped to a couple thousand liberal bloggers in Pittsburgh last week that the great thing about being a former president is that you can say whatever you want. The terrible thing is, nobody cares what you have to say anymore.

"Unless, of course, your wife is the secretary of state, and then they really only care if you screw up," he added after a generous pause.

A brilliant observation from a man trying to explain how he can make a difference in the world, now that his political party is in power with his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as one of the powerbrokers.

In the fertile but ill-defined land of ex-presidents, Clinton...]]> Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The Republican Party became Humpty Dumpy in August 2006 and, by the 2008 election, all the king's horses and men couldn't put the cracked party together again.

The question now is whether it's time for the GOP to try getting back up on the wall.

What if I told you that, while the party's base is anxious for Republicans to begin crafting a positive message and start building support for 2010, to do so at this moment would be premature? Might even hinder its long-term efforts?

Instead, the GOP should retain a crisp message of being champions of limited government, individual liberty and free-enterprise capitalism.

Keep this in mind: While the Democrats'...]]> Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Deep-Democrat-blue New Jersey is on a direct course to go Republican-red this fall, and it does not look like even Obama-esque hope and change can stop that.

To the middle-right (the only way New Jersey can reasonably go red) is former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie. To his left is Gov. Jon Corzine, running in one of two (Virginia is the other) off-year gubernatorial elections.

RealClearPolitics' average of recent polling shows a 51-39 lead for Christie. For an incumbent, being not only behind, but far under 50 percent, is deadly. Just ask Pennsylvania's...]]> Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Virginia will be the center of political attention this fall, thanks to the first statewide election in a battleground state since the 2008 presidential election.

"Here we go again," said Larry Larsen, an independent voter accustomed to national attention for Virginia races.

November's gubernatorial race matches former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell, a Republican, and state Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat.

A SurveyUSA poll last week gave McDonnell a 15-point lead. RealClearPolitics shows McDonnell up 6.3 points, based on aggregate polling data.

"If McDonnell were to win this, the message it sends back to Washington is to slow down," said John Morrison, a...]]> Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 NEW WATERFORD, Ohio - If Ohio is the nation's political weathervane (and you can make a good case that it is), then a two-election trend toward Democrats may be over.

"The problems for Ohio are all created in Washington," says Bill Watkins, owner of The Original Mario's pizza shop on East Main Street here. "Bailouts, stimulus money, cap-and-trade have only hurt our economy, not enhanced it."

Earlier this month, President Obama and his policies took a hit in the Buckeye State. A Quinnipiac University poll showed the president's job-approval rating dropped from 62 percent to 49 percent, and Ohio's unemployment rate hit 11.1 percent, higher than the national average of...]]> Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Thanks to vacancies created by last fall's election, then-president-elect Barack Obama faced the first dramas of his administration: Finding credible, re-electable bodies to fill those seats.

Remember the good old days of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and whether or not he could legally appoint someone to replace Sen. Obama? Then there was the near-anointment of Caroline Kennedy to replace New York's Sen. Hillary Clinton.

After much controversy, Roland Burris took Obama's Senate seat, N.Y. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand replaced Hillary, Vice President Joe Biden's former chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, took his place in the U.S. Senate, and Michael Bennet of Colorado now sits in...]]> Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 President Barack Obama made news at a press conference last week - by planting a question with a blogger, not by offering anything new in spite of taking his sharpest questions to date.

The sharper edge of reporters' questions had much to do with the setting, one White House press corps member said afterward: "It was our turf, in our seats, no formality of the East Room or even (the) Rose Garden. So I think when we're comfortable, we're more likely to fire back at him for follow-ups."

Obama coming unarmed with news led to more probing, analytical-style questions which can always tie up presidents.

The planted query (the White House denies it being planted) came from...]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The upside to Gerald Walpin's firing as inspector general for the federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps is that he could appear in one of those "Organizing for America" ads that highlight Americans who have lost their jobs along with their health care.

It's just a thought.

Walpin became the center of some media attention last week for suspending Barack Obama supporter Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and now mayor of Sacramento, for irregularities in his use of federal money when he ran a charity.

Walpin was asked by the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service to investigate the charity, St. HOPE, which received an $850,000 AmeriCorps grant to...]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Missile defense has been a political issue since President Reagan introduced his plan to win the arms race by rebuilding our arsenal while using technology to prevent a successful Russian nuclear attack against us.

Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., dismissed Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as "Star Wars."

Yet Reagan appealed to Americans' common sense in a 1983 speech: "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge ... that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil?"

SDI is now the Ballistic Missile Defense program. Its mission is to defend our forces and allies against all ballistic missile threats,...]]> Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Ohio has a political-identity crisis. Is it a "blue state," as demonstrated by Democrats' statewide wins in 2006 and 2008, or a "red state" that is just fed up with the behavior of its former Republican elected officials?

"Well, it's more like an orange state," said Bert Rockman, a political scientist from Purdue University.

Ohio, Rockman explains, is mostly up for grabs: "Through gerrymandering - and, yes, both parties do it - Republicans had for some time a lock on the state legislature and, therefore, a lock on the state's congressional delegation."

That's changed some, precipitated by the misfortunes during Republican Gov. Bob Taft's administration and by the...]]> Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Two weeks ago, ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper wrote in his "Political Punch" blog that the Obama White House has begun covering its own stories, "complete with cuts, interviews and chyrons identifying who's speaking."

Although Tapper called the "coverage" (Obama at the White House basketball court shooting hoops with the NCAA champs Lady Huskies) and White House logo "cute," he pointed out that ObamaTV - OTV for short - comes at the expense of pool reporters:

"Your Pool was not allowed to go over and shoot POTUS (President of the United States) with the team shooting hoops. We protested loudly."

No doubt, from the outside looking in, President Barack...]]> Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Word out of Washington is that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the political wise-guys from the Obama administration plan on "visiting with" Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Joe Sestak. Their objective? A clear message: Get off of the stage and out of a possible primary race against "incumbent" Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter.

"I have received a call from DSCC chair Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey," admitted Sestak in an interview. "But we keep missing each other."

Probably a good thing for both men at this moment: Sestak has no inclination to be pushed out of a race and Menendez's marching orders from the White House are to not only push but shove.

"Joe...]]> Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Will the last activist who hopes the antiwar cause will re-emerge as a central tenet of the Democratic Party please turn out the lights on the way out the door?

Little evidence exists that any antiwar movement is alive, well and influencing policy in this country.

Certainly no voice for it is coming from Barack Obama's White House. In fact, Obama has been pretty consistent in jerking-around antiwar crusaders, beginning with last summer's vote as a U.S. senator for a federal surveillance law and its provision shielding telecommunications companies that cooperated in warrantless wiretaps - a law he previously opposed.

The only sound coming from the left at the time was...]]> Mon, 11 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 All elections have consequences. The most dramatic consequence of President Barack Obama's election may be his inability to separate himself from his party's base -- specifically, its left base.

All good presidents govern from the middle. Yet Obama has taken a sharp left turn on at least one important issue, intelligence.

In a confusing series of messages -- from the president, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, press secretary Robert Gibbs and Attorney General Eric Holder -- the administration flipped back and forth on prosecuting those who approved torture of terror suspects during the Bush years.

At the center of this controversy was another: the Justice Department's...]]> Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- John Boehner says it was at his family's tavern in Cincinnati that he learned all the skills he needs for his job as House minority leader.

"Great food. Great people. I did dishes. I waited tables. I tended bar. . You learn real quick how to deal with the jackass that walks in the door," Boehner says during an interview in his office in the Capitol.

Boehner, 59, is the 21st minority leader of the House, elected by the GOP caucus in January 2007. A representative of Ohio's 8th Congressional District, Boehner won election in 1990 on the cusp of the Republican Revolution.

On both sides of the aisle, Boehner earns praise for candor and an ability to...]]> Sun, 03 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Arlen Specter switched parties for one and only one reason: to save his career.

No principle was involved; there was no "the party left me" moment. It was pure, unadulterated political greed; he wanted his seat.

Out of honor, Specter should have resigned, had Gov. Ed Rendell reappoint him, and then run in a special election in the fall as a Democrat. Instead, he abandoned his principles and went from a fiscal conservative and social moderate to a social liberal who voted for President Obama's trillion-dollar stimulus package.

What he has left behind with his switch to the other team is everyone under the sun, as he gleefully dances on the supposed grave of the...]]> Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 As with anything involving Pennsylvania politics, it's complicated.

Much of Pennsylvania's 2010 U.S. Senate race will depend on turnout in the primary and general elections.

Sounds obvious, right? Yet in an odd turn of political and geographical shifts, the Senate candidates will have little control over the outcome.

That is largely because of fiercely competitive primary races on both sides - for Republicans, incumbent Arlen Specter versus former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey; for Democrats, state Rep. Josh Shapiro versus former Philadelphia deputy mayor Joe Torsella.

In the middle, all of the traditional party organizations will concentrate more of their money and...]]> Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 In other words, he forgets to use his "inside" voice.

"His success is pretty simple," said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. "He puts on a consistently good show that is a great mix of culture and entertainment, with painstaking research to back it up.

"Plus, Beck's show is personality driven. People genuinely like him."

And some people genuinely dislike him.

His critics include the Comedy Central's Steven Colbert, who loves to ridicule Beck for shedding tears. He is not alone: Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal Daily Kos website, quipped on Twitter last week, "I also love to see Glenn Beck cry....]]> Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Card-check is dead. Although organized labor and business will passionately disagree, the reality is that when Sen. Arlen Specter, R- Pa., jumped off the labor-friendly bandwagon (taking Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., with him), the bill lost its mojo.

Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods, with Davis as their front man, call their effort the "Committee for A Level Playing Field." Among many things, their proposal retains secret-ballot union elections, essentially taking the "card-check" component out of card-check.

They also propose eliminating binding arbitration and giving employers the right to apply to the National Labor Relations Board to decertify a union.

...]]> Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Five minutes after Barack Obama took the oath in January and began signing executive orders and expanding government, those same pundits began lining up the Senate Democrats they expect to be in trouble in 2010, Obama's first midterm.

Historically, a president's party loses seats in Congress in midterm elections, so in theory, 2010 should favor the GOP. Yet it is hard to imagine the GOP making significant gains because most seats held by Democrats facing re-election are in states that "went Obama" in 2008.

Colorado is one state showing signs of a possible GOP pickup. Democrat Michael Bennet, appointed to replace former Sen. Ken Salazar when he became Interior secretary, has...]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Almost instantly, supply-sider Pat Toomey dropped his plan to run for governor and turned back to a re-match with Specter, who he very nearly upset in 2004. With "tea parties" sprouting across the state over congressional spending, with a union-friendly "card-check" vote looming in the Senate, Toomey seemed destined to crush Specter.

But then more Republicans - two, specifically, to the way-right ofToomey: Johnstown's Peg Luksik and Philly native Larry Murphy - formed exploratory committees.

"The more, the merrier - that is, if you are Arlen Specter," said Pennsylvania political pollster G. Terry Madonna. "Specter can only hope for a crowded primary. With possibly...]]> Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Obama won over 43 percent of voters who attend religious services regularly, contrasted with the 39 percent who supported John Kerry four years earlier, according to exit polling by the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life.

Strider, named one of the most influential Democrats on faith issues by Religion News Service, became the Democrats' go-to guy on God in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office in 2004. After reaching out to values-voters in the 2006 mid-term election, he went to work for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

The Mississippi native did not work for Obama directly but did work for Matthew 25, a political action committee supporting...]]> Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600 "Conservatives certainly have more a lot more energy, creativity and ideas this year opposing the Obama agenda than they did supporting the Bush administration," said Charlie Gerow, a Harrisburg-based media strategist. Gerow is on the board of the American Conservative Union, which sponsors CPAC.

Not confined by the Bush political message or machine, conservatives are freer to explore a better way to lead and govern the country, Gerow said.

Meeting the past three days in the shadows of a Democrat-controlled White House and Congress, attendees debated what it means to be a conservative in the era of President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry...]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 The Republicans claim the stimulus package contains too much spending and not enough stimulus. All the Democrats have to say (whether accurate or not) is, "Your failed policies put the country here," and they win the conversation.

The problem is that both parties spend most of their time debating what academics call "false dichotomies," which in the real world means they hold views that appear to be opposite from one another but are not.

Sometimes both are wrong; sometimes both are right. Yet most voters feel they must choose between the parties, between the lesser of two evils, which is why our politics tend to oscillate between the two parties over time.

Sometimes...]]> Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 In 1920, before the Great Depression hit, our country was moving from an agricultural economy into an industrial economy. Today, we are an information/service economy, which means the things we create are not necessarily concrete, as crops and machines were.

"I think that fact alone has ramifications for a government stimulus," says Lara Brown, a political scientist at Villanova University.

Brown's concern is how exactly the stimulus money will "filter" into our less-than-concrete system.

"If we borrow money from China to give money back to individuals to spend (in the form of tax cuts or tax credits), will their spending eventually go back to China because they use it...]]> Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 One way, University of St. Louis professor Joel Goldstein says, is for GOP congressmen to think of ways to use the stimulus package to strengthen the role of state governments. "Or they might envision ways to make certain that the proposed spending package is not permanent," he adds.

Another approach he suggests is to address some of Wall Street's flagrant abuses that contributed to our economic crisis.

A bold approach by a minority party certainly worked in 1990, when a group of freshman House Republicans - the self-described "Gang of Seven"

- began taking on House banking issues and ethics reform.

GOP boldness did not defeat President Obama's...]]> Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 However, with Senate vacancies created by Vice President Joe Biden (Delaware), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (New York) and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (Colorado) forcing special elections in 2010, 36 states face Senate contests -- including New York, with two.

With a special election required in Illinois for the remainder of President Obama's old term, that adds up to 38 Senate contests nationwide.

If health or age create two vacancies in Massachusetts and West Virginia, that would make 40 Senate contests in 38 states, all in one election cycle.

"I sincerely doubt that the Democrats are likely to lose that many in 2010," says Lara Brown, a political scientist...]]> Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Herzik said Reid is not beloved in Nevada: "He is powerful and respected, but he also has very harsh critics in the state ... even among Democrats." Until the last election cycle, Nevada has been a fairly even split between Democrats and Republicans. Thanks to aggressive voter registration during last year's early party caucus, Democrats now outnumber Republicans by 100,000 registered voters.

"That surplus, and the fact that the Republican Party is in disarray, is about the only good news for Reid," said one inside-the-Beltway Democrat strategist who is from Nevada and considers Reid a "disappointment."

One thing hurting Reid is that his state is changing....]]> Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 As governor of Texas, Bush had a near-flawlessly congenial relationship with Democrats in the state legislature. That was not the case when he went to Washington.

As Barack Obama prepares to take the oath as president with a largely-Democratic Congress covering his back, will he consider the olive branch offered by Rep. John Boehner, the Republicans' House Minority Leader?

"When our new president extends his hand across the aisle to do what is right for our country," Boehner said, "Republicans will extend ours in return."

Obama ran on changing Washington and has sent signals that he wants to govern from the center. But he cannot do that without the...]]> Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 A number of our presidents have been celebrity-like individuals with name recognition and fame, notes Lara Brown, a professor of political science at Villanova. "The difference, however, is that in previous eras, those 'celebrities' were generals and war heroes like George Washington and Andrew Jackson," she explains.

Today's media can take part of the blame for making (or breaking) politicians as celebrities because of the way they deliver the story.

Journalism professor Bruce Evensen at DePaul University in Chicago agrees with Brown that Obama is far from America's first "rock star" president. "What is new on this side of the digital divide," he says, "is how copious the...]]> Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Eight years ago, Pennsylvania had two Republican U.S. senators, Specter and Rick Santorum, with Republican Tom Ridge as governor. Its congressional delegation and state Legislature were also solidly GOP.

Since then, the governorship, one Senate seat and a majority of the congressional delegation have shifted to Democrats. The only thing left in GOP hands is the state Senate.

"Being out of power can be good for political parties," says Rob Maranto, a former Villanova political scientist. "It forces you to work harder to figure out what you really need to focus on, as opposed to what is superfluous, and it forces you to find new and more capable leaders."

In the U.S....]]> Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 "While Kennedy provided Sen. Obama with the imprimatur of a legitimate Democratic candidate, one in particular who was more liberal rather than centrist, Gov. Dean was more important for Sen. Obama's campaign," says Villanova University political science professor Lara Brown.

Brown believes Dean's stridency regarding the nomination calendar and punishing the "rogue states" of Michigan and Florida was critical to Obama's win.

Add to that Dean's "50-state program" (putting political workers and cash in every state), his awakening of the progressive movement, and the "net-roots" Internet blueprint he created during his failed 2004 presidential run, and you'd think Dean would be...]]> Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Under card-check, not so much: If a majority of employees sign a union card, then the union becomes the bargaining unit. No more six-week campaigns, no more elections. It's a done deal; you're essentially a union shop.

This will not be the first vote on this bill; it passed the House last session, 241-185, but died in a Senate filibuster.

This time, with a healthy majority of Democrats in the House and a near super-majority of them in the Senate, passage is likely to go from standing on a precipice to heading over the cliff.

According to Nick Shapiro, a spokesperson for the next administration, "President-elect Obama supports the Employee Free-Choice Act and...]]> Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 When Siegel lost his son in a car accident in 1974, in circumstances similar to Biden's own family tragedy, the newly elected Delaware senator was there for him. He told Siegel at the time that nothing would be the same but that life would go on.

"In many ways, he kept me going," Siegel adds.

Biden was there for Siegel again when he lost his good friend, Pakistani political leader Benazir Bhutto. Siegel co-wrote a book on Bhutto that was completed the day she was assassinated in December of last year; Biden wrote a blurb for the book's cover.

John Kerry has great respect for his longtime colleague: "Joe and I have been in the trenches, and I really think that's when you...]]> Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Here is why this fight matters: The chairmanship determines which legislation reaches the House floor, or at least two-thirds of it. That is a lot of power and persuasion to leap from between two old-school yet decidedly different congressmen.

"This is a battle for the premiere authorizing committee in Congress," says Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), a longtime committee member. "We are responsible the widest range of jurisdiction that there is - think energy, health care and telecom policy, it is the committee."

Doyle is working hard as part of Dingell's "whip team," vote-gathering for the chairman, making non-stop calls, sometimes checking with members once, twice or even three...]]> Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Purdue University political scientist Bert Rockman says Dean's "50-state strategy" - compete in every state, regardless of whether it's Republican-red or Democrat-blue - was very controversial in Democratic circles, but it was strategically right.

Rockman stresses that Dean's strategy would not have worked with a different kind of candidate, such as John Kerry or Hillary Clinton, because "Obama was able to mobilize hugely African-Americans, young people and other minorities." That worked especially well for him in the South and in Indiana.

Another major factor in making this work was Obama's ground and Internet campaigns; both were textbook lessons on how to apply...]]> Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Perhaps pundits should start listening more and talking or number-crunching less. Science and stats do not vote, but Wurzelbacher does.

The pundits don't listen, however. Instead, their echo chamber tells us the election's over: John McCain lost the debates and all that's left is for the fat lady to sing. (Of course, they would never say "fat" because that is not politically correct.)

Historically speaking, McCain has never run a great campaign; in fact, he has never run even a good campaign. McCain has gotten to where he is by being John McCain.

He became the Republican presidential nominee on his own terms, and no leg of that journey was pretty.

Now McCain is up...]]>