After the wheels came off McCain's campaign back in July, many people declared that his candidacy was finished. For my part, I was less sure. Obviously, what had happened to McCain's campaign was very bad - but, on the other hand, candidates have bounced back from these sorts of problems in the past. What is more, it is still quite early.

I do not think this so much any more. Two pieces of evidence seem to me to be telling.

First, I did a Google Blog search on John McCain for the time period of 8/1/07 to 8/22/07. I came up with about 10,000 hits. Compare that to the 32,000 or so hits for Giuliani, and the 53,000 hits for Hillary Clinton. I ran the same search on McCain for the same time period in April - and came up with 30,000 hits. This is an indication that people are not talking about him nearly as much. And, I wager if one sifted through those 40,000 blog posts on McCain, you'd see a marked difference in tone about his prospects depending on when they were written.

Second, I've noticed that his opponents in the race are starting to praise him. Hillary Clinton went out of her way at the VFW meeting in Kansas City to do so this week. She called McCain "a great American hero." And of course, there was this.

This is not a good sign for McCain. Clinton would only praise McCain like that if she assessed that she would not face him in the general election. Giuliani sure as heck would not tell people that he'd vote for McCain if he thought that McCain was going to be a major contender for votes.