The Underdog: McPain

The American Spectator blog:

While we can drive ourselves crazy doing the electoral math between now and Election Day, here's the bottom line. In 2004, Democrats had a much worse candidate, and the electoral environment was much more favorable for Republicans, and yet Kerry fell just 18 electoral votes shy of becoming president. Looking at the election on a state-by-state basis, you can come up with a lot of scenarios whereby Obama gets to 270 electoral votes, but it's a lot harder to come up with a combination of states that will put McCain over the top. This isn't to say it can't be done, but amid all of the focus on the closeness of the daily national tracking numbers, it's important to keep in mind what an uphill climb this still is for McCain.

He likes being a "maverick." But that plays well only in Wisconsin--and maybe not this year.