The American Spectator

American Spectator , and a site visitor, for years. I am disappointed by the defeatist article by Robert McCain you just published. Please save such demoralizing articles until AFTER the election! br> — Vivek Rao /p>

“How John McCain Lost”? Get serious. The McCain/Palin ticket is not dead, for several very good reasons.

First and foremost is the Bradley effect. This is not a typical white bread Presidential election. This is the first Presidential campaign involving a black candidate for President. While the citizenry of this country has become largely colorblind in recent decades, there are still a number of people who won’t vote to place a black man, or a woman or other minority, in the White House. This is reality. Various scholars of this phenomenon place the percentage of voters who would vote against a minority candidate, even though they say they would support him, at between 5% and 12%. Even allowing for a monolithic block of minority votes for a black candidate, this is not insignificant. Especially in a close race.

Second, there is the philosophical bent of the individual candidate. Both McCain and Obama know that they can not win a national election against even a mildly conservative candidate if their personal philosophies become a major point in the campaign. They are both simply too liberal to satisfy the bulk of the voters in this country. In this contest, however, John McCain has a clear advantage. While John McCain is a proven liberal populist, Barack Obama can be shown to be decidedly communistic, and decidedly anti-American, in his philosophy. The McCain campaign, through Sarah Palin, is busily exploiting that now.

Third is the undecided voter. The popular identification of the undecided voter; chiefly among scholars and blue-state and Washington pundits; is a person who is an independent or moderate Democrat. While these groups are, indeed, a potential source for McCain votes, they are not the most significant group of undecideds that are available to McCain/Palin. That group is Conservatives. Though a significant number of conservative voters have, reluctantly, decided to support a McCain Presidency, there are still a large number of Conservatives who have not. They view John McCain as being the person that has actively worked against conservative ideas, aims and goals and they have no trust in him to abandon his previous positions on various issues and embrace Conservative principles. Now, this is the area where the campaign can do much more. The continued exposure of Obama as a dangerous anti-American, socialist radical will attract working-class Democrats and Conservatives alike. This is the time to go positively negative. No one with an I.Q. above the ambient temperature in Nome, Alaska truly believes in political promises. Politicians have been proven to say anything and do anything to win an election. Therefore, what the candidates promise is largely irrelevant. Their character and philosophy are not. And this is what will make a difference on election day, not who is proposing a better health insurance package for the 15% of the population without one.

This election will boil down to whether the American people would rather have a likable liberal populist or a radical socialist with ties to a wide array of criminals (Rezko, Ayers) and anti-American firebrands (Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Ayers again, etc.). It all depends on how aggressively the McCain campaign exposes Barack Obama’s true nature.

The only real wild card in this election is voter fraud and the Democrat Party is working overtime on accomplishing that. Reports, some from the liberal media, of organized fraudulent registration, fraudulent voters, institutional disenfranchisement all perpetrated by Democrat Party members or their agents, such as Acorn, flood in. And yet, few seem to care. It must be remembered that over 1000 ineligible voters (convicted felons), in King County Washington, voted in the last Gubernatorial election in that state and a Democratic Governor was elected by only 1000 votes. Yet, there seems to be little enforcement activity underway to combat this. Fraud could win this election for Barack Obama, little else can. If the contest can be kept honest, the election is not lost to McCain.

p>”It’s not over til it’s over.” — Yogi Berra (Noted American Philosopher) br> — Michael Tobias /p>