Phillip, you’ll recall that the first time I covered the Clinton campaign in March, the title of my article was “Fourth and Long for Hillary.”

As I learned last week, Republicans don’t want to consider the possibility that it’s already too late for John McCain, so what’s the point in debating the question of whether it’s already over? I said it was over on Oct. 2, the day the McCain campaign pulled out of Michigan. I would be only too happy to be proven wrong, but I’m looking at the Electoral College math and thinking that only some kind of mutant Bradley effect on steroids could turn this around.

My concern, as I’ve tried to explain, is that Democrats will claim victory before Republicans will admit defeat and therefore the liberal spin on the result is going to get a three-week head start. Already, you’re seeing the pundit corps starting to offer a variety of wrongheaded explanations: McCain is too “mean spirited,” Palin is too “populist,” etc.

Bill Kristol’s advice yesterday, for example, is 180 degrees out of phase. It’s not “strategic incoherence and operational incompetence” by the campaign staff that’s hurting the McCain campaign, it’s John McCain. The Democrats nominated a tall, young, charismatic candidate, and the GOP nominated a short, grumpy, bald septuagenarian. Every time they debate, the visual mismatch alone drives more independent voters into Obama’s column. No amount of strategic or operational savvy can overcome that basic dynamic.