The Pastor Returns

Obama is weaker than we thought and can't win the kind of people who go bowling.

John McCain is competitive in the polls.

Therefore . . . McCain might actually win!

Of course, there was always a possibility that McCain might win. Whatever his drawbacks, he's the Republican candidate with the strongest appeal to independent voters. But the environment is so hospitable to Democrats this year that the prevailing feeling among liberal pundits is that once we get through this primary messiness, we can get about the business of routing McCain.

Now, for the first time in awhile, they're sounding nervous.

Or at least trying to reassure themselves that it's still a Democratic year.

(A brief digression about the campaign coverage: If I were Clinton or Obama, I might try to talk about something--anything--other than demographic groups and superdelegates. Make the narrative about something other than campaign strategy. Yes, I know Hillary talked about nuking Iran the other day and no one cared, but still.)

Of course, McCain is in a sweet spot right now. He's not under any kind of sustained attack, beyond an occasional jab from his Democratic friends. He is largely getting to define himself while the media's attention is trained on the Hillary-Barack slugfest. So his numbers may well drop when it's a one-one battle.

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum sees McCain's popularity as a temporary phenomenon:

"McCain simply isn't as strong a candidate as people seem to think he is. Factors working against him include Bush fatigue, a declining economy, his age, his need to pander heavily to the Christian right, his hawkishness in a year when the public isn't feeling very hawkish, his history of flip flopping for transparently political reasons, and a portfolio of extremely unpopular positions (like privatizing Social Security) that Democrats can make a lot of hay with in the fall.

"What's more -- and go ahead, call me an optimist -- I suspect that at some point there's going to be a press backlash against McCain. His media image is a bubble, sustained by a sort of childlike faith, and once that faith starts to wobble -- something that may already have started -- the bubble is likely to pop. Before long, I suspect that a lot of reporters are going to start recognizing his faux openness as more faux than open.

"Of course, this all assumes that Hillary Clinton decides not to be completely suicidal and take down the party in a huge ball of flames. But I don't think she will. Even the Clintons have to bow to reality eventually."