The Presidential Race: A Silver Lining From Frank Rich

I saw the headline for the latest Frank Rich column and could not resist the call of my curiosity: How McCain Lost in Pennsylvania. How can anyone not want to know what McCain lost in Pennsylvania and how did he lose whatever was lost?

But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn’t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party’s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain. Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party’s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That’s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama.

Could it not be that neither Obama or Clinton is as unpopular within our party as McCain is within his? Today's polls show Obama and Clinton polling ahead of McCain (but within what looked like the margin of error.)

Then, too, McCain may be having trouble with money:

For such a bitterly divided party, the Democrats hardly show signs of clinical depression. The last debate, however dumb, had the most viewers of any so far. The rise in turnout and new voters is all on the Democratic side. Even before its deathbed transfusion of new donations, the Clinton campaign trounced the McCain campaign in fund-raising by 2.5 to 1. (The Obama-McCain ratio is 3 to 1.)

Then, too, there was news here that I had not read or heard (excepting the President's approval rating):

On Tuesday, a Democrat won the first round of a special Congressional election in Mississippi, even though the national G.O.P. outspent the Democrats by more than double and President Bush carried this previously safe Republican district by 25 percentage points in 2004. A Gallup poll last week found Mr. Bush’s national disapproval rating the worst (69 percent) for any president in Gallup’s entire 70-year history. For all his (and Mr. McCain’s) persistent sightings of “victory” in Iraq, the percentage of Americans calling the war a mistake (63) also set a new record.

I think that some of my desire to get past all the mud of the primary is a desire to beat McCain and kick out enough Republicans from the Senate that the mess created by George W and friends can be mended. I take hope with this pronouncement:

On the way to the finish line, the prolonged primary race, far from destroying the Democratic candidates, may do more insidious damage to the Republican nominee, lulling his campaign into an unjustified complacency. The Democrats should “take their time — don’t rush,” the McCain aide Mark Salter joked last week. Yet his candidate, as the conservative blogger Ross Douthat pointed out, keeps bumping up against a 45 percent ceiling in the polls even now, when the Democrats are ostensibly in ruins.

All which was needed after The London Times' Hillary Clinton risks rift in Democrats by ‘cheating’ black voters.