Foolish is the person willing to make any precise predictions about tomorrow's primary results, particularly for the Democrats. Obama is rising, slowly but surely, and one has to think that most undecideds will break his way in the end.
On the Republican side, I think it is safe at this point to call John McCain the presumptive nominee. I'd love to claim I predicted this, but its more like I hinted at it but hedged.
Like many conservatives, I have a love/hate relationship with the Arizona senator. I favoured him over George W. Bush in 2000. I was mesmerized by him after seeing him deliver a luncheon speech in Los Angeles in the summer of 1999. He is a riveting and inspiring speaker. But in the eight years since, McCain has taken the "maverick" shtick a bit too far for my tastes. It is one thing to be independent-minded, but it is another to be constantly on the other side of your own party and to attack its members.
Nevertheless, true to Republican meritocratic tradition (he who wins the nomination shall be he that lost the previous time) McCain deserves the nod and will stand a very good chance at winning the presidency, particularly if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton. In that sense, McCain is the right guy in the right place at the right time: he is identified as anti-Bush and is known as a fighter of wasteful spending, two things that are very unpopular with rank-and-file American voters at the moment.
The interesting question going forward for the Republicans will be who McCain picks as his VP candidate. One would think a conservative governor, he being a Senator and identified as less conservative. Mike Huckabee? Rick Perry? How about a woman candidate like Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison? My personal pick would be Lynne Cheney.
Get ready for a late night tomorrow.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 3:52 PM
