When you have the standard FR position being not voting or going third party, I don't see much hope for McCain.
Like many other Republicans and independents I voted Obama in Virginia. I know some 17 year olds (will be 18 in Nov) and they all voted anti-Hillary. The challenge now is to wean them off Obama.
The Dems went to the primaries because there were actual choices they had to make. For Republicans, the real conservatives did not generate much excitement and quickly fell by the wayside. Why go and vote when the choice is McCain, who I don’t like, and Huckabee, who I don’t like? That’s why I didn’t vote in the primary. But I will vote in the general election for McCain. Period. End of story.
Most of McCain’s would-be flock will return to him in either case, whether it winds up being HRC or BHO-—and at this point it’s still harder to figure out which of them would be easier for McCain to beat. I can’t quite foresee a scenario where Hillary becomes as “clear” a frontrunner somewhere down the road as Obama is generally conceded to be now. Looking at it objectively there would be no better gift for McCain’s supporters than for the Clintons to pull out all the stops and Obama to do the same, just to protect himself. A real mudfight might just turn off enough (D) voters to make them doubt the wisdom of voting for EITHER of them, and bring them over to the (R) side.
And beyond a traditional kind of mudfight, Team Hillary is still probably capable of at least trying to pull off the same kind of nomination-stealing tactics they’ve spent 7 years fine-tuning their accusation against Bush of-—
McCain’s camp , if this happens, would be wise to jump in , right in the middle of the thickest part of it , and point out to the American people that both are unworthy of being C-in-Chief, if they’re behaving like that now.....
Having said all that, the choice among these three still comes down to a choice between Far Left, Farther Left and Rino/Lib masquerading as bi-partisan (ONE-WAY) “reach-across-the aisle “uniter”-—not much of a choice either way. Inevitably all this makes me think of the title of the old 1960s musical “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off”.