Just to stick in my two cents' worth on McCain:
He, like most of the bunch inside the Beltway, is still operating on the premise that the MSM is the REAL national constituancy; Trim your positions to gain the approval of the media, the voters will meekly rubberstamp whatever comes out of the NYT's font of wisdom and shazam, you're POTUS.
Doesn't seem as though any of those terribly clever people have even considered the gross declines in readership or credibility of the entire MSM over the last ten or fifteen years, or briefly wondered why lately the voters persist in standing "conventional wisdom" on its head so often.
IMHO, McCain is probably not going to be campaigning for President much past the Iowa primary, precisely because he and his staff have put so much into satisfying the MSM, they don't have a clue about what the average voter has as a concern.
Right now, my favorite candidate for POTUS is Condi Rice based mostly on gut instinct, plus the fact that she is the only one with the guts and good sense to say that she doesn't really want the da**ed job.
Re McCain and their supposed support of him.
He carries so much baggage, that DBM would have a field day, starting about one day after he won the nomination. They already have all the clips and quotes of his instability, etc ready to go, "in the interest of faaiirness to the dem candidate" they will be "forced" to report on them.
McCain is one of the few people who apparently does not foresee this statistical certainty in his future.