No question. It's going to take somebody like JD to beat him.
I wonder, though, if McCain's status might be like the Soviet Union's in 1989. Everybody assumed it was forever...but, when some people who didn't know any better, started taking down the wall the whole edifice collapsed.
I don't read McCain as "popular" so much as he is viewed as "inevitable". That's how Hillary was viewed before the Democrat primary, remember. If somebody starts chipping away at that perception of inevitability, it could come apart rather quickly.
Ask yourself this: Who do I know that is really for John McCain?
McCain’s POW story is very inspirational... but that only gets you so far. His maverickness is a pain in the dupa. There’s no telling where he will come down on any issue. His daughter is revealing that she would have been real trouble had he won. This whole Big Tent thing needs to go away.