Battling a Headwind

Conservatives have been surprisingly muted in their criticism of John McCain ever since The New York Times ran an article on February 21 raising questions about the close friendship between the maverick senator from Arizona and a much younger female lobbyist. Maybe there is some truth to the adage "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Few journalists or news organizations truly qualify as enemies of McCain, though. He is probably the only viable Republican presidential candidate in a couple of generations to have enjoyed largely favorable news coverage. The Times's controversial piece effectively chased conservatives into McCain's open and welcoming arms. There is no telling how much puckering up that saved the senator.

However, many conservatives and other members of the Republican establishment who have never been particularly fond of McCain and his propensity to adopt moderate views on a number of issues may have simply decided that because they are stuck with him as the party's presumptive nominee, they might as well make the best of it. They may also have realized that in the current political environment, no one they really like and trust would have had a snowball's chance in hell of winning the White House.

To appreciate how much McCain might help his party this year, all anyone has to do is look at the 18-point margin that Democratic congressional candidates rolled up over Republicans in the 2006 exit polls. And McCain is in the best position to curb the likely stampede of independents to the Democratic Party if Barack Obama is its presidential nominee. Whether McCain wins or loses the White House, he will be more appealing to independent voters than President Bush was as leader of the GOP in 2006.

Just a glance at national and state polling data on questions of party identification or party image, or a look at Republican prospects in U.S. House and Senate races, provides convincing evidence that this is a horrendous political environment for the GOP. Yet many of those same polls show McCain a bit ahead of, even with, or only slightly behind both Obama and his Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

When unparalleled Democratic pollster Peter Hart and his equally respected Republican counterpart Bill McInturff asked 1,012 voters in the March 7-10 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll which party they would rather see win the White House in November, 50 percent said Democratic while only 37 percent said Republican, a 13-point difference. This is nothing new: The Democratic edge was 9 points in their September 2007 poll and 10 points last November. In the March NBC/WSJ survey, 44 percent strongly preferred a Democratic victory and just 29 percent strongly wanted to see a GOP win, a 15-point margin. Depending upon the national poll, the Democratic advantage in party affiliation runs anywhere from 8 to 14 points.

So, for McCain to run basically even with either Democratic candidate is amazing, especially when he's also battling the political equivalent of a 50-mile-per-hour headwind. No generic or even typical Republican could fare nearly so well.

Having said that, however, this fall's presidential contest remains a very tough fight for the GOP. It's not difficult to come up with states where Obama or Clinton might top Al Gore's performance in 2000 or John Kerry's in 2004. But it's hard to find a Gore or Kerry state that McCain could shift into the GOP column.

Gore won Iowa and New Mexico but lost New Hampshire. Kerry won New Hampshire but lost Iowa and New Mexico. All three states will remain battlegrounds. Statistically speaking, based on 2000 and 2004 presidential voting, the next-most-vulnerable Democratic states are Wisconsin, Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. (Other than Iowa and New Mexico, the states that Bush barely won in 2004 were Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Missouri, and Colorado.)

There are other enticing targets for each party. Democrats will keep an eye on Arkansas and Virginia in particular. Republicans will be angling for Washington and Maine (whose electoral votes are not winner-take-all).

McCain might not be the dream candidate for many conservatives, but the nomination of any other Republican would likely have produced a total nightmare for them on November 4.