The problem is that McCain has a number of factors working against him, including his own long career of hostility toward the people he needs to win the general election. If you can't consolidate and motivate your base, you will not win the presidency. It has been his strategy to distance himself in numerous and provocative ways from his own party. He has used the tactic of alienation to pander to constituencies outside the party. And he has been so prominent and antagonistic in the execution of his strategy that it's difficult to see how he can overcome his own record.
My sister, who is very much a Conservative, has this opinion of McCain:
I just want to tell somebody that I can’t stand John McCain and if he becomes the Republican Nominee I do not think I can vote for him.
And this:
Have I told you lately that John McCain is a pompous little backstabbing gas bag who irritates me more than words can say?
How he gets all these endorsements including Brownback is beyond my understanding.
So will she, and millions of others go to the polls this November to vote for a man why despise?
Probably not enthusiastically and not in overwhelmingly large numbers.
But … but … but … I also have a friend who is a centrist Democrat who does not want a repeat of the Clinton years and is not at all put off by the McCain mutiny. He likes him and is likely to vote for him rather than Billary or Obama.
So is it possible for McCain to create a center/left coalition that dispenses with the Right but co-opts the moderate Left? A weird version of the Reagan coalition that appeals to moderate Democrats who are embarrassed by the Clintons and see Saint John of Arizona as preferable to Billary?
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