It's almost over

John McCain's campaign will soon, thankfully, come to a merciful end.

Thanks for the military service and working in the Senate all these years. It really is appreciated. But I can't help but think the whole "Maverick" thing was a bit too contrived. You can't vote with the President and party 90% of the time and then reasonably sell yourself as someone that bucks the party or leadership.

Honestly, I think McCain's something of an opportunistic phony. Rather than learn discipline at the Naval Academy, he played the role of Admiral's son and goofed off. Bad grades, bad conduct. He tries to spin it as if he was a "rascal." Probably considered by his classmates more of a spoiled jerk.

Anyway, the financial collapse has ruined what little chance he had of staying close. The only thing McCain's folks cling to are national polls showing them within five points. But national polls can only predict the popular vote; a thing everyone knows to meaningless, especially after the election of 2000.

If you want to get a real picture of what's going on, check out pollster.com or 270towin.com or politico.com. They have the polls from individual states. Leave out the states where averaged poll results show a difference within the margin of error (only 6) and Obama is already looking at somewhere near a 320-158 lead in electoral college votes, with 60 more to be fought over. Politico makes calls on the remaining states and gets a final result of 353-185.

No, it's not over. But I don't know that McCain has anything left that won't cost him as many votes as it wins him. Politico is running a story about how McCain rallies are getting uglier, to the point that some in the party worry about it. It has the word "panic" in the headline. That's never good.

John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.”