John McCain's Chances Of Victory

The chattering class and the conventional wisdom have it that the presidential race has been over since about two weeks ago and John McCain is toast.

Reading the national poll numbers, and even most maps of the electoral vote, it certainly seems that way. I refuse to prognosticate in even the most obvious of races. And I refuse to do so in this presidential race as I've been wrong at least a half-dozen times since the summer of '07 when the media declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee.

The New York Times reports Sen. McCain's advisers still maintain there's a path to victory for his campaign, and I guess that's what's keeping them going at this point in time. Check it out:

Mr. McCain's advisers said the key to victory was reeling back those Republican states where Mr. Obama has them on the run: Florida, where Mr. McCain spent Thursday; Indiana; Missouri; North Carolina; Ohio; and Virginia. If he can hang on to all those states as well as others that are reliably red, he would put into his column 260 of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win. Mr. McCain's advisers said they would look for the additional electoral votes they need either by taking Pennsylvania from the Democrats, or putting together some combination of Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico.

All I can say is if McCain were to win, we'd all better get used to hearing the phrase, "my friends" as he's annoyingly using it about every third sentence. It has become a linguistic tick of which he just can't seem to wrest himself.

By Bonnie Erbe