I'm slightly annoyed that McCain still has a 2% chance on 538. Like a week ago I thought it'd be like 1 out of 10000 by now.

Remember that McCain was offered early release and refused it. Even if the word heroic is overused and hackneyed, I think McCain's early release refusal qualifies; at the very least, he followed what he thought was a noble purpose (not accepting release before other POWs due to his family connections, not wanting to give the NV a propaganda victory) and underwent great personal discomfort for it. I'm not particularly interested in having out the debate if this qualifies as heroic, but it's something beyond just mere happenstance, just random circumstance that saw him shot down and tortured.

If McCain picks, say, Tim Pawlenty, I probably care far less about the outcome of the election.

The model takes into account the fact that the polls could all be doing something wrong and completely miss the boat.

I've tried to explain this a number of times but I can't seem to get any traction. I usually get someone saying something like, "Democrats voting early is good ............. for John McCain."

But, the early voters are not representative of all voters. The Democrats are voting early en mass because they are worried about Republicans causing problems at traditionally democratic precincts on Election Day. They are being encouraged to vote early by both the Obama Campaign and some liberal media partially for this reason.

If their vote is challenged in the early voting they can attempt to have the matter resolved by election day or they can bring the proper I.D. with them on Election Day. If the Republican Sec. of State decides to only have 2 voting machines at a Democratic Precinct and the lines are 10 hours long, no big deal if you've voted early.

This is exactly right. I don't know where the hate for McCain's war hero/POW narrative comes from -- it might be from what the right so despicably did to Kerry, it might be from notions that he overused it, whatever -- but it is absurd. It would have been VERY easy to take the easy way out of that prison camp, and he didn't do it. That deserves AT LEAST the minimal amount of respect it takes to STFU about the fact that he eventually broke under torture.

I recall something about how accepting the deal to come home would have basically amounted to treason.

Take this with a grain of salt though I think I read it in the Rolling Stone article about McCain.

Not only does this seem "possible" I would say it's pretty likely. If Obama's popular enough he can basically anoint a successor a la Teddy Roosevelt and Taft. I guess it would be Warner, but it could be someone like Brian Schweitzer.

Latest weather map. McCain does not have a 9% chance to win Nevada given 70% early voting, ridiculous Dem margin so far, and this forecast.

I have some racist relatives that were dead set against Obama and were strong McCain supporters. I showed them pics of the Wasilla town hall (they all cracked up), then mentioned Palin's general insanity, the Jews for Jesus thing and the witch hunting pastor. In less than five minutes, every one of them went from strong McCain to extremely strong not voting.

I agree. I respect McCain's tenure in Vietnam and consider him a war hero. He suffered for what he saw as the right cause. Just doesn't qualify him for anything besides my respect. In the future if they want to run war heroes, I suspect they will choose ones who proved brilliant tacticians.

This is being VERY generous. I would guess this list of pilots who crashed as many planes as John McCain is VERY short indeed.

I will never, ever begrudge someone who breaks under torture. Like wtf? It's torture. That **** is hardcore. But yeah, I think people got pretty tired of McCain saying things like 'I didn't have a home for 5.5 years' or 'I wish I could have gotten Joe the Plumber to give me running water when I was a POW, which he couldn't do under Obama's tax plan'

The problem with the McCane war hero talking point is that it has nothing to do with his potential performance as president.

Mpethy,

Did you vote for Kerry the war hero, or Bush the guy who served in the National Guard but used family connections to stay out of Nam?

This is fantastic.

This is simply false. Just go to the wiki page on him and look at the footnoted sources. the fact that McCain was tortured repeatedly has been well documented and corroborated by his fellow prisoners.

The source for the ridiculous claim that he was not tortured is a NVA prison guard, for pity's sake. Do you really believe some anonymous vietnamese dude over numerous Americans who served their country honorably? A vietnamese dude, who, if he is who he claims he was, the chief guard, was almost certainly one of the torturers?

Kind of disgusting, in my opinion, to be propagating an obvious lie.

what? he's the only one that really fought for our country! (sarah palin)

What did you think of the swift boat ads?

Well, we'll see in 24 hours and obviously most pollsters agree with this kind of analysis. But your explanation just does not intuitively seem likely. Looking at this site I see that early voters now total >55% of the 2004 vote, and that ~36% of the electorate voted early in 2004. If you assume that turnout will be the same as it was in 2004 then McCain has to win remaining voters 61%-37% to eek out a 50-49 victory. If you assume that turnout is higher such that the early vote is still only 36% of the vote this year (best case scenario for McCain imo), he has to win the remaining voters ~55-44. It seems extremely odd that one candidate's voters would so overwhelmingly vote early compared to the other's, if indeed the race is so close as to produce a 50-49 result.

EDIT: ALL OF THIS ASSUMES THAT POOFLER'S +11 INFO WAS CORRECT.

Um, OK. Why does that qualify you to be President? Does loving the United States assist you in making good decisions? If you had the choice between an armed forces grunt awarded the Purple Heart, or a distinguished public servant who was a brilliant decisionmaker, who would it be? Does Disney choose its CEO based on who the biggest Disney fan is?

This is the same sort of argument as saying that the biggest thing a poker player requires is "heart". It is just not the case that a person with strong character makes a better President. Bill Clinton was a pretty good president despite being a scumbag.

This is all not to mention the pretty obvious deficits in McCain's character.

Just spotted that someone else replied:

Yeah, that's it in a nutshell.

afaik T. Boone Pickens still has his million dollars.

I never said McCain wasn't tortured. What I said was that the injuries to which you were referring - presumably, his inability to lift his arms over his head - are a result of the fact that he broke both arms when he bailed out.

End of O'Reilly tonight with open acknowledgment that it's basically over. Kind of weird and surreal.

heh, you and I fundamentally disagree.

I don't grant that Kerry was a war hero, but i will not repeat the accusations about him, as i am unsure whether they are true. I tend to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt in my mind and assume that he served honorably.

But I voted for Bush. I admit it was an ethical dilemma for me that I actually struggled with at the time. On the one hand, Bush was (is) inferior to Kerry in this crucial metric for qualification for the job. On the other hand, Kerry was willing, even eager, to surrender in Iraq, repeating the mistake of Viet Nam, and doing a disservice to all who have served in this war. Those of us who understand counterinsurgency knew the war was winnable, and subsequent events have validated our thinking. So, while I admit to being very uncomfortable with my vote, I think it was the least bad option I had at the time.