I know this is a little late but I've been thinking quite a bit about both Obama and Clinton supporters' claims that they'll vote for McCain if their preferred candidate does not get the nomination. I'm hoping that Josh is right and that people will calm down, eventually voting for the Democrat when they realize the enormous differences between the Dem and Teflon John.

But do you think, as that settles out, there might be another reason to expect a second mini-surge toward the Democratic candidate? Hear me out: From the beginning of the campaign, the Democratic race has gotten FAR more media attention than the Republican race. Even as we've narrowed the field down to two candidates, you can argue that McCain has been playing second (third? fourth?) fiddle to the Democratic contenders, thereby amplifying the media's tendency not to focus on his blunders, misstatements, "plans," etc.

What happens when things settle down on the Democratic side though?

I think that what we're seeing now is a symptom of the fact that most voters don't follow this horse race every day. They remember McCain from 2000, feel that in hindsight he would have been a better President than Bush, have vague recollections of him being a bipartisan maverick that truly represents the middle ground.  A lot of them don't realize that, in the meantime, he's cozied up to the agents of intolerance, he now supports tax cuts that he himself opposed, he was against torture before he was for it, he freely admits to knowing nothing about economics, and he offers a dangerous foreign policy that may indeed make Bush's seem tolerable.

In short: are your "average" American voters, who are only starting to tune into the campaign, going to turn on the debates this fall, hear the words coming out of McCain's mouth, and ask themselves "What the hell happened to this guy?" Are his approval ratings and competitive numbers due to the fact that he's lost in the media narrative right now? And that as soon as people start to look at him a bit more closely, they'll realize that he's not who he once was?

Just a thought.