McCain and electability

Here's my rule of thumb: if you're voting for a candidate because you think they're electable, they're actually not. The reason is that if you don't really like a candidate, but you're voting for him or her because you think other people will like them, this is in fact a really bad argument that's immediately contradicted by your own gut.

Voters in Iowa four years ago voted for John Kerry because they thought he was electable--he wasn't. "I'm electable" is the last refuge of a bad candidate.

The argument for John McCain has always been that Republicans should vote for him, even though they don't like him, because he's electable. He's not.

McCain's "hundred years of war in Iraq" comment will come back to haunt him in the general election, just like "I voted for it before I voted against it" in '04.

I'm not into conspiracy theories, but it does raise a red flag for me that shortly after McCain wraps up the nomination, there's talk of keeping troops longer in Iraq. The "surge" of troops that began a year ago has brought sectarian violence in Iraq down from massively chaotic levels (2,000 deaths a month--see the graph above) to much lower levels. That surge has to end in August, the Petraeus report announced "bringing troops home" which only meant one month early. But that leaves four months of disintegrating security right before the general election.

McCain will get his clock cleaned in November.