THE TELEGRAPH: Well, I got the first part right. Regular readers may recall that all those months ago, when Hillary Clinton was a dead cert for the Democratic nomination and John McCain was the RINO ("Republican in Name Only") outsider who had too many enemies within his own party to be a plausible candidate, I went out on a crazy limb and predicted that Barack Obama and McCain would be fighting each other for the presidency come November.
So now for the second half of my prediction: that John McCain would win the general election.
This bit may seem even more far-fetched, especially if you are following all this through the eyes of the British media, whose cynicism about domestic politics seems to be bizarrely mirrored (which is to say, reversed) by naivety about American politics. But I am standing by it. If anything, the events of the past few days have confirmed my view.
Why? Because the historical point that should have looked like Obama's irreversible moment of destiny - the vanquishing of his immensely powerful rival, Mrs Clinton - did not, in fact, lift him into clear triumphal territory.
Given the ecstasy of his own followers and the support he has had from the mainstream media in the United States, that event should have brought with it a sense of inevitability, an overwhelming tide of belief that he was now unstoppable: that the future belonged to him. It should, in short, have given him a real bounce in the polls. But it didn't. What he got was a very small spike.
The two polls taken immediately after Hillary's withdrawal speech (and her effusive expression of support for him) gave Obama leads so small as to be virtually within the margin of error. Why John McCain Could Still Beat Barack Obama in Presidential Race >>> By Janet Daley | June 9, 2008
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