Although McCain's attempt over the last seven years to rebuild his reputation with the GOP right wing is somewhat contemptible, it is also good politics. Politics has never fled from making the necessary deals in the pursuit of victory. McCain, because of his past, his manner, his life, has the ability to make people forget about his semi-sincere courting of the right and to hope he will become himself once in power. He has already given some hints that he will break with many Bushite policies, including the ones in Iraq. This allows people with little hope in Clinton or Obama to vote for him. In addition, the prospect of Clinton being President and of her egregious husband being back in power is enough to make real men cry. Obama started out with great appeal but he seems to be floundering. A vote for McCain will be based on many factors. Those choosing to vote for him do not deserve Scheer's scorn. It is true that Americans habitually fail to vote their real interests, but real interests are known not only to sociologists but also to real people.

I know I am not the only person who will, if provoked sufficiently, vote for McCain, holding my nose. At least I won't have also to hold my wallet and my rear aperture.

Norman Ravitch

Savannah, GA

Are Obama’s San Francisco speech (that bitterness made us turn to God and guns) and Hillary’s consumption of a beer and a whiskey in some bar in Indiana among complete strangers (getting drunk and ready for that 3 am phone call) justifiable reasons to skip the taxpayer-funded duties they swore to fulfill in the US Senate?

Luckily, there is Mr. McCain who would cut the taxes even more. Mr. McCain, this is the 2008 campaign, not the 2000 one. We don’t have a budget surplus any more.

These three Senators shouldn’t be promoted but fired. Imagine if they were pediatricians and their absence prevented us from scheduling a child appointment for almost two years while they were bickering constantly.

Mr. Obama, when we get frustrated with our government over broken promises and inept leadership, we don’t turn to religion, guns, anti-immigrant resentment or racism. We turn to our family and our kids for relaxation. We are here for them.

And God is always with us.

Kenan Porobic

Charlotte, NC

I am more optimistic than Mr. Scheer. We've been subjected, those of us who are inured to suffering, to trivialized, exhausting, self-destructive trench warfare lasting months, seeming like years. Ask me, who would not vote Republican if the Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela were their candidate, to throw custard pies at the future Democratic President. Put in my hand the custard pie named John McCain.

McCain is this quarter's goblin who will getcha if you don't watch out. Six weeks after our two dazzlingly qualified candidates agree to stop gutting each other, McCain's numbers will collapse, along with the prestige, military infrastructure, physical and mental health, economic well-being of the American people.

I believe this. I have to believe this. I remember Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George I. With the current worst-President-since-James-Buchanan I count twenty-seven years of these Tin Men, Cowardly Lions, empty-shirted Wizards of Oz.

It sure is time for our two possible futures to exit the movie they've been trapped in, but it isn't too late.

Barry Blitstein

New York City, NY

Just as economists have trouble reconciling that most economic players are not "rational decision-makers," we political observers tend to forget that trends don't disappear overnight. McCain is for all intents and purposes running on a "stay the course" platform. But those people who describe themselves as "uncommitted" or "independent" decide our elections. Even if you assume that the electorate is now in the neighborhood of 45 percent Democrats (which includes those independents who consistently vote for Democrats) and 40 percent GOP (again including those independents who consistently vote GOP), that leaves us with 15 percent in the middle who won't really decide until November.

I really don't know what makes those people tick. And I don't mean that they are stupid or insensitive or "bitter." I mean I probably will never fathom how they arrive at their eventual political decision, whatever it may be. I really can understand why many of them voted for Reagan in 1984. But is McCain's long cultivated "Cult of Maverick Personality" really that appealing when it pretty much means that nothing much is going to change in the White House if he is elected?

Maybe the "true" independent voter doesn't perceive the themes and consequences of political decisions the way liberal me or my fellow citizens who are some stripe of conservative do. Maybe only events like the Great Depression move large numbers of people to change (or initially develop) some core beliefs for a longer than a four-year term.

Michael Whitehead

Ann Arbor, MI

I don't think anyone has a clue about the way the voters will vote in the next election. However, all of the candidates, to some degree, seem to favor "free trade." " Free trade" or "laissez-faire capitalism" is basically economic anarchy without the rule of law or regulation. If you cannot control the economy, you cannot fix the economy, so each one of the candidates will fail if they are elected.

Pervis J. Casey

Riverside, CA

The beginning of your article is the reason people WILL vote for McCain.... You accuse the American voter of being stupid, and having lost their senses... HAHAHA you are a stuck-up snob!! YOU are the idiot, for not being able to understand the real American people. YOU are an elitist who is out of touch with the common man. We can make up our own minds, and when YOU liberal wing-nuts talk like this, we know we are making the correct decision.

Bill Nigh

Riverside, CA

Middle America has been voting against their own interests since 1968, when they switched parties in large numbers to vote for the "law and order" promises of Richard Nixon. That trend has continued, though it has metastasized into the "national security" demagoguery of Reagan and both Bushes. McCain is everything Middle America believes it needs--a war hero, who's all about national security. And besides, he has the media behind him--he is going to be very tough for any Democrat to beat.

John Giarratana

Jersey City, NJ

This morning on MSNBC Mike Barnicle expressed astonishment that McCain could be leading in the polls, given the unpopularity of this President, and that 81 percent of Americans tell pollsters our nation is headed in the wrong direction. Let's see, forty-three white males in a row as President, and Barnicle is astonished the one white male in the race would be leading a black man or a woman?

Why does this 400-pound gorilla continue to sit in the room and even liberals like Barnicle cannot see him for the wallpaper? While I agree with Robert Scheer's take on the matter, his are still peripheral perspectives anointed as the core element in a dynamic that can only be explained by the nature of the forty-three previous occupants of the office. Denying this taints all other observations, because they are all extrapolated from an indoctrinated, occluding premise: that all elections are necessarily decided by issues and personalities and policy, that all discussion on the matter must honor that framework and that the dark underlying truth of the matter is not to be considered. It's like a convention of Lamarckians refusing to discuss Darwin's blasphemous little theory.

Rest assured, the fact that our forty-three past Presidents have all been white males will probably only be briefly commented tonight on MSNBC, and probably not even brought up on CNN or FOX.

This blinkered circling-of-the-duped-wagons seems to brazenly cross party lines and has expressed itself at other times in this election. The flap raised when President Clinton compared Obama to MLK and Hillary to LBJ was legitimate, the comparison was racist in nature. Indoctrination would not allow pundits to see the comparison was specious; Clinton and Obama are both senators, King was not. There was no reason to compare Obama to King and not Clinton, and Clinton to Johnson and not Obama. Any comparison of political experience would be apples and oranges. King was a social activist, and Obama is a collegaue of both Clinton and LBJ. The only reason to be comparing Obama to King would be their shared blackness, which apparently relegates them to impractical idealism as opposed to the get-things-done political savvy of Hillary and Johnson. Yes, apparently Obama's blackness makes him a '60s style Negro activist by default, until he becomes President and proves otherwise, and we can't have him as President because the blackness he shares with MLK makes him a '60s style Negro activist by default. Joseph Heller must have his hand in this somewhere.

Jimmy Davies

Belle Fourche, SD