When you get right down to it, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge says that McCain will lose the election:
HARRISBURG — Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said today that John McCain can’t become president without carrying Pennsylvania and that the race would be different if McCain had chosen him as his running mate.
“I think the dynamics would be different in Pennsylvania,” Ridge said when asked if he should have been chosen to run as vice president over Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. “I think we’d be foolish not to admit it publicly.”
Ridge, the campaign’s national co-chairman, said McCain “had several good choices and I was one of them.”
(…)
“Unless we win Pennsylvania, I don’t think (McCain) is elected president,” Ridge said.
And the unstated conclusion of Ridge’s argument, given the polls, is that McCain will lose:
In the aftermath that follows what appears likely to be a Republican disaster on Election Day, there will be several competing narratives to explain what happened. One of them will be John McCain picked the wrong running mate. Guess which side Tom Ridge will take in that debate.
As Marc Ambinder notes, he might have a credible case to make:
If parts of the South are trending blue — if Obama wins at least one of Virginia, North Carolina and comes within 5 in all three, and within 7 in GA — a Giuliani or Ridge can make a pretty strong case for a new map to 270
If obama wins, and the map is blue, we’ll know it’s a realignment if, in fact, the GOP is forced to discover a new path to 270 markedly different from the one they use now (a path predicated on a regional lock in the south).
Has the lock been picked?
Stay tuned…..
