I had an epiphany this morning -- John McCain is losing this election. How can we tell? Because he has started running as a Fake Democrat.
First, he talked in his acceptance speech about how Washington had "changed" Republicans, and he could go against that.
Next, he started running ads and doing interviews emphasizing that he (and Palin) have taken on the Republicans and claiming that Obama hasn't "taken on" the Democrats. While this appears at first to be an attempt to revive his "maverick" status, the fact is that 80% of the country thinks we're on the wrong track, and nobody is asking politicians to "take on" the Democrats, so he's really saying he'll be better than Obama at confronting Republicans.
Then yesterday he responded to the financial panic by suddenly starting to speak out in favor or regulation:
Responding to the turmoil on Wall Street, John McCain said flatly yesterday: "We need strong and effective regulation."
Arching over that, there's the whole push to co-opt Obama's message and say "no, we're the ones who will change things, really!" (Who are they claiming they'll change from, hmm?)
It took me a while to see the pattern, because we're so much more accustomed to seeing this behavior in Democrats, but it's there. McCain is running as a fake Democrat. And since the one thing we know from our side is that when voters have a choice between a fake Republican and the real thing, they'll choose the real thing every time, there's no reason to run as a Fake Democrat unless you have run out of better options.
That's how we can tell that McCain is losing, and he knows it.
(P.S. This is not an argument to get complacent! We've got him on the run, but it still depends on all of us following through by working our asses off!)