User blog comment:LurkerLordB/If Obama lost in 2008/@comment-4727448-20120812234512/@comment-32656-20120818190755

Really, you are understating McCain. He was close in most polls for most of the time leading up to the election, even running ahead of Obama for about a week in early September, just after he announced Palin as his VP choice at the end of August - the so-called "VP bump" that all candidates receive - and stayed close for most of that month.

By the end of the month, however.... polls swung a large amount away from their ticket as her gaffes increased, and they found themselves down by a fair margin. Stayed that way until the election.

While he did need to get the base "excited," and the pick did do that in a big way, it ended up hurting the other side of things.

The man would have stood a very good chance of winning had he chosen a different running mate. And that's something that members of his own staff have publicly agreed with.

Really, like Bush and a few others, all he would have had to do is win the right states to win, even if he lost the popular vote. And given how many states were actually pretty close otl, there's more than enough wiggle room for a different McCain ticket to win.

That being said, Lurk is right - any remotely mainstream and competent Democrat could have won, though he's incorrect about the "would" part.