McCain: I'll lose if I can't persuade voters that the war in Iraq is succeeding
If a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth, then John McCain committed a gaffe on his campaign bus today when he told journalists that if he couldn’t persuade the public that the war in Iraq is succeeding he would lose in November. McCain tried to walk the comment back straight away. But there’s no doubt that he’s right: he is running on his national security credentials and if the electorate judge him to be wrong on his signature issue they are hardly likely to vote for him.
The worry in all this is that it will push Barack Obama, if he is the nominee, into depicting the situation in Iraq in the worst possible light. If Obama wins having done this, he would have very little wiggle room to back away from the precipitously fast withdrawal that he is currently proposing.