David Frum boldly wrote off John McCain in a Washington Post column, instructing Republicans to abandon the McCain-Palin ticket to save floundering Senate and House candidates. Half of the McCain team is savaging Sarah Palin publicly. The other half is rushing to her defense. And many onlookers are touting her for 2012. Meanwhile, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is already booked for a visit to Iowa latter in November.

The vast majority of voters have yet to cast their ballots. The presidential candidates are still campaigning. Ads are still running. But many Republican insiders and some members of the conservative punditocracy are already moving on. This election is, to many of them, passé.

David Frum boldly wrote off John McCain in a Washington Post column, instructing Republicans to abandon the McCain-Palin ticket to save floundering Senate and House candidates. Half of the McCain team is savaging Sarah Palin publicly. The other half is rushing to her defense. And many onlookers are touting her for 2012. Meanwhile, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is already booked for a visit to Iowa latter in November. And those are conservatives. Isn’t there still an election to be held?

Well, it certainly looks like it is an uphill climb for McCain. But it is more than a little odd that Republicans are already fighting for the inside pole position in the next election before the votes are even counted in this one.

As many of them now fear, this election may mark not just a loss, but a sea change in party affiliation and ideology. So what we’re beginning to see is a collective rush to find a shining knight -- or lady -- who promises better days and the chance for political redemption.

But it is, of course, a fundamentally misguided exercise to plunge into the next election cycle before this one has even ended. Putting aside the adage that the race is never over until all the votes are counted, this rush for the next standard bearer misses the cardinal lesson of 2008: you need to figure out what the election will be about before you find your candidate and set your course.

In this quintessential “change” election, Republicans failed to avoid the same error which Hillary Clinton made. They believed that inexperience would doom their opponent and they convinced themselves an impressive biography would prevail.

It is not evident what the election of 2012 will be about, or what type of candidate will fit the bill for the Republicans four years from now (if they indeed find themselves running against an incumbent Democrat). The issue may be competence, trustworthiness, international peril, “malaise” or, as Donald Rumsfeld so elegantly put it, some “unknown unknown.”

Moreover, if conservatives agree on anything these days, it is that they lack a cohesive vision of conservative governance. Former Reagan adviser Peter Wehner cautions that it won’t be sufficient simply to recycle a Reagan policy agenda, and suggests that a promising “governing vision” would be one that sets its sites on “reforming our public institutions to meet the demands of the 21st century.” Other prominent conservatives believe any talk of reform is “code” for capitulating to a scheme of Democratic-lite policies.

Without knowledge of the terrain or a self-identity, it’s just silly to begin choosing up sides, assembling PACs and exploratory committees and gauging the 2012 field. It suggests that conservatives have not really learned that a presidential candidacy must be about something real, providing answers on what issues are occupying the electorate at the time. And the winning theme is arrived at by assessing the scene and finding, or developing, a candidacy to suit the circumstances.

Republicans need to see this election through and then think about who they are and where the country is headed before searching for the next nominee. Otherwise they are going to wind up with an “inevitable” candidate who fits neither the party nor the country.

Instead, they have watched in abject horror as McCain has presented a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas, a heaping of me-too-ism and a non-stop diet of earmark minutiae. No wonder conservatives are depressed.

McCain stunned conservatives in the second debate by trotting out a $300 billion plan for the government to purchase mortgages and help homeowners renegotiate their terms to avoid foreclosure. Obama gleefully pointed to conservative critics who puzzled over why the government need provide this service and how this would logistically work. And how did purchasing mortgages at full value from lenders fit with McCain’s own warnings about protecting the tax payers? It seemed more ill-conceived than anything Obama had set forth.

Nor did McCain distinguish himself in any fashion on Treasury Secretary Paulson’s $700 billion rescue plan. His support for the rescue plan with some proposed revisions -- more oversight, more transparency and limits on executive compensation -- mirrored Obama’s. If both presidential candidates were on the same page (on what was then believed to be the critical move to stem the growing crisis) what precisely was so extreme about Obama? It was getting hard to tell.

But nothing left conservatives so infuriated as McCain’s inability or unwillingness to provide a compelling attack on the Democrats’ role in the financial crisis, and specifically their failure to reign in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They longed for McCain to go after Democrats -- who cheered Freddie and Fannie’s ill-fated policy of guaranteeing subprime mortgages and who received gobs of campaign donations from these same institutions (and maybe even a “Friend of Angelo” discounted mortgage from other lenders which they were supposed to be regulating). But McCain did not connect the dots in the first two debates and has only recently begun to make this case to voters.

Instead, McCain has seemed obsessed with earmarks. Certainly, fiscal conservatives have no love for pork and regret Congressional Republicans’ loss of frugality. But in the middle of a complete meltdown of the financial system McCain’s insistence on dwelling on bear DNA and a Chicago planetarium seemed misplaced and, frankly, out of touch. Why was he talking about a tiny sliver of government spending while condoning a massive government expansion into the financial sector?

Occasionally, there have been glimmers of hope for fiscal conservatives. McCain gamely explained his market-oriented health care plan in the second debate. He has questioned why any tax increase, even one ostensibly only on the “rich,” is a good idea in the face of a daunting a recession. And he has sporadically raised Obama’s large domestic spending plans on energy development and health care as reasons for concern.

Still, the critique doesn’t quite hold together, in part because his own vision has been so inconsistent and disjointed. The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes summed up: “Three weeks out from the 2008 election and John McCain's campaign has no discernible central theme, no succinct answer to the most basic question voters ask as they consider their choice: Why should I choose you over the other guy?”

Now, conservatives should not be entirely surprised. As Mitt Romney pointed out in the primary, McCain never fancied himself as an economic guru. And unlike Obama, who sought out top flight advisers like Robert Rubin, Paul Volker and Warren Buffett, McCain could not seem to snare any of the leading economic conservative thinkers who had populated his Republican opponents’ campaigns. Lacking his own big ideas, he also lacked a big-idea adviser to help guide him.

Republicans may be deluding themselves into thinking that even a more robust conservative economic vision would be enough to sway voters in this election cycle. In the face of an unpopular president and a cratering economy it would be a Herculean task for any Republican to hold on to the White House. But with an economic vision as feeble as the one put forth by their nominee, many are left wondering what might have been.

In the waning weeks of the campaign, there is word that McCain may toss out some more tax-relief plans or perhaps a loan program for small business to help arrest the plunge in the markets -- and in his own poll numbers.

His speech on Monday attempted to describe a sharper contrast between his tax and trade policies and Obama's. It’s an open question, however, whether this will be seen as a compelling alternative vision, and whether it is weeks, if not months, late in coming.

Most voters may have already decided that their best chance for economic recovery rests with changing the party in the White House. Conservatives may not agree, but they can certainly understand.

Democrats are hoping that her VP face-off against Senator Joe Biden is the Hindenburg of debates – a disaster of unmitigated proportions that sends the McCain ticket up in flames and rekindles concerns about John McCain’s judgment in selecting her and, indirectly, about his age and health. Republicans hope she’ll be a magic bullet to enliven the base, grab Hillary Clinton voters and nail down problematic Western states. It’s too soon to tell.

But though the Palin experiment is still in its early stages, she has already contributed something crucial to the ticket: she is allowing John McCain to run as John McCain.

Just by being on the ticket, Palin has given the conservative base more than they could have hoped for when McCain won the nomination.

Her elevation from obscurity (after conservatives feared a pro-choice Democratic Joe Lieberman) and the revelation about her pregnant daughter set off a media feeding frenzy -- thereby cementing the affections of social conservatives and transforming her into a veritable icon. The result is almost more than conservatives could have hoped for: A gun-shooting, pro-drilling and pro-life female icon, selected by a Republican candidate who has often found himself at odds with the conservative base.

For McCain, this has meant a new lease on life, not only as a viable candidate, but as one free to take liberties with policy positions that previously would have incited the conservative gallery to open revolt.

For example, McCain recently ran an ad touting his support for stem-cell research – which, if understood to refer to embryonic research, is opposed by many pro-life Republicans. The apostasy went largely unnoticed.

When Lehman Brothers’ liquidation and the takeover of A.I.G. sent shock waves through the economy and the presidential race as well, McCain responded with red-meat populist rhetoric out of the playbook of Mike Huckabee – or any of the Democrats who ran this year. Fiscal conservatives privately tut-tutted, but his threats to go after executive salaries, impose a new regime of regulation and punish greedy titans of industry only drew yawns from critics who months ago lambasted him for offering a partial bailout for homeowners who couldn’t make their mortgage payments.

Now, the conservative base is busy defending Palin against an onslaught from the Obama camp and the mainstream media (which is more loathed than Obama could ever be by conservatives). Moreover, with visions of a once improbable win now firmly in their heads, conservatives are wary of crossing their nominee. After all, he found them the most attractive political spokeswoman for many causes they hold dear that they ever could have imagined. If the price of getting to a “real” conservative president is a term or two of a McCain administration, with ample training for someone they view as a political rock star, so be it.

So while the voters -- and the McCain camp -- wait to find out whether Palin is the key to a historic upset or the straw that finally breaks the back of the McCain campaign, McCain is finally getting to run something like the campaign he always wanted to run. He is never so happy as when he is preaching the gospel of political unorthodoxy, bipartisan compromise and anti-Washington reform. And, in the greatest irony of a race replete with them, the conservative base doesn’t seem to mind a bit.

His Celebrity ad and a subsequent one dubbed the "Fan Club" go straight at Obama's mass-movement popularity. His message, not unlike Clinton's, is clear: Obama is very cool but he is not presidential material. And he goes one step further: that Obama's "celebrity" status has rendered him clueless to the concerns (e.g., $4 gas) of average Americans.

And on the 3 a.m. front, McCain has made the most of international developments -- the success of the surge and his own warnings about Vladimir Putin's imperialistic ambitions -- to make the argument that his opponent lacks the experience and judgment to lead in dangerous times. McCain's polling numbers show that he leads Obama by a considerable margin on Iraq, national security and the war on terror.

Still, McCain trails in the national polls, albeit narrowly. And it is worth asking whether the very themes that Clinton used can be successfully recycled by McCain in the general election. McCain holds out hope on several fronts.

First, he is getting some help (at no cost to his own war chest) from free media. They were certainly not receptive to carrying Clinton's message of steely-eyed resentment about Obama's appeal. But in the general election the media has gotten in on the Obama-debunking act. Late-night comics and serious news commentators have picked up on the "arrogance" and "presumptuousness" themes. The cable news networks have given mass exposure to McCain's Obama-mocking ads. And Obama and his ever-enthusiastic supporters probably did not help the cause with the mass rally in Berlin and the advent of the easily ridiculed additions to the Obama phenomenon like the "O" salute.

In this regard, McCain also has been helped by time and the ever-fleeting attention span of the public looking for the newest craze. What was new and stunning in January -- a mass rally of screaming young people -- now seems ho-hum. Obama will have his chance at the convention to pull out all the stops, but after 200,000 flag-waving Europeans, the crowd in Denver may not seem so novel.

McCain also has the benefit of continued world instability. Unlike Clinton, he really does have years of foreign policy experience and actually was under enemy fire. His support of the surge has been largely validated by events. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia, McCain seems ready (indeed tailor-made) for the role of commander in chief if we are headed for a redux of the Cold War. (He, after all, was there for the first one.)

But McCain's greatest advantage is his audience. Clinton really never stood a chance in a Democratic primary in which appeals to idealism rang true with receptive urban elites, African-Americans and young people. A broader-base general electorate may be a harder sell for Obama.  Less starry-eyed working-class voters and those in McCain's age bracket (who turn out in huge number on Election Day) may be the very skeptics to whom McCain can appeal. And, of course, those Clinton voters who agreed with her 3 a.m. appeal are in McCain's target audience.

Also, it is indisputable that the McCain camp has a funnier, lighter touch than the Clinton camp. In part because of limited resources, they have discovered the strength of funny Web-based ads and the value of mocking (rather than screaming at) the media for their sometimes all-too-apparent infatuation with Obama. McCain in essence has decided it is far easier to use Obama's celebrity aura (and the public's growing suspicion of the news media) against him than to try to lecture voters that they shouldn't be inspired by Obama's soaring rhetoric.

Will it work? Clinton found out the hard way that experience, a full policy portfolio and a familiar face don't always triumph against a novel, alluring mass phenomenon. But McCain is hoping that Clinton was just a poor messenger for a winning message: The world is too dangerous and the country too bollixed up to trust to the new kid on the block.

Ironically, McCain's hope is that the worse things become in the last months of the Bush presidency, both at home and abroad, the more receptive voters may be to his appeal that a sober, experienced hand is needed to get the country out of the ditch. If not, McCain and Clinton will have plenty to commiserate about.

This is the presidential election, we have been told, that a Democrat can’t lose. The economy is in decline, with unemployment on the rise, President Bush’s approval ratings in the basement and virtually everyone convinced that America is “on the wrong track.” But the race remains tight, at least according to the polls.

The McCain camp would no doubt like to keep the focus of the coverage where it was for most of last week, on story lines far from the economy. The narratives were the ones they dictated: Obama’s presumptuousness, the success of the surge and the Democrats’ opposition to offshore drilling (which has popularity ratings approximately double that of Bush and Congress combined.)

But that’s not a luxury the McCain campaign will have going forward. The economy will be an issue, and no incumbent party in recent times has held the White House in faltering economic times.

If McCain is to have a chance once the discussion shifts back to the No. 1 concern for voters, he’ll have to simultaneously destroy voter confidence in Obama’s ability to manage the economy and separate himself from some of the most unpopular elements of his own party.

So how can he do it?

First, McCain and his surrogates argue that if things are bad now, Obama will only make them worse. By focusing on Obama’s ideas for tax increases (and there are a few of them) and his protectionist hype from the primary, McCain will be invoking memories of Smoot-Hawley, George McGovern and Walter Mondale. If the choice is fiscal conservative versus old-fashioned tax-and-spend liberal, McCain may level the playing field.

The problem: Obama is already sliding away from his self-described “overheated” protectionist language and suggesting he may delay planned tax increases. It makes it hard to paint Obama as a traditional liberal when he’s sounding more like Robert Rubin and less like Robert Reich every day.

Second, McCain takes a few pages from the populist playbook usually employed by Democrats (and more recently, by Mike Huckabee). McCain is not about to run as a defender of big business and unbridled market capitalism. His new ad declares: “Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He’ll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again.” Not exactly your average Republican appeal.

That and similar lines in speeches may give the editors of the Wall Street Journal hives, but McCain’s intention is to separate himself from traditional big business Republicans and reach out to those blue-collar voters, many of whom liked the feisty Hillary Clinton who was going to “fight for them.” The dual challenge for McCain here is prevent a revolt on the right and convince voters that there is something more than rhetoric behind his defense of the “little guy.”

Still, it's far from clear whether McCain can win on an up-or-down vote on economics against Obama. Polls show that voters trust Obama to manage the economy by margins as great as those by which they favor McCain as commander in chief. Sometimes you can only move the needle so much.

McCain may (as he has done on Iraq) make the pitch on this subject that the real issue is leadership, not just the economy. He likes to stress that he’s the one who stands up to special interests (in opposing earmarks), sticks to unpopular stands (running as a free-trader) and talks straight (about those Detroit auto jobs).

The appeal will be based on the very credible premise that the next president will face tough choices – cutting entitlements (or raising payroll taxes), chopping popular programs and delivering stiff medicine to Wall Street. McCain’s argument will be that what’s needed is a tough guy who doesn’t care how popular he is.

That formulation -- the economic grown-up to straighten out the knotty fiscal and structural problems we’re now in -- is the best McCain has at his disposal. If leadership is the issue (or Obama’s own economic proposals), rather than a referendum on the Bush economic legacy, McCain stands a fighting chance. But it’s a big “if.”

McCain and his conservative critics learned different lessons from the ill-fated attempt in 2007 to create a comprehensive immigration reform scheme. Conservative opponents of immigration reform interpreted the defeat of the Bush immigration plan as proof certain that opposition to legalization for illegal immigrants was a winning argument and that the public had embraced a border-security-only plan.

But McCain saw it differently. He survived a near-political death experience and then came back from the political grave to win the nomination of the G.O.P., a party supposedly dominated by anti-immigration reform conservatives. How did he do it? Not by renouncing his support for immigration reform, but by recognizing political realities. His formulation: border security first, but then comprehensive reform.

For months the argument was theoretical. Conservatives took pride in sinking comprehensive reform while McCain reveled in his reputation as a maverick who had defied his party and at least tried to construct a real solution to a knotty problem.

But now the fight has resurfaced. With each speech before a Hispanic group, the gap between McCain and his base becomes more apparent. No matter how often McCain promises that he has learned the lesson of achieving border security first, the conservative chorus rolls its eyes in disbelief. His talk about immigration reform is simply, as one activist put it, “a code word for amnesty.”

As for illegal immigrants already here, loud conservative voices either insist that they will never reward “law-breakers,” or they set the standard for border security and attrition of illegal immigrants already here so ridiculously high that it amounts to the same result: no legalized status for illegal immigrants.

McCain can talk all day about border security measures and employer verification but his critics aren’t listening. Anti-immigration reform conservatives accuse McCain of double talk and of planning an amnesty bonanza. They give him no points for having given it the college try with Ted Kennedy. Rather, it reminds them of all the things they don’t like about McCain – maverick, deal-maker, and compromiser.

Even his praise for Hispanics who served and sacrificed in the military brings groans from conservatives. Tom Tancredo went public with his outrage over McCain’s ad which celebrated the Hispanics whose names appear on the Vietnam memorial. And many conservative pundits grumbled as well. They take umbrage at the perceived insult that they can’t distinguish between legal immigrants who have served honorably and illegal immigrants. There simply is no winning for McCain with this crowd.

But McCain would be foolhardy to throw in the towel or to stop talking about this issue. After all, he won the Republican Florida primary on the strength of his support among Hispanic voters. He will need them and others in New Mexico and other western states to win in November.

Moreover, McCain has another reason for bringing up immigration which has nothing to do with Hispanics or even immigration itself. Both he and Barack Obama are trying to lay claim to independent voters who want less screaming and more problem-solving from their leaders. The very things -- immigration reform, global warming legislation, campaign finance reform and judicial nominations (i.e. the Gang of 14) -- which anger his conservative base potentially endear McCain to independents. They like politicians who know how to get things done.

That, in part, is why the McCain team was eager to pounce on Barack Obama’s recent attempts to bolster his own role in immigration reform, pointing to Obama’s votes on so-called poison pill amendments that killed the bill.

Even if his conservative critics would rather McCain forget about immigration reform and find other examples of political heresy to tout, McCain shows no sign of stopping. That may create some heartache for him in keeping conservatives in the tent and energized. But the alternative is worse: losing a powerful argument with independents and a vote-getting issue with Hispanics.

So McCain will have to grin and bear the screams from his base and resist the warnings, sometimes verging on threats, to pipe down. And he, of course, has the best evidence possible that his is the winning argument. He won the G.O.P. primary, didn’t he? He’ll need to keep that in mind and steal himself against the cries from the Right if he is to have a fighting chance in November.

If you redacted the names you might think it was 2004 and the candidates were George W. Bush and John Kerry. Back then Kerry accused his opponent of frittering away America’s reputation and disregarding the sensibilities of the international community. Bush derided Kerry for being soft on terror and holding America hostage to the “international test.”

That argument is being replayed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s controversial decision. McCain and his surrogates accuse Obama of being naïve and reverting to a “criminal justice” approach to fighting, just as Bush claimed Kerry did. Obama applauded the Supreme Court’s decision and could find no “credible scenario” under which the decision would put Americans at risk. McCain, he said, was playing the “politics of fear.” In short, we were back to the same old dichotomy: foolish liberal vs. fear-mongering conservative.

The question is whether times have changed and whether McCain can be as successful as Bush was in playing the national security card.

McCain claimed the initial advantage when Obama’s advisers let on that the Supreme Court decision would grant habeas corpus rights to Osama bin Laden. As Jake Tapper put it, “Regardless of the merits of the jurisprudence argument, Osama bin Laden's rights are not a good political topic.” So if the argument is giving trial lawyers free rein to spring terror leaders, McCain will likely win this issue going away.

It did not help matters when Obama slipped up, suggesting that the model procedure was the Nuremberg trials, which of course were military proceedings lacking any habeas corpus or other procedural rights familiar in civilian courts.

But the danger for McCain is that he, not known for finesse, will be labeled as the rogue candidate who opposes the rule of law. It takes time and a certain amount of tedious detail to explain that McCain favored a military tribunal system over the Bush administration objections, but thinks full-blown legal proceedings in civilian courts is a bridge too far. It takes even more time to explain why a civilian proceeding may not be suited to prosecuting terror suspects.

It requires patience and daily effort to explain what McCain favored, what the Supreme Court accomplished and what potential dangers lie ahead. For Americans frankly tired of hearing about terror suspects and eager to move on to gas prices, health care and social security, it is a steep communications hurdle. It is even steeper for a candidate who has such a shaky relationship with teleprompters.

And that may be the biggest challenge McCain faces: getting Americans to believe that terrorism continues as an ongoing and immediate threat to their safety. In some sense it is a problem born of success, namely the absence of any domestic terror incident since 9/11. Occasionally we hear of a thwarted terror plot or a released Guantánamo prisoner who turned up back on the battlefield, but the immediacy, and hence the political utility, of the war on terror has diminished with the passage of time.

So if McCain is going to benefit from this debate and convince Americans that Obama is John Kerry in a more attractive package, he will not only need to do things like explain his own record and a bit of constitutional law, but convince voters that this issue matters a great deal, perhaps more than any other. For a candidate not known for great speech-making or for staying on message, that’s a lot to ask.

The text of the speech was fine, even innovative in some places, as McCain laid out the beginnings of a reform agenda and began to question Obama’s New Politics bona fides. However, even sympathetic Republican observers noted McCain’s scene -- complete with a dreary suit, the glaring lights which washed out his complexion, and the pea-green background board -- were no match for the Xcel Center where Obama spoke to 25,000 screaming fans. Moreover, McCain does not talk in the inspiring manner and voice of his opponent. The contrast was painfully obvious.

Well, some would argue that presidents don’t govern from basketball arenas and some of Obama’s rhetoric verges on self-parody, as in this passage:

But politics, after all, is the art of inspiring people to follow you. And the contrast in excitement, energy and sheer newness greatly favors Obama in this particular election which, as Hillary Clinton learned the hard way, really is about “change.”

To put in plainly, McCain needs to find a way to narrow the rhetoric gap.

One surefire way not to do this would be to disparage or demean Obama’s oratory, as Clinton tried unsuccessfully to do. Telling people not to be inspired just makers the accuser sound like a grump.

Instead, McCain would do well to avoid side-by-side comparisons of the type he tried last Tuesday, and instead do three things.

First, as he has already done with his offer of town hall meetings, he should try to coax Obama into settings with live audiences, unexpected questions and a few irascible voters. McCain is well practiced in handling all of these and can draw on a reservoir of knowledge to answer obscure questions. Obama, as we saw in the Philadelphia debate, can become, as Time magazine’s Mark Halperin described him, “surly” when the heat is on.

The difference between Obama’s oratorical performances on a stage before enthusiastic crowds and those at press avails, for example, is striking. If McCain can get him to play on his turf, it’ll help.

Second, if Obama gives media pundits prose to admire, McCain gives them intimacy and access. Part of the rhetoric game, of course, is the impact it has on media, who relay the contrasting scenes and the corresponding impressions of the candidate to the vast majority of voters who never really see or hear speeches themselves. In the 2000 Republican primary, McCain won the affections of the media by overwhelming them with access and giving them near round-the-clock attention. He can do that again, and thereby highlight the degree to which Obama is cloistered from media access. Once again by shifting the focus, here from the arena to the campaign bus, McCain can try to convey that he is the candidate who is most transparent and also the least scripted.

Finally, McCain has a certain self-deprecating humor, a delight in not taking himself or the artifices of campaigning too seriously. Poking fun at his own “uncoolness” and down-to-earth qualities may appeal to voters, especially older ones, who are a bit skeptical, even wary, of Obama-mania. He need not criticize his opponent; he can instead slyly suggest that, contrary to the Canon camera ad tagline, image isn’t, in fact, everything, at least when it comes to picking a president.

They are downright angry about some of the language employed by the media to describe Clinton, and at what they see as the media’s undue haste in shoving her out of the race. And they don’t like some of the phrases tossed around by Barack Obama (“Sweetie”; “You’re likable enough, Hillary”) either.

The major newspapers now regale us with stories about the many women, especially but not limited to the Geraldine Ferraro generation, who threaten to withhold their votes from Obama. Such angry and disillusioned female Democrats seem, for the moment, to be everywhere.

But even if we accept that this phenomenon is real (even if encouraged by Clinton herself), the question going forward is this: Will these voters will really turn tail on the Democratic nominee and vote for John McCain?

Recent history suggests that the idea of a mass female defection to the Republican side is more than a little unlikely: In 2000 Al Gore carried women voters 54-43 percent, and John Kerry carried them 51-48.

More significant, though, is the fact that John McCain doesn’t appear to have much innate ability to appeal to female voters in the way, for example, Bill Clinton did. McCain doesn’t have the patience to feel anyone’s pain, and he would, if left to his own devices, talk 24/7 about foreign policy rather than issues, like health care, that resonate strongly with women voters.

So is it at all reasonable to believe, even if lots of women are mad at Obama right now, that McCain is the guy to reel them in?

The answer is, it depends on what he does. Though it may not be apparent just yet, McCain will have a few tools at his disposal to at least boost his share of the female vote in a head-to-head race against Obama.

First, many of the Clinton supporters as well as independent and non-primary-voting women, particularly older women, liked and agreed with her argument about experience. For older women who spent lives in the workplace toiling to move up the ladder, the sight of a young, handsome opponent bypassing their standard-bearer was eerily reminiscent of a dozen slights and inequities they suffered.

Sure, “change” beat out “experience” in the electorate overall, but among older women, preparation, experience, qualifications and knowledge still count. McCain may be a more palatable alternative for those voters who, for example, bought the message of the “3 a.m” TV ad and concluded that Obama is simply too untested to protect their family’s safety.

Second, Clinton’s greatest successes came when she became the pugnacious populist—railing against a president who considered middle-class voters invisible, vilifying the insurance industry and lambasting the lobbyists.

McCain is never going to reinvent himself as the second coming of John Edwards, but he has begun to attack Wall Street (in the housing crisis), go after drug companies (by favoring drug re-importation) and skewer CEO’s for big severance packages. All of this causes fiscal conservatives to break out in a cold sweat. But it does amplify his image as the feisty, take-no-guff fighter that Clinton appealed to when she "never gave up and never gave in.”

And finally, some of the Clinton female voters are culturally conservative, the remnants of Reagan Democrats, who looked askance at Obama as an out-of-touch elitist. McCain, although reluctant to talk up issues on the social conservatives’ wish list, has a culturally conservative profile to go along with his record as a war hero. And in some key swing states, McCain will be pitching to the same women who noticed that their children had better bowling scores than Obama.

So McCain is not without tactical options to capitalize on what is, for now, a vulnerability for Obama.

In the end, most Democratic-leaning females aren’t about to jettison their policy views for a conservative curmudgeon, no matter how miffed they are at Obama. But the danger for Obama remains: In a close election, it would take only tens of thousands of disaffected—and motivated—women in swing states to make the difference.

Clinton’s failures and successes provide some invaluable lessons for John McCain as well—if he’s alert enough to heed them.

Clinton’s most serious error, her delinquency in recognizing that this is the greatest “change” election in a generation, should serve as a warning to McCain, who is already saddled with the most damaging label in this election season: “Republican.” The winning message in this election is not likely to be “Experience” or “Ready on Day One.” And it certainly won’t be “How to Build on the George Bush Legacy.”

In every poll, voters overwhelmingly tell us that they think the country is on the wrong track and want someone who can take us in a new direction. McCain might be able to argue that Obama’s direction is faulty or even dangerous. But McCain is unlikely to convince voters that the best reason to vote for him is, as Obama ever so indelicately points out, his “fifty years of service to his country.” (Conversely, Obama’s own modest résumé never seemed to bother most voters.)

If the McCain camp had been paying attention, they might also have noticed that Clinton got nowhere with cynical attacks on Obama’s inspirational rhetoric. “Change you can Xerox” will go down as one of the lamest debate insults in modern times. Whining about his big rallies and fancy phrases sounded envious and small-minded and severely underestimated Americans' desire to be inspired by leaders. Republican heirs of Ronald Reagan should know better than anyone that politics is the art of inspiring people to join your cause. Grousing that Obama does it exceptionally well is not a recipe for success.

But Clinton did not just leave the campaign trail littered with mistakes and miscalculations. In her run of successes through Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, she also carved a path that a savvy McCain team might follow.

While some conservatives are loath to admit it, millions of working-class Americans don’t feel like they have benefited from macroeconomic growth, free trade and globalization. By identifying on a visceral level with these voters, pledging to fight for them and offering specific policy prescriptions aimed at their daily concerns, Clinton found her greatest electoral success.

If McCain commits to expanding and reinvigorating the American dream of upward mobility and to ensuring that the playing field is at least level for these voters, he stands a chance to inherit these voters who, Clinton has shown, admire a feisty, combative and world-wise champion.

Clinton also showed the weakness in Obama’s conflict-adverse personal style. Debates are not his forte. When she, with some help from debate moderators, pressed him both on values issues (she wouldn’t have stayed in that church) and substance (doesn’t raising the cap on payroll taxes hurt people who aren’t rich?), she made headway, cementing her image as the tougher and more aggressive of the two. (It wasn’t coincidental that he gave up debating after Pennsylvania.)

McCain, too, will need to walk a tightrope (one he didn’t always traverse successfully in his own primary’s debates). In the debates against Obama, McCain will need to appear assertive but not nasty in order to convince voters that he really is the “take charge” candidate, the most credible leader. And Clinton showed that Obama can be made to seem defensive, even irritable when pressed.

Clinton also bequeathed McCain one very large gift in the form of her “3 a.m.” TV ad, leaving behind a healthy dose of doubt about Obama’s ability to assume the role of commander in chief. She did a fair job of rattling voters by suggesting that Obama just might not be tough enough or prepared to be a wartime president. (And McCain will not be hobbled by fake memories of sniper fire, nor will he be limited to an electorate purely of Democratic primary-goers.)

Now, it is an open question whether the McCain camp has learned all or even most of these lessons. It may be easy for them to discount Clinton’s experience as the legacy of a flawed and failed candidate. But she turned out to be a pretty formidable campaigner who fought Obama to a near-tie. McCain’s team could do worse than to learn from her example.