Can McCain Still Win? (Pat Buchanan)

Two weeks after the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., John McCain and Sarah Palin were striding forward toward victory. They had erased the eight-point lead Barack Obama had opened up in Denver and watched as one blue state after another moved into the toss-up category. That is ancient history now. Since mid-September, the stock market has cratered, losing half of the $8 trillion that has vanished since October 2007. All five of America's great investment banks — Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill-Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — have either ceased to be independent or ceased to be. The nation's largest savings and loan, Washington Mutual, and largest insurance company, AIG, have gone belly up, with the federal bailout of the latter costing $100 billion and counting. Perhaps $3 trillion of the $8 trillion... [read full story]