Back in June 2005, I argued that John McCain’s high favorability ratings were doomed to decline:

McCain spiked upward in popularity at the time he made his run in the 2000 presidential primaries, and has barely declined since — even though he has generally been a strong defender of President Bush.

The reason, I think, is that Democratic politicians don’t criticize McCain (some even ask him to be their vice presidential nominee). He’s more or less the only partisan politician who Democrats and Republicans generally praise. As a result, the public likes him across the board — the Quinnipiac poll shows his favorabe ratings as 37% favorable, 8% unfavorable among Republicans; 31% favorable, 8% unfavorable among Democrats; and 40% favorable, 9% unfavorable among independents.

But this will inevitably change if McCain runs in 2008. The reason is that he’s never received significant Democratic criticism. He was defeated in 2000 before the Democrats felt the need to open up on him, and since then they all praise him because they want to look bipartisan and co-sponsor bills with him in Congress. But he won’t get the Republican nomination unless he starts unloading on the Democrats, and if he does get nominated (which I think is unlikely), things will turn around really quickly. Pretty soon Democrats will start pointing out that he’s a pro-life, ultra-hawkish, government-cutting conservative, and his favorability profile will start to look like most other Republicans. And even though McCain’s numbers look great today, few Democrats would actually vote for him — if he’s only getting 15% against Hillary Clinton right now, imagine what he’d draw against a more moderate Democrat like John Edwards at the end of a vicious presidential campaign.

Eighteen months later, this sounds just about right — Democrats have turned against McCain already and his support among independents is apparently declining in key primary states, as Ezra Klein noted on Tapped. Josh Marshall concludes that McCain is “going nowhere” in the presidential race. I’m not sure that’s true, but the combination of McCain’s pandering to the right and his position on Iraq is likely to burn through most of his capital with independents and Democrats during the primaries. If McCain does win the GOP nomination, he’s not likely to be the intimidating candidate that many Democrats fear.