Josh Marshall reports:
As of right now, at Intrade, John McCain has just moved ahead of Romney and Rudy as the most likely GOP nominee.
To which Scott Lemieux responds:
a McCain win would be very bad for the Dems: despite his moderate reputation he's a fiscal and cultural reactionary with nutty foreign policy views, he has the best chance of winning of any major GOP candidate, and a McCain candidacy (especially if he's matched up against Clinton or Edwards) would result in an anti-Democratic media bloodbath comparable to 2000.
Leaving aside the fact that, for lefty bloggers, "nutty foreign policy views" means trying to win the war in Iraq instead of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, this seems to be the consensus view on the left--they fear McCain.