McCain is toast. burnt toast.

It's really hard to see how McCain survives this floozy scandal and the funding scandal. Even if he gets off, he's going to be indelibly tarnished with a big stain on his character. Furthermore, this could set him off, and I could see him losing his temper somewhere, on film, when some reporter asks an impertinent question (and you know they're going to try and bait him), or worse still when Obama asks a seemingly innocuous question in a debate.

Worse still, John McCain has become a national figure of mockery. Every comedian, late-night or otherwise, is going to be lining up to take their potshots at him. At some point it's going to stick, and this is going to be worse for McCain than the same thing was for Giuliani or Bill Clinton (who at least had the advantage in the public eye of actually being President).

For the Republicans, this is a difficult situation. If McCain doesn't implode and sews up the nomination (and he needs about 350 to do so without superdelegates), then he's pre-Dukakied even before the General Election, and that's without taking W into account. The alternative to McCain is either Huckabee or Romney, unless the RNC makes a deal at the convention for a dark horse. The problem for the Republicans is that the only people left with enough gravitas to do the job of POTUS are cranky assholes like Bob Dole.

For the Democrats this is an opportunity for them to make even bigger inroads in the Senate and Congressional battles, the meme being "..even the best the Republicans have to offer is a lier, a crook and a philanderer". The Dems still have enough time to show enough backbone to convince the nation that there is a clear and wide difference between them and the GOP.