In fact, it is really one big problem reinforcing itself each time McCain attempts to deal with it. That is because McCain cannot access the kind of money he needs to compete without help from the FEC or the kind of donors McCain has built his post-Keating reputation by holding in open contempt. Now he has to go hat in hand to both. He needs friendly rulings from the FEC and bundles of corporate soft money to finance his general election campaign.

Yet asking the FEC to finesse election law on his behalf with sweetheart rulings, and/or opening corporate spigots undermines the profile he has established for straight talk and independence. That would collapse any moral high ground he occupies on campaign finance reform. Indeed, the recent purges of registered lobbyists from his campaign only spotlights the dirty secret: McCain has been snuggled up with lobbyists all the while he was preaching abstinence to the rest of us. He has flip-flopped to accept Jesus on the GOP’s tax agenda, which is the only domestic policy his party is truly passionate about. But the nakedness of his pandering conversion means that nobody will trust him on the issue. That leaves foreign policy, where he must now defend the carnage, bankruptcy, and failure of George W. Bush’s neocon policies.

The bottom line is that McCain must go to battle against the Democrats with a Republican base that he has been poking in the eye with a sharp stick for years, many of whom would happily sacrifice one election in order to humiliate McCain and be rid of him for good. The only people who ever really liked McCain are independent and crossover Dems who see him now as Bush wearing a McCain mask. Besides, there is a new boy in school that independents think is kind of interesting, because he has nearly secured the Democratic nomination by energizing a fresh coalition with a message of change and hope. McCain’s campaign is going to have to rely on doom, fear, and a televised clan war among Democrats.

This raises the question of whether the Democrats themselves are going to be self-destructive enough to open that door. We’re talking about Democrats, so of course it’s possible. But is it likely? No.

First, the animosity between the Obama and Clinton campaigns is the product of a long and bruising primary, but they are not angry about policy or principles. Primaries always cause hard feelings. General elections bring a different focus and are driven by other priorities, like winning. And the poll results that commentators use to illuminate a dangerous rift in the party are ignoring something important when they do not identify the emotion involved for what it really is: passion. Democrats, this year, are not simply energized about individual candidates in the primary. They are a herd that smells water in November. The excitement is building over the results of special Congressional elections where Democrats are poaching previously untouchable seats. Republican retirements are opening up other seats in the House and the Senate, where the GOP has to defend more precarious seats than Democrats. All this while the Republican brand is suffering because many voters believe it now represents arrogance, incompetence, deceit, scandal, and an utterly incoherent vision of any future that does not include perpetual war.

Democrats sense the opportunity of this political moment. The primary, on some level, is better understood as a family argument over what kind of history they should make first. Will all those savvy women of Hillary’s generation, the veterans of the second wave who fought for abortion rights, really give John McCain the chance to appoint three more justices to an already stacked Supreme Court, knowing that McCain will be trying to make his bones with the right wing of his party? Are all the working class whites now voting for Hillary’s populist stance really going to place their desperate need for affordable health care in John McCain’s hands, just because Obama won a close race for the Democratic nomination? Is the scorched earth campaign McCain will have to run likely to leave the legions of new Democratic voters satisfied to stay home and not even vote, because of their hard feelings over the primary? Will superdelegates really ignore what Obama has accomplished to buy into the argument that the candidate who won fewer delegates is actually the stronger candidate against the Republicans? All these scenarios are possible, but only in the way a perfect storm is possible. Right now the weather favors Democrats, and all serious Democrats know it.

It is also not such good news for Republicans that whichever candidate wins the Democratic nomination is going to be tougher, better funded, and more ready to fight like hell than previous nominees have been, with more states in play. The primary has been like a gladiator camp, and both candidates will be alive, determined, and personally engaged against McCain, one way or another, in the fall campaign. It will be very hard for their supporters to stay on the bench, just because of hard feelings. The positions on the issues between Obama and Clinton are just not that different, and George W. Bush will remind them all how high the stakes are when he wades into the fray with clumsy and indefensible arguments like his recent appeasement attack. McCain cannot energize the GOP base without Bush, which will burden McCain more than ever with two terms of baggage.

John McCain’s luck, such as it is, will hit the wall soon. This is an election where Democrats are ultimately going to be happy to be Democrats. And Republicans are going to have a hard time being happy about anything, especially the top of their ticket.

[If you missed it, Part 1 of "O Lucky Man" is right here.]