Hurting. But Far From Broken.

The informed opinion business waits for no man. Or woman.

And it certainly doesn't wait for Clackers on vacation.

Which is why we "worked" (on our vacation) to take a chance encounter in Old Town, Virginia last night and turn it into a "visit" to McCain's national headquarters in Crystal City this afternoon.

And work it did.

Which is how GreenMountainPolitics1 got to spend 2 hours this afternoon wandering around McCain's national HQ "kicking the tires".

(Mostly) unsupervised. Talking to just about everyone. About everything.

Which we consider to be a nice "get" on our part. And, at the very least, we are now more well informed.

Noted: This is (probably) the part where Team McCain reaches for the antacid tablets.

But they need not worry. Because our "deal" with Team McCain, as is our "deal" with every other campaign, is that GreenMountainPolitics1 is only "on the record" when we're jumping up and down screaming "we're on the record".

Not only is "gotcha" journalism bad form. It's also bad for the informed opinion business.

But enough about all that. Let's get into it.

And, to put it very simply, Team McCain has had a terrible last few weeks. Everyone knows that.

It's hurt them. And a lot of folks are still hurting. Bad.

Ink smarter and better informed than ours has been spilled on those stories already.

But John McCain is still standing. Tall.

And so is his (dramatically scaled down) team. Because they believe that they have the best candidate. Which, eventually, the voters will reward.

You see it in their body language when they talk about him. You hear it in the background buzz in the office.

They still believe that John McCain can win. And so do we.

Now, as always, folks are welcome to dismiss our musing on office buzz as "Clacker drinking the Kool-Aid" or "GreenMountainPolitics1 doesn't understand politics worth a damn" or "that guy is an asshole".

That's fine. We've been wrong before.

But so everyone is clear, we're taking quiet notes that we plan to utilize around the middle of this November.

Because John McCain is still standing. It's only July of 2007. And his opponents are Mitt-Flop, the guy from Law and Order and a former Mayor who can only talk about 9/11.

Anyone that thinks this is over is out of their minds.

We're just saying.