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Last week, I wrote on the aura of inevitability surrounding Senator Barack Obama's bid for the presidency. I still believe that odds overwhelmingly favor Obama because of the country's momentous desire for change, and because of America's historical tendency to switch parties after a two-term president and punish the party in power during tough economic times.

Indeed, two polls released in the last week, one from Newsweek and the other from The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg, show Obama with a double-digit lead over Senator John McCain. But it's only June, the general election is not until November, the polls are too early on, and politics is no stranger to scandal or candidates who sputter or snap in self-defeat.

So could McCain snatch the prize from Obama's seemingly inevitable rise? McCain faces a political climate unfavorable to Republicans and a formidable fundraiser in Obama, to be sure, but he could pull off a victory in November in a number of different ways. To begin, he could do so on his own merits. McCain benefits from a positive public perception that people seem to grant him by default, irrespective of his party affiliation or policy positions. McCain's service in Vietnam and his experience as a prisoner of war afford him great respect among ordinary Americans. Having served for more than twenty years in Congress, McCain's record as a legislator is marked by a willingness to reject the party line and adopt politically unpopular positions.

It is this "maverick" image that makes McCain particularly attractive to independent voters, who might play the role of tiebreaker in a close contest. McCain could even make a dent in the Democratic voting bloc by wooing those conservative Democrats who think Obama is too liberal. Also, McCain's willingness to support the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq at a time when even some Republicans were calling for a revision of our strategy may yet pay off. The Iraq War still weighs heavily on America's collective psyche, but it appears the surge has made steady and significant progress in reducing violence and cutting casualty rates in Iraq. As such, McCain could come to be viewed as having been right about the war all along.

If not by his own merits, McCain could also win as a result of Obama's missteps. After taking a hard line on the North American Free Trade Agreement during the primaries, Obama now tells Fortune his criticism of NAFTA may have been "overheated and amplified." A flip-flop? McCain and the Republicans will certainly say so. Additionally, Obama’s decision to opt out of public financing for his general election campaign after saying as late as November 2007 that he was a "long-time advocate for [the] public financing of campaigns" will be used against him as well. The charismatic and eloquent Obama will have an easier time talking his way out of the flip-flopper label than the rigid and redundant John Kerry did in 2004, but in the meantime, voters may come to see Obama as a just another politician.

Finally, McCain could win by playing the race card or stoking the politics of fear. In fact, McCain could win with his hands clean by letting Republican organizations and right-leaning political action committees do his dirty work for him. In terms of race, we have by no means seen or heard the last of the inflammatory remarks made by Reverends Wright or Pfleger. Their politically explosive remarks will continue to reign on YouTube and be recycled in political ads as evidence that Obama would promote an African-American agenda if elected. And though we've already seen the photo of Obama dressed in traditional Somali garb, it remains to be seen if paranoid right-wingers can lift their absurd "debate" over Obama’s false Muslim origins from backwards blogs and ill-informed email chains to the pages of reputable newspapers.

As far as the politics of fear are concerned, we got a dose of it this week from McCain's chief strategist, Charlie Black, who said that a terrorist attack at home "certainly […] would be a big advantage to [McCain]." Black's quote, which sounds like a strategist's wish for anything that might bring his candidate success, will only be the first of many attempts to exploit the electorate's fear of terrorism in pursuit of political gain. Sure, it's three weeks into the general election, but we ain't seen nothin' yet.