Trailing in a raft of polls with barely a week to go for the November four showdown, the Republican nominee for the Presidential election has vowed a comeback even if many political analysts have essentially come to the conclusion that it is a lost cause for the Arizona Senator.
Coverage: US Elections 2008
The McCain campaign is taking some comfort in the fact that a small element of surveys is showing the race tightening and not anywhere close to the 13 to 15 point margin in favour of the Democratic front runner Senator Barack Obama.
And at a time when Senator McCain is seen to be distancing himself from the present incumbent George W Bush and reaping some benefits out of the decision, the Arizona politician has said that he shares a common political philosophy with the Republican Party and has stood up to not only against President but also the Grand Old Party.
Participating in Meet The Press programme on Sunday, McCain said, "Those polls have been consistently showing me much further behind than we actually are. It all depends on the voter turnout model. Everybody gets bored except for us junkies about the process. We are doing fine. We have closed in the last week. We continue this close through next week, you're going to be up very, very late on election night.
"We are very competitive in many of the battleground states, and I see these polls ranging from a 3-point gap, today in Zogby, to your 11-point one. And they're all over the map; and obviously, I choose to trust my senses as well as polls. And I've been in a lot of presidential campaigns, usually as the warm-up act or, you know, one of those things. And I see intensity out there and I see passion," he added.
Senator McCain sought to play down the impression that somehow at the tail end of the campaign of 2008 he is coming out swinging against President Bush.
Commenting on President Bush's policy in Iraq he said, "The fact is I am not George Bush. The fact is that I was not popular within my own party. The fact is that when I said that we were failing in Iraq and we were going to lose, I was criticized by Republicans.
"The fact is when I did campaign finance reforms with Russ Feingold, I was opposed by my own party and my own President. So, do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course," Senator McCain said.
"I have stood up against my party, not just President Bush, but others; and I've got the scars to prove it, including taking up, with Ted Kennedy, immigration reform, knowing full well that that was going to hurt my chances in the primaries. So I could go down a long list of issues with you," he added.
"Do I respect President Bush? Of course I respect him. But I pointed out we were on the wrong track in a whole lot of ways, including a $10 trillion deficit, including saying we got to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and propose legislation to try to fix it before that triggered the housing collapse, including today when I'm saying they should be going out and buying up these mortgages and giving people mortgages that they can afford rather than bailing out the banks," Senator McCain said.
While the Arizona Senator and his running mate Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska have refused to throw in the towel until voters have had their say on November four, a good many analysts, including conservatives, have come to believe that the 2008 Presidential election is basically over for it is difficult for Senator McCain to stage a comeback as he has a 'steep hill to climb'.
And that steep hill has to do with not only holding on to what he has but Senator McCain wresting back such Republican strongholds as Ohio, Virginia and Indiana, which are now being posted on Senator Obama's win column.
"In order for McCain to win, he's got a very steep hill to climb. He's got to win all of the toss-up states, 64 electoral votes. Then he needs to strip away Ohio and Indiana with 31 electoral votes to get him to 252. And then he needs to either win Colorado and Virginia, which gets him to 274, or win one of them plus Pennsylvania, which would get him to 282 or 286. It's a steep uphill climb," said Karl Rove, the 'architect' of President Bush's electoral wins in 2000 and 2004.