We all have no shortage of reasons why the McCain campaign didn’t win. But this afternoon I was Holyoke, Massachusetts. Driving through the main street of a once vibrant mill town, now full of boarded up businesses and homes, depression everywhere (admittedly made more dramatic by the miserable rain today), I can’t imagine many people here voted for John McCain. And not because it’s the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. These people need an inspirational leader. They’ll have to take faux inspiration in the absence of a better alternative. America is a great nation that John McCain loves dearly. But he didn’t reach these people with a message of opportunity they could relate to; he had some of the policies that would have helped them mind you, but how were they supposed to know? (As much as I’d like to think the whole world reads NRO . . . ) I think Palin probably began to inspire, but too late to really matter.