I think it is impossible to say whether or not Romney ran a better campaign than McGovern or Goldwater. But that isn’t important either. The point is that Romney ran a really bad campaign. The one issue were he was to the right of the rest of the field in the primary was immigration. His stance on immigration, his personality and his comments about “the 47%” meant that he wasn’t going to do any better among Hispanic voters than McCain did. He might have been able to overcome this problem by doing better with white voters, but a lot of white working class voters didn’t turn out for a man who increasingly seemed like an inept plutocrat. These voters might have disliked Obama, but they didn’t care for Mr “I bet you 10 000 dollars” either.
McCain on the other hand played his hand of bad cards very well. Facing an opponent who walked on water, and an unpopular incumbent from his own party in the White House he had closed in Obama's lead by the early fall. If it weren’t for the financial collapse and the whole Palin debacle, McCain could have won.
I don't think McCain was going to win, but it probably would've been closer without the financial collapse.
