Madame President? John McCain says Hillary Clinton would win the White House if the 2016 election were held today

Self-described 'Maverick' Senator John McCain is making waves with his defeatist statements about how formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton will be as a presidential candidate, predicting that she would win if the 2016 election were held in 2014.
'I would bet, my friend, as much as I hate to admit it,' McCain told Piers Morgan during his Thursday night CNN broadcast, 'that right now – this is why we have campaigns – but right now, if the election were tomorrow, Hillary Clinton would most likely be the president of the United States.'
The Arizona pol and 2008 Republican presidential nominee was responding to comments from Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, who told a columnist that Americans weren't ready for a female president – at least not as much as they were eager to elect an African-American.

John McCain told Piers Morgan that as much as he hated to admit it, Hillary Clinton would win the U.S. presidency if the 2016 election were held now

Michele Bachmann caught flak nationwide for saying that civil-rights '€˜guilt' was behind Barack Obama'€™s election victories, and that women couldn'€™t play the same card in politics

'I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt,' the 2012 GOP presidential hopeful said.
But 'people don't hold guilt for a woman,' she explained.
McCain said he wasn't eager to prove Bachmann wrong – Clinton 'wouldn't be my candidate,' he insisted – but pointed to congresswomen and female governors and senators as evidence that female politicians could climb to the top.
The Arizona senator and one-time Vietnam POW also raised eyebrows on Thursday with a declaration Barack Obama's handling of Russia and the Ukraine proves he's 'the most naïve president in history.' 

Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic front-runner for president, trying to break the ultimate political glass ceiling for U.S. women -- a feat that Bachmann couldn't pull off in 2012

McCain chuckled when Morgan asked him what he thought of tea party Rep. Bachmann's view that Americans weren'€™t ready for a female president, saying, ' It's a free country!'

Russian President Vladimir Putin has 'played us, so incredibly,' McCain said on KFYI, a Phoenix radio station.
'The naïveté of Barack Obama and John Kerry is stunning,' he charged.
McCain recalled an open-mic moment from March 2102 in which Obama was heard telling Dmitry Medvedev 'Tell Vladimir if I’m re-elected, when I’m re-elected, I’ll be more flexible.'
He also said he disagreed with Obama’s comment this week that America's approach 'is not to see these [uprisings in the Ukraine] as some Cold War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia.'
'The president doesn’t think it’s a chess game. Certainly Vladimir Putin does,' said McCain. 'Putin wants a restoration of the Russian empire.'

DM