Charlie Black, a longtime Republican operative and senior adviser to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), said Friday he would be “surprised, not shocked” if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) were to win the Democratic nomination.

Black, speaking to a group of reporters at a lunch hosted by The Christian Science Monitor, said the McCain campaign views Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as the front-runner for the nomination, but they are still prepared to run against either candidate.

The McCain adviser noted that he thinks “something dramatic will have to happen” for Clinton to win the nomination.

“Arithmetic is arithmetic, and he has got a significant lead in delegates,” Black said. He added: “I don’t know what she has up her sleeve.”

Despite that analysis, Black referred reporters to his refrain: “Never count a Clinton out until they’re out.”

Black said if Obama wins, McCain will be well-positioned to win over Hispanic voters and blue-collar Democrats who have largely been supporting Clinton throughout the primaries.

He added that Obama’s struggles with blue-collar voters have “been there way pre-Rev. Wright.”

“That’s a trend that has been there for a while,” he said.

Black noted that the McCain campaign is already doing research on blue-collar, conservative Democratic voters, but he conceded they would be slightly more difficult to win over if Clinton wins the nomination.

“Sen. Clinton, it appears, would hold the Democratic coalition better,” he said.

Black said if McCain can pull 20 percent of that demographic, “he wins.”

He declined to offer any specifics about where McCain is in the selection process to pick his running mate except to say that the senator is looking at names and he likely won’t ask someone to lead a search committee as candidates have in the past.

“I think he’s the chairman of the selection committee,” Black said of McCain.

When discussing McCain’s age, however, Black did draw a comparison to President Ronald Reagan’s run in 1980.

“The day that he picked George [Herbert Walker] Bush [for vice president], the age issue pretty much went away,” Black said.

Black also stressed that Democratic efforts to tie McCain to the current President Bush will fail because of McCain’s “maverick” reputation. That point was undermined slightly by Black’s tie, which was from Bush’s inauguration and covered in little W's.

“John McCain will not fail to win because of George W. Bush,” Black said. “If we lose, it will be because of something else.”