I knew that the McCain campaign was getting desperate but, holy shit, I had no idea he’d go this far off the deep end.
There’s no question that he had a bad day last week with the whole “fundamentals are strong/the financial world is ending” flip-flop. And the whole “no fucking way we’re bailing out AIG/we totally need to bail out AIG” flip-flop. And the whole “I’m fundamentally a deregulator/by God, we need more goddamn regulation” flip-flop. And the whole “Barack Obama has never done anything of consequence in Congress/this is all Barack Obama’s fault” flip-flop. And the whole impulsive “we need to fire the SEC head” gaffe. And the Wall Street Journal is calling him an idiot. And George Will is calling him an idiot.
And then there’s the media completely turning on him and Sarah Palin because he hasn’t had a press conference or press “availability” in over a month and she has been on the ticket for over three weeks and hasn’t had a single unscripted encounter with the press pool on the campaign trail.
Yup it was rough week, alright. But the last couple of days haven’t actually made things better. Particularly since it was revealed that has campaign manager is a corrupt douchebag who has basically been getting bribed by Freddie Mac for the past few years in anticipation of him having a job at the White House.
Oh yeah, and then there’s this:
Washington Post/ABC Poll – 9/24/08
Obama — 52%
McCain –43%
Plus all those other polls, too.
So how does a campaign respond to all this Very Bad Horrible No-Good News? Well, the first thing you do is lob a William Ayres bomb at Obama, accusing him of being involved with corrupt, evil people. Then, before your opponent says, “Oh yeah? Fuck you,” and then pulls out a can of Keating Five Whoop-Ass on you, you say:
Even though it would inject completely interfering and unnecessary political distraction into the whole financial crisis discussions and bail-out contortions that are happening up on Capitol Hill, McCain is suspending his campaign to go to Warshington to sort things out.
That’s right, suspending his campaign. To go back to Warshington to get things all fixed, like on his own all by himself and everything. God only knows why he didn’t do this earlier before shit hit the fan but anyway.
And he wants to postpone the debate two days from now.
And he wants to postpone the vice-presidential debate next week.
That last one, of course, is a crucial reason. The few little moments when Sarah Palin has been seen unscripted lately have shown she’s about a millimeter deep when it comes to foreign policy, domestic policy, economics, and all other topics except killing mooses and wolves and charging rape victims for their rape kits. For example, there’s this brilliant bit of rhetorical awesomeness from that interview today with Katie Couric. Couric had asked her twice about examples where John McCain had EVER supported regulation in the past and Palin bobbed and weaved her way around the question with canned “answers” that were not answers but evasions. Finally Couric kinda had it:
Couric I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.
Palin: I’ll try ta find ya some and I’ll bring ’em to ya.
Clearly they can not have her debating. They know it and they are completely panicking.
Anyway, yeah, so McCain is suspending his campaign and canceled his appearance on David Letterman today. Letterman was filming this afternoon when he found out that McCain hadn’t actually left for Warshington but was five blocks away filming an interview with Katy Couric. He proceeded to go all medieval on him. Satirically- and insultingly-speaking, I mean:
It’s worth watching the whole thing.
And actually, he’s not really actually suspending his campaign. Not today anyway. And not tomorrow either, at least not until later in the day ’cause he has a prior commitment with Bill Clinton.
But still, he IS suspending his campaign. Eventually. You know “Country First” and all that. It doesn’t even matter that Barack Obama tried to form a bipartisan “joint statement on the financial crisis” at 8:30 a.m. Or that he waited and waited for McCain to get back to him while McCain was meeting with former Clinton supporter (and uber-rich McCain supporter) Lady Lynn de Rothschild. Nope, that stuff doesn’t matter at all. Because he is putting “Country First” so just shut up.
There’s a smell that a scared feral animal gets when it’s cornered and sees no way out. It rolls off them in thick, cloying waves that you can almost see.
That terrified animal is John McCain. September 24, 2008 is the day that his campaign officially left the tracks. Those poll number he doesn’t like? They’re going to get a whole lot worse.
I’m just sayin’…
