The election is still a month away, but Robert Stacey McCain, a conservative, is performing the first post-mortem of the McCain for President campaign:
Yesterday, when the news hit that Team Maverick was pulling out of Michigan, I did not hesitate to state the only possible meaning of this news: Game over. Obama wins on Nov. 4.
If you’ve got any InTrade futures on McCain (now trading at 34%), sell them immediately for whatever you can get, because they’re not worth a nickel.
As drastic and premature as that conclusion may seem, it is defensible, if you have carefully followed the course of this campaign. This is not “panic” or “quaking in your panties,” as the commenter Nermous said and, contrary to what one Kossack commenter suggested — yes, I got cited at DKos — this is not: “When things get tough, they begin to eat their own.”
However colorfully vituperative my language might be, I am trying to report an objective fact. When it becomes clearly obvious to me that a candidate has lost an election, and I see the possibility of being the first to report this fact — a scoop! an exclusive! — I’m not going to keep my mouth shut just because the guy has an “R” beside his name. (Which, through a fantastic genealogical coincidence, just happens to be my name, too.)
McCain (the blogger) cites a number of reasons why McCain (the candidate) is in such trouble at this point including the fact that the electoral map has never been in his favor and his surrender in Michigan is a sign that it is about to get even more difficult to put together the 270 Electoral Votes needed to win.
But the biggest problem for John McCain, is the position he took on the bailout:
I consider the bailout to be a travesty, but even if you believe the bailout is The Right Thing To Do, it’s just bad politics to jump in on the unpopular side of a controversial issue six weeks before an election, especially in such a flamboyant manner as McCain did last week.
Yep, that’s about right.
Can John McCain still pull out a victory here ? Yea, it’s possible but it’s becoming less and less likely as time goes on and if something doesn’t change by the time the last Presidential debate ends on October 15th, then it may be time to say hello to President Obama.
