What then does McCain’s decision to stop running ads in the state — an all but certain concession that he cannot and will not win it in November — tell us about his candidacy?
First, that the damage done to McCain at the national level by the bailout of Wall Street is being mirrored in the states too. Since the third week of September, five polls have been released in Michigan; Obama had leads of seven, five, six, nine and thirteen points — bringing his average overall edge in the state to 48 percent to 44 percent. “The numbers have been bad in Michigan for some time,” a Republican official told the Post’s Mike Shear.
But, it’s clear from looking at the trend lines that polling was getting worse in the Wolverine State as the focus turned more and more to the economy. The economic hard times in Michigan are as bad as any in the country; the continued collapse of the auto industry has ground the Michigan economy to a virtual halt.
It’s not just the poll numbers it’s also the trend — Obama’s leads increasing rather than stopping or shortening. This decision also has to do with faltering campaigns in swing states that were critical in the last two election cycles. McCain has to concentrate on defending the 2004 map and key states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and Ohio that are slipping out of his favor. Both FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics currently project electoral maps heavily in Obama’s favor, with critical states trending toward Obama. McCain has to have all those states to have a chance to win. Obama has many other options, and taking just one of those states could be decisive.
With the vice presidential candidates set to square off today in their only scheduled debate, public assessments of Sarah Palin’s readiness have plummeted, and she may now be a drag on the Republican ticket among key voter groups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Tonight’s heavily anticipated debate comes just five weeks after the popular Alaska governor entered the national spotlight as Sen. John McCain’s surprise pick to be his running mate. Though she initially transformed the race with her energizing presence and a fiery convention speech, Palin is now a much less positive force: Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her.
Just the other day, with the kind of foresight that led him to declare the economy “fundamentally sound” just before a market collapse, McCain insisted “I think the American people have overwhelmingly shown their approval” for Palin, excepting the “Georgetown cocktail party” circuit.
Either McCain is once again badly out of touch or the Georgetown party circuit has become rather vast.
Right Blogostan isn’t very confident about Palin’s ability to hold up in tomorrow’s debate. They’re already making excuses in advance for Palin’s Fail, with Fraulein Konzentrationslager leading the charge.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.
The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.
Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.
“I’ve never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I’m not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn’t want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”
McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.
“That’s not leadership. That’s watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause.
Leadership is taking credit for the non-achievements of others who actually worked hard at a problem and had a shot at solving it until Johnny McBigmouth flashed back into town and injected politics into bipartisan negotiations.
McCain is such a fucking Maverick he claims credit not only for things he had little or nothing to do with, but also for things that never happened.
More on McMaverick’s awesome leadershippery: Not a single member of Arizona’s House Congressional delegation voted in favor of the bailout bill McCain claimed to champion.
More Awesome McCain Leadershippery! After taking credit for engineering the compromise that failed primarily because House Republicans — and every member of McCain’s own delegation — voted against the bailout bill, McCain shows leadership by having his campaign blame the other guy!
Nothing says “leadership like “The Buck Stops Over There!”
In his first public appearance since Friday night’s debate, McCain said Democrat Barack Obama advocates tax-and-spend policies that “will deepen our recession,” and voted against funding for equipment needed by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just 12 days ago, McCain maintained that the fundamentals of our economy were sound, and denied that we were anywhere near a recession. If he had clue one about economics, or was even capable of truthfully recounting Obama’s proposals, he might have a little more credibility.
In the early days of the economic crisis, McCain seemed uncertain how to react. His first response was to say the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Then he backtracked, saying the workers form the foundation of the economy and they are strong. Then he called for a blue-ribbon commission to study the root causes of the debacle on Wall Street. Then he called for the ouster of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, with each shift drawing ridicule from Obama.
But now he’s back to basics: lying about Obama’s tax proposal and claiming Obama’s economic proposals, which he doesn’t understand, will make the recession, which he not only doesn’t understand, but which up until recently he didn’t believe existed, worse.
But we can trust him because, you know, he’s so maverick-y. Or so he keeps on telling us.
Ben Smith at Politico, quoting Howard Kurtz, “the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.”
There’s been a certain amount of pop sociology in America … that Sarah Palin’s inability to frame a single coherent thought and McCain’s total disconnection from economic reality coupled with wildly erratic statements and actions regarding the economy have hurt his campaign. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. McCain’s mastery of economics and Palin’s intelligent eloquence have always been the strengths of his campaign.
Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.
Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.
Sixty-six percent of uncommitted voters think Obama would make the right decisions about the economy. Forty-two percent think McCain would.
Forty-eight percent of these voters think Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq. Fifty-six percent think McCain would.
And FiveThirtyEight reports this snippet from the internals of the CBS Poll:
EDIT: The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on “understanding your needs and problems” before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on “prepared to be president” to a +21.
