McCain's cooked. He missed his last best chance to overtake Obama. Had he voted against the bailout, he could have come out on the same side of the election's biggest issue as the vast majority of Americans, AND put Obama in the uncomfortable position of voting for a drastically unpopular Bush proposal. A "no' vote could have instantly demolished Obama's "Bush clone" attacks, made McCain's "maverick" appeal more believable, shored up his base, and appealed to many swing voters.
Instead, he fell in line with Bush AND Obama. In doing so, he gained no points with the undecideds. His base, which was temporarily enamored/deluded with the Palin selection, felt betrayed. And no one takes his earmark veto threats seriously now that he voted for this disaster.
McCain might have pulled it off had he voted against the bailout. Then he could hit Obama with a lot of "I told you so" now that it's not working. Personally, I think he was afraid that if he voted against it, the Republicans would have fallen in line with him, and it would have failed. Then Obama could do the "I told you so" thing against him, when the economy didn't rebound.
By voting for the bailout, McCain screwed up three different ways. First, because you can't play it safe when you're behind. Second, because you don't want to vote for something supported by only 7% of the population. But most importantly, because voting "no" would have been the right thing to do.
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2 comments:
This article is really good too. You really should see about sending some of this stuff out to see if you get any bites.
Yep, he is done for. I don't understand these people who are so hell-bent on keeping Obama (once again, usually the same ones who do not know the difference between Muslim and terrorist) out of office that they will support someone like McCain. Unfortunately, there is no good candidate in this election, at least not in my opinion. I'm sure it will be "the lesser of two evils" for a lot of people....or they could be savy and just vote Ron Paul.
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