I can barely believe what I’ve just seen. John McCain, more or less, seethed and blinked his way to certain political ignominy. John McCain wanted to get Hillary Clinton’s voters the whole time, and tonight he blew that apart with his meltdown – and totally ghoulish – response on abortion and women’s health. He wanted to change the perception of voters of him as an angry, erratic and – dare I say it – grumpy – old man, and instead he could barely contain his anger and derision.
The Obama campaign dared McCain to continue his fearmongering, nonsensical attacks on Ayers and ACORN, and McCain dutifully tried those avenues, only to lose the moment to Obama’s calm and unflappable explanation of why those attacks are nonsensical and also, possibly, why no one cares about them. Even his big zinger line – that he isn’t President Bush, and that if Obama wanted to run against Bush he should have done so four year ago – fell flat, and then was visited with absolute destruction by Obama about a minute later. Incredibly, even FOX News is running Obama’s rejoinder paired with McCain’s line.
McCain not only lost this debate, he was directly manipulated by the Obama campaign into believing that non-issues are what he should talk about. Not only is McCain wrong about almost everything: his campaign’s character attacks against Obama, the primary driving force behind everything they’ve done since they picked up Sarah Palin – have now been turned to Obama’s advantage by a much more skillful political operation.
McCain said often tonight that voters are angry, and the base that shows up to his rallies and forwards emails from thenewdumb.com about how Obama is a terrorist is actually angry, as they have shown us. But I think the angriest person that will vote for John McCain is John McCain, and you can see it on his face, as he rolls his eyes and grits his teeth and turns in the most petulant, teen-aged, surly performance I’ve ever seen in a national debate. Or even in national politics.
George Bush took the stage against John Kerry four years ago in a series of debates, and when he would stammer out his talking points, half of the country would say, “Wait, what kind of crazy bullshit was that?” and the other half of the country + 1 percent or so would either say “Awesome.” or “I’m not sure what that’s about, but I like ol’ George. He’s likable. I’d like to have a beer with him.”
After this campaign, the polls are telling us that Senator John McCain is not a guy the vast majority of Americans would want to have a beer with. When he glowered through two debates he looked dour and grumpy. Tonight, when he grinned, he looked scary and full of rage. John McCain is wrong on most issues – at least, the ones he has some discernible position on – and the champion of the same kind of economic policies that have damaged our country almost irreparably. More importantly to John McCain, John McCain is mad that John McCain might not get to be president, and that has everything to do with John McCain and very little to do with us, the American people he would be charged with helping and protecting if he managed to win, an outcome now only seemingly possible in an alternate universe in which McCain had conducted himself or his campaign with any degree of respect for what it all means.
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