McCain Is A Joke

If McCain wins this election, it will only be because the media covered for him while half the population wasn't paying attention. The guy is a miserable candidate.

When I started this blog, a few months back, I figured I'd have to post a few times per week, mainly just to make fun of how old and lame McCain was. The guy is an old coot who doesn't know what the hell he is saying half the time.

But I'm actually shocked by how much material we are getting on this guy. He literally makes at least one gaffe per day, sometimes more. Yesterday he made at least two MAJOR gaffes, the "killing Iranians" joke and the statement that our Social Security system is an "absolute disgrace". I've got a full time job and a social life, it's hard to keep up with McCain's avalanche of stupidity, flip-flopping, and general foot-in-mouth syndrome.

Don't get me wrong, as a Democrat I love it. I hope McCain keeps it up until Election Day, particularly during the debates when more folks will be paying attention. But as an anti-McCain blogger, it is tough to keep up. So for all of my readers (yes, all one of you!), my apologies. If I was blogging full time, this wouldn't be a problem. Tracking McCain's disastrous campaign is literally a full time job.

Anyway, here is the quote of the day, courtesy of Matt Stoller:

McCain is literally the most inconsistent and dishonest candidate imaginable.

Truer words have not been spoken.

McCain's contradictory policies get a devastating close-up at the New Republic:

The larger problem is the contradictory ambitions of the McCain campaign. The candidate wants to stand for "leadership, courage, and choices." Yet he also want to be both a supply-sider and a deficit-hawk. He wants to transform our health care system and Social Security without adding any money to either and without anybody getting hurt. He wants to be a tightwad on spending who doesn't cut any spending anybody cares about. These are impossible policies to explain, because the policies themselves are impossible. No wonder he ends up talking out of both sides of his mouth.

McCain's Iraq position is falling apart.

Both McCain and Obama spoke to a Latino conference yesterday, and Obama won:

McCain's speech felt like your typical rubber-chicken affair. Obama's felt like a party.

McCain's campaign is getting a thumbs down when it comes to coherence or consistency:

There seems to be some fundamental confusion about what McCain's policies are or should be, and also about his underlying principles. On a practical level, you never know precisely how a candidate's positions will be translated into actual policy -- but you can get some general ideas. That doesn't seem to be the case here. We don't know what McCain would actually do if he becomes president. And at least right now, neither does he.

And McCain's joke about killing Iranians with cigarettes is getting bad reviews all around.

His comments on Social Security are also being scrutinized -- and it ain't pretty.

And Josh Marshall is trying to figure out why McCain is such a horrible candidate:

Part of the reason may be that, despite a few of his claims to the contrary of late, I don't think McCain has had many contested races in his political career. I don't know exactly how his first election to the House went. But since he's been in, it's been pretty much smooth sailing. So a lot of this is just new to him.

This brings us back to the question of why McCain seems to suck so much this cycle whereas many people -- even political opponents -- thought he was solid as a candidate in 2000. And when I say 'solid', I mean a candidate whose public presentation was a big part of his attraction.

Inevitably, one part of the explanation is age. A lot happens between 63 and 72. But we also forget that much of the punch of McCain's candidacy was his anger at key segments of the conservative establishment that attacked him for not toeing the line on issues important to the religious right and on tax policy. That was his punch. That got his goat up. But most of his snark lines this season are meant to kow-tow to those same folks. And in any case, his manner seems to say, why am I up here having to do this anyway? I'm John McCain. Who's Barack Obama? Just make me president!

My theory: McCain has had it easy his whole life, save for those few years as a POW. Being the son of an admiral, being a war hero, being rich, being a big shot Senator, being lauded and loved by the Washington media, McCain's ego has simply exploded. I'd say his ego is perhaps as large, if not larger, than George W. Bush's. Bush's ego was mostly self-inflated, he never actually accomplished anything before becoming president. McCain did some worthwhile shit in his early 30s, and since then he's been resting on his laurels and getting praise from everyone around him. He doesn't have the patience to learn the issues, put some energy into a stump speech, get fired up and ready to go. He doesn't think he has to. He's never had to, not in any of his races.

Why should he sort through the chaos of his campaign, the incoherence of his policies, the mixed messages of his ads? The media still loves him, he's still the maverick straight-talker (in his own head), there's no way this young upstart Obama will stay in the lead until the end. Why does McCain suck so bad? Easy, it's cause he doesn't give a shit. He thinks he has it in the bag, and everyone around him should stop worrying their pretty little heads off. Americans will get serious sometime around the end of October and give McCain his due.

McCain might be right, who knows. Things change all the time in political campaigns. But if he doesn't take seriously the next few months, particularly his RNC speech and the debates against Obama, he'll find himself in a hole of blowout proportions and won't have time to claw his way out.