McCain’s desperation
By Nick Ragone | Related entries in News
With a month to go, John McCain is in big trouble.
On Friday, he pulled out of Michigan, and in most of the key battleground states — Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio — he’s now trailing. Just three weeks ago, he was tied or leading in every one of those states.
The financial chaos and bailout news has certainly hurt him, as has Sarah Palin’s horrendous interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. It formed a kind of perfect storm of crappy news for McCain, and completely changed the trajectory of the election.
With 30 days to go, can he catch up?
I suppose it’s mathematically possible, but no candidate in history has come from 7 points down (the latest Gallup poll) this late in the election.  At this point, there are only two ways McCain can make this a contest again.
First, if Obama stumbles — badly. Hugely. Says something so insanely off-the-mark in one of the debates, or has another “cling to guns and religion” comment on the campaign trail, that it dominates the news cycle for a week. Obama proved in the primary that he is capable of mega-gaffes, but the odds of it happening this late in the game grow slimmer and slimmer every day. The McCain camp shouldn’t be counting on this.
Second, if there is a blockbuster “October surprise” revelation about a week before election day. My guess is that it would have to involve a another Reverend Wright tape, or maybe something to do with Tony Rezco.  Those are the two “negative narratives” for Obama that resonate, and if the McCain camp has any new dirt on either, look for them to drop it about a week out.
Short of that, I’m not sure that McCain can close the gap. Even if he and Palin are on message for the remainder of the campaign, too much damage has been done over the past three weeks. It’s now Obama’s to lose.
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October 4th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Or, with a helpful assist from GWB, an invasion of Iran in the second half of October…
October 4th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
[...] Desperate after seeing their precipitous drop in the polls, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin have decided to go relentlessly negative for the last month until Election Day. They are essentially conceding that their proposals to continue and extend the Bush administration’s policies are so unpopular that they can’t talk about them truthfully anymore. Instead, they’ll be telling lies about Senator Barack Obama. [...]