Tag: McCain

There are so many things that have happened in our recent history – things that have changed the world, things that change the definition of destiny, things that change who we think we can be, what we think we can achieve, things that change the boundaries of what is and is not. The West Wing gave us a glimpse of what it could be like. Season 7 took us though the Primaries with Matt Santos the minority candidate and into the general election under the guiding hand of Josh Lyman as they set the stage for Barack Obama and David Axelrod.

The McCain team is feverishly attempting CPR on the lifeless thing that is their campaign. Will the third and last debate provide the super-defibrillator they need?

The possibilities for excitement on stage today all hinge on McCain. To what do you ‘throw the switch’ in these circumstances, in which you are 8-10 points down nationally with 3 weeks to go? Vaudeville won’t help. He’s already tried that with Sarah the ventriloquists’ dummy. Perhaps you say, “We’ve got nothing to lose, let’s go for the goolies.”  If Rove and his ilk are now running things, that is probably what McCain will attempt. Even winning the talking points in the debate is not sufficient for him.

Jesse Jackson lobbed some criticism at Barack Obama resulting in the The New York Times citing the incident as ‘a real generational shift in power and leadership underway within African-American politics‘. In effect, Jesse’s criticism seems to be strengthening Obama’s position in that he is not being embraced by the hard line black political core. While the Jackson/Obama drama had all of the ingredients for a two-day news cycle, John McCain managed to take the talking points when he switched the identity of football teams when recounting his experience during torture in Vietnam, and in doing so raising some interesting questions in the media. On top of this his top economic advisor and National Co-Chair refers to Americans as a bunch of whiners for complaining about an economy that is only in a mental recession. But that’s only scratching the surface of John’s bad week.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow provides a summation of the week that was.