Posted by Al Giordano - August 10, 2008 at 11:29 am
An audience at the convention of the 1.4 million-member Disabled American Veterans organization ought to bring an easy sale for Senator McCain, no?
Well, no.
Patrick Coolican and Michael Mishak report in today's Las Vegas Sun that the 4,000 disabled vets assembled were largely unimpressed:
The veterans, at Bally's for their national convention, gave him a tepid reception, especially considering McCain's life story...
Just one of 14 veterans interviewed by the Sun after his speech said he is a certain McCain voter, and the nonpartisan group's legislative director expressed concerns about McCain's proposed "Veterans' Care Access Card."...
John Von Schlicher, 87, of Florida, said he will support McCain. Schlicher sharply criticized the Democratic-controlled Congress for not funding VA hospitals. (Spending on veterans benefits will increase 11 percent this year.)
Other veterans, such as James Jewett and Jay Johnson of Texas, expressed misgivings about McCain using the occasion to attack his opponent so fiercely.
Duke Hendershot, a double amputee retired Marine who served in Vietnam, supported McCain's run for president in 2000 but is undecided this year.
"John just isn't the same as he used to be. He's not his own man," said Hendershot, who lives in San Antonio, Texas. "A lot of that has to do with how he's wanted this job so bad for so long that he's tied himself to President Bush."
He said McCain's embrace of Bush, whom Hendershot called a "draft-dodging coward," is even more perplexing because of the rivalry between the two candidates during the 2000 campaign.
Hendershot also criticized McCain for taking swipes at Obama in his speech. "He should have been talking about veterans issues, not his opponent," he said.
By contrast, he praised Obama for keeping his remarks tightly focused on veterans. The Democrat gave taped remarks via video.
Bob Drogan, there for the
Los Angeles Times, drew the same conclusions: "the Arizona Republican's appearance here suggested limits to that appeal."
This is an excellent example of how much of the free advice being offered to Obama (the latest, a stream-of-consciousness screed from the pop star,
Moby, that fails as poetry as well as consultancy) to go more negative on McCain has more to do with the advice-givers' self-indulgent desire for the Democratic nominee to supply them with personal gestalt-on-demand than with the realities of the 2008 campaign.
As you can see from the report out of Vegas, the media narrative about Obama "not closing the deal" is empty by half. McCain is doing an especially poor job of it. All he talks about is Obama, obsessively and - I think this is sinking in with a lot of undecided voters out there (you've just heard it from some veterans' mouths) - enviously.
McCain's TV ads during the Olympic games feature attacks on his rival but they utterly fail to make voters feel more comfortable with their own candidate. If anything, their cringe factor raises doubts about the attacker as well as the attackee. Obama's Olympian ads, by contrast, are issue-oriented, upbeat and introductory.
moreMcCain is running a lousy campaign. Or is the campaign running him?
by organicdemocrat
Sat Aug 09, 2008 at 09:43:23 PM PDT
He wants to be leader of the Free World. But he is not even allowed to use his own cell-phone whenever he wants to. Which BTW is Gold Colored.
We are not talking about some delusional teenager, living in his mom's basement. It is John McCain who lost his ability to chat up his buddies at will. Who has the power to do this to a grown man?
NYTimes Mr. Schmidt has sought to cut down on Mr. McCain’s use of his cellphone and limit the people who have regular access to Mr. McCain in an effort to keep him more focused, advisers said. He has been the impetus for an effort by Mr. McCain to limit sharply his engagements with reporters, the kind of freewheeling encounters that Mr. McCain enjoys — and that helped him charm the news media for years — but that often lead him to veer from his campaign’s message of the day.
So when is Schmidt going to ground McCain? Or take away his gameboy? Now we can see why McCain comes across as a teen bully lashing out at the successful kid in his class. His own people treat him as a juvenile.
<...>
She is talking about managing McCain. Usually the candidate manages the campaign. Here the campaign has a person whose responsibility is to
make sure that the candidate agrees to the campaign's message. So this is the guy who wants to run the country?
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