True to my namesake on this site, I was fired up a couple of days ago to write a diary about different approaches to defeating McCain. I had a massive philosophical treatise in my head What can we do? What should we do? Could we become a left wing noise machine if we aren't careful? Is it ethical to point out telling resemblances McCain has to anime characters?
But then the lobbyist story came out...and then I heard about the FEC trouble and I wondered, what's the use? John McCain has practically written the handbook on how we're to defeat him.
Is there any way McCain can hope to even come close to victory in November? I mean, what is the man known for? He's a maverick, right? But what constitutes his maverickness?
He's against torture...which is a good thing considering he was tortured. Yet he just recently voted against a bill that would prevent the CIA from using water boarding and other illegal interrogation techniques. Confront him with that fact over and over, and he starts to look like he's compromised his principles to make the right wingers happy. I was considering a really snarky post where I'd take his biography from wikipedia and replace every mention of torture with "enhanced interrogated" but what's the point? A monkey could destroy him for his vote for torture here.
He supports campaign finance reform yet the real story, once you get past the sex issue with Vicki Iseman, which is a bad alley to go down, you get to the real point being McCain, nearly a decade after the Keating Five scandal, still has issues with helping out lobbyists.
To add to this problem, he's played fast and loose with FEC rules over public financing laws in a way that could be easily framed as McCain attempting to defraud the government. And now that the FEC is calling him on it, he's said he'll ignore the FEC and spend as he likes.
What else is he known for? Immigration reform right? Of course he doesn't like to talk about that now. Obama even co-sponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act which McCain introduced. But only Obama is allowed to talk about it now. McCain was for that bill before he was against it.
I'm trying to really hate McCain enough to let my Rovian brain think of ways to tear into him...but I just feel sorry for the guy. I don't need political spin to already see him as a well meaning man who let his principles get compromised so often they became subverted by his desire to be the nominee. A warrior so caught up in the battle, he forgot what he was fighting for.
So that's it. The election is pretty much settled, as far as I'm concerned. I'll still be pushing for the democratic candidate to win, but I just can't work up the enthusiasm to be nasty about it. Who knows, if he starts flinging mud at Obama enough, I might get more interested, but for now I stand watching McCain's campaign slowly dissolve, doubting he can regain initiative for a moment this electionl.