Monday morning Nate Silver suggested, and I strongly agreed, that McCain was planning a "reboot" of his campaign leading into tonight's debate. It boiled down to that he was going to follow Kristol's advice "including some combination of (i) pledging to run a positive campaign; (ii) firing/demoting Steve Schmidt and or/Rick Davis; (iii) apologizing for his campaign's tone."
Clearly I was very, very wrong.
But, I think I know why...
I had assumed that McCain and his advisers were fundamentally rational when evaluating the current state of the campaign. Obviously they were terribly misguided and flawed in their approach to achieving campaign goals, but I thought the were at least looking at the polling and trying to adjust to reality. This is assuredly not true, and it was clearly proven tonight at the debate.
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