Three weeks before Election Day, John McCain on Monday is unveiling what his aides call a more forceful new stump speech in which he portrays himself as a scrappy fighter on the comeback trail against an opponent who’s already “measuring the drapes” in the Oval Office.
“The national media has written us off.,” McCain says in excerpts released by the campaign. “Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”
Allies are calling this “hitting the ‘reset’ button” on the campaign, with McCain re-emerging after a long Sunday strategy session with a feisty tack that uses candor and humor, at a time when his rallies have become known for raucous rage and clumsy attacks.
But it’s more like hitting the panic button. McCain is appearing Monday in Virginia and North Carolina — two states that are usually safe for Republicans in presidential races and that he should have put away long ago. But Barack Obama is pouring visits and staff into the former Confederacy, and he has caught McCain in many Southern polls.
Nationally, the Real Clear Politics average has Obama up 7.3 points. A Washington Post-ABC News Poll out Monday morning gives Obama a yawning 10-point lead, while a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll shows Obama up just four points.
"Let me give you the state of the race today,” McCain says in his new speech. “We have 22 days to go. We’re six points down. …
“What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I’ve never been the kind to do it from the sidelines.”
The remarks reflect the graceful cadences of Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime aide and co-author, and suggest that the senator plans to fight without personally going viciously negative in the final days. He can leave that to the television advertisements.
The reference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is part of a new Republican effort to warn voters of the consequences of having one party dominate all of Washington, as Democrats would if Obama won in a landslide that helped his party rack up wider congressional margins.
The McCain campaign is beset from all sides. William Kristol, the influential conservative commentator, has a column in today’s New York Times with the headline “Fire the Campaign” and the lead: “It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign. He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s.”
Over the weekend, McCain advisers said he planned to announce new economic policies, including tax cuts designed to encourage investors to return to the markets. But after a tense strategy meeting on Sunday, McCain had not signed off on any new announcements, to the consternation of some key supporters who said he needs to do more to show a command on the economy, the top issue on voters’ minds.
The third and final presidential debate is Wednesday at Hofstra University, the largest private school on Long Island, N.Y. After that high-stakes encounter moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, McCain’s chances of changing the dynamics of the race dramatically diminish.
Do you think this will change the current tide?
28 comments:
Yes 22 days is a long time but it is not enough time to change the view of a whole nation. I believe that McCain has it already cut out for him there is no possible way he is going to be an underdog out of nowhere and beat Obama. McCain can try to use some of his new economic policies to try and earn a few more votes but truly the race has already ended. There is no doubt in my mind that McCain isn’t a good fighter he’s just not the fighter he once was.
I think that it is time for McCain to let everyone know what he is really doing. He has really danced around the questions of what are his policies. America needs to know what both canidates plans are the election isn't over yet. I also think that McCain should have made his policies known earlier and had done what he needed to do now i think it will be a scramble.
It's hard to say without knowing what McCain has planned for his new policies. As it stands this new plan could set him ahead of Obama, or drop him even further behind. It all depends on how well these plans strike a chord with the voters, and if Obama could mess up with his current momentum.
I think that McCain still has chance in this election, because of the new economic policies he is about to announce. McCain has been doing well in the election in my point of view and I think he could bring things around on the final debate. If the new economic policies he will announce are good enough, then he will get more support and could end up winning the election.
I believe that McCain has come in too late with this great come back plan. Obama has a clear lead, even in a few Republican states, and it would take a lot longer than 22 days for McCain to make all of that up. McCain will be able to collect a few voters with this plan, but he has gone too long with out and Obama already has enough supportive voters on his side to feel comfortable. I believe this is McCain's emergency button so that he feels that he didn't hold back in this election.
"Buckley leaves National Review after Obama endorsement"
Christopher Buckley, the son of conservative icon William F. Buckley, said Tuesday he's resigned from the conservative National Review days after endorsing Barack Obama's White House bid, among the most powerful symbols yet of the conservative discontent expressed this election cycle.
In an online column, Buckley said he had decided to offer his resignation from the magazine his father founded after hundreds of readers and some National Review colleagues expressed outrage he was backing the Illinois senator.
"While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for," Buckley wrote.
"Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case," he also wrote.
The resignation comes four days after Buckley formally endorsed Obama on the Web site The Daily Beast, writing the presidential campaign had made John McCain "inauthentic," and Obama appeared to have a "first-class temperament and first-class intellect."
In a statement posted on the publication's Web site Tuesday, National Review editor Rich Lowry noted Buckley was writing for the magazine on a trial basis, and took his offer to resign with the "warmest regards and understanding" sincerely. Lowry also took issue with Buckley's contention the magazine had been flooded with angry mail over Buckley's endorsement, saying it had received a relatively small 100 e-mails expressing disapproval.
"It's an intense election season and emotions are running high," Lowry said.
Matt Lewis, a contributing writer to the conservative Web site Townhall.com, told CNN the National Review made the right decision in quickly accepting Buckley's resignation.
"While it is acceptable for a conservative to vote for a third party – or to abstain from voting for McCain – no real conservative could cast their vote for Obama," he said. "The conservative movement didn’t leave him, he left it."
No, I do not believe this will close the gap between Senator McCain and Senator Obama. McCain has tried any and every tactic to save himself from all of the critics. This tactic might gain him a point or a few more votes, not enough to save his campaign. It is too far into the presidential campaigning for John McCain to expect a vast change. I do believe the American people have chosen their new president in their own minds. It is not official as of yet, but when the last vote is casted, Obama will be the new President of the United States.
I think that McCain should fire his campaign because he is over matched by Obama. I don't think that he stands a chance right now against Obama. Out of all the debates I have briefly watched Obama seems to be the one dominating and has nothing but good things to say about the future, but he could just be saying that, but i don't think he is.
McCain has lost. Even some Republicans have already realized this and unless McCain has some amazing plan to pull us out of debt (which will not happen) he has literally no chance of winning.
This might but who knows. I mean u never know about politics and what the outcome will be. McCain does need to step up his campaigning a little if he does want to catch up to Obama but its a mystery on who will become our next president.
I think that John McCain really needs to do something extraordinary to gain points in the polls. It is so late in the race, so this will be very difficult to do, especially considering Obama's superior campaigning which is mainly a result of his fund raising. The strategy of the fighting underdog that McCain is trying to evolve is inspiring and definitely the best choice for him right now. He must play this role right now because if he didn't, he would be in danger of losing some of his current supporters who would be thinking that he was just going to take the defeat laying down.
The fundamental differences between the two candidates is astonishing. I'm really nervous about the outcome of this race because so much is at stake! This isn't just about gay rights, or pro-choice issues anymore- this is the entire economic standpoint of our nation, a war, foreign policy, my future.
I just wish I could vote.
I don't think that McCain can win the election he has burried himself too deep, he has made himself look bad by all the negative commercials and mud-slinging.
I agree that Senator McCain needs to bring out all the stops in order to regain the polls. The only problem with trying to play catch up is that he will start to promise things about the economy for example in which may sound brilliant at the time but he may not be able to go thru with his propositions. These next three weeks will be tough on the McCain campaign, yet they need to keep an optimistic look ahead. They are hoping the Obama Campaign begins to slither down before election day.
I think in some ways it could change the tide but in other ways I think that people are gonna stick to who ever they originally planned to vote for. I also think that if McCain's new policies are good enough then it just MAYBE change people's minds.
With how McCain's campaign is going right now, I don't think that 22 days is enough time for McCain to make a "comeback". Palin is probably the only reason that the Republican campaign is moving at all, but Obama has a clear lead ahead of McCain.
I would really like to see what our two candidates are all about. They keep dodging around the questions thrown at them, but why are they being asked? Because the American people would like more insight to their plans. We've heard a lot about their views and how they are going to "bring about the change we need", but this talk of hidden plans doesn't help. These 22 days will be eventful, especially with the two candidates trying to rack up all the support they can get.
It's probably a little late to change anything dramatically but i think the statement that McCain's campaign is strongly over matched by Obama's is an overstatement depending on who you're talking to- this is an opinion. However this new plan may work- it may just have a sweeping effect over the american people, but in reality, at this point in the race, what's done is done. McCain is pushing and campaigning hard for the republican party the only way he knows how and the people's faith in him as a fighter might just be inspired and galvanized or apathetic and uninterested.
I think that its good that McCain is willing to fight for our country, but it really doesnt matter how hard he fights unless he is fighting for the right reasons and if the people want what he is fighting for. Also he says he is fighting for America but he failed to sign off on any of the proposals regarding tax cuts and economic policies. So the polls will probably not change much unless McCain stops just telling us that he is a fighter and actually becomes one
Senator McCain's stump speeches will do nothing to turn the overwhelming tide in this election. As John Stewart pointed out through clips of both speeches, McCain's GOP nomination acceptance speech was strangely similar to this "new" stump speech. He can't throw off this mean ol' man image he's cast across undecided Americans. Senator McCain is going to find out how much his bitter campaigning has come back and bit him in the you know where.
McCain is just trying to save himself with all the new economic policies. Obama just blew him out the water. There's no way mcCain is going to change enough voters minds to beat Obama this election.
It's still hard to tell what the final outcome of the race will be, but it definitely doesn't look promissing for McCain right now. He is going to have to step up his campaign if he wants to catch Obama, but that will be very difficult to do since it is so late in the race. There's only so much more he can do in the time he has left.
I think that we should get rid of the senate and just let the people decide in one big vote.
McCain was already fighting an uphill battle running under the republican ticket. he then chose palin as his VP. again making even more controversy and struggle. and to top that his campaign has been mediocre. he doesnt have enough time to salvage his campaign and has made irriversable and poor dicisions. no campaign stance change can help now.
Nobody really knows who is going to win an election. When it comes down to it, poles are just numbers that reflect what people think, not what they actually do. In this view, his comeback plan could in fact go either way, depending on what it is.
i think that mcCain just messed up more because he is jus doing worse then doing better when obama is winning in the polls and doing better instead of going dowm. mcCain really has to step it up in these next 3 weeks or, if not there goes his chances for president.
I think it would be unwise for the American people to assume that McCain is completely out of the race. There is still time until election day. Don't get me wrong, McCain definitly has ground to make up, but to assume that he has literally no chance of winning is just naive.
Ezequiel Savedra
Period 7th
McCain is trying to do all that he can do in this election. McCain knows that Obama is going to win the Presidential Election. So now all he can do is bargain with the people with lowering down taxes and appointing meeting. McCain is trying to get as many people as he can just so he can catch up or get a head of the game in 22 days. To me all that McCain is doing is trying to brainwash the mind of immature voters but using his past in order to win the people also the voters.
i think we wont know whose gonna win until they reveal who is gonna be president. It can go either way like it does every time there is a presidency campaign.
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