McCain simply isn't as strong a candidate as people seem to think he is. Factors working against him include Bush fatigue, a declining economy, his age, his need to pander heavily to the Christian right, his hawkishness in a year when the public isn't feeling very hawkish, his history of flip flopping for transparently political reasons, and a portfolio of extremely unpopular positions (like privatizing Social Security) that Democrats can make a lot of hay with in the fall. What's more — and go ahead, call me an optimist — I suspect that at some point there's going to be a press backlash against McCain. His media image is a bubble, sustained by a sort of childlike faith, and once that faith starts to wobble — something that may already have started — the bubble is likely to pop. Before long, I suspect that a lot of reporters are going to start recognizing his faux openness as more faux than open.
As Drum notes as well, the Democratic primary needs to end sooner rather than later in order to capitalize on these fundamental weaknesses but the weaknesses are there and they are prominent.
1 comment:
Not to be a skeptic, BUT, likely the Democrats again will NOT exploit his weaknesses just as we did NOT exploit the many weaknesses of the current adminstration BOTH times we had to cut them to the quick...
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