Did somebody die, or is this just McCain campaign headquarters?

Absent his knowing something a whole lot of other people don't, McCain appears to be a lost soul.

Sometimes explosively angry and other times mindlessly propagandistic, he seems absent from himself -- not quite "present."

Did you know that every 17 minutes, another staffer abandons McCain headquarters?

My hunch is that his campaign's fundraising totals for the 3rd quarter are not likely to frighten Romney out of the race.

It's hard to run a campaign if you don't have field offices, which cost rent money McCain doesn't have. There's staff, materials, transportation, and phone bills, too.

It would be interesting to know why McCain hopped whole-hog onto the Surge bandwagon, even as some of the most conservative op-ed pages in the country were calling it bad news.

All the polling indicated that the Republicans were in harm's way for 08 owing to their lingering yes-man genuflection to Bush's war. GOP majorities in the House and Senate fell away, largely driven by voters' unease over Iraq.

Had he been a real leader, I think John McCain would have broken more sharply and much earlier than he did with the president.

His support has tanked and his coffers are empty. And the fat lady is doing her warm-up scales backstage as we speak.

he would have been the long-standing loyal opposition to Bush, especially since he was the first man "swift-boated" in the election of '00.

With no apparent dividend.

Agree with you. The Bush campaign in SC in 2000 behaved disgracefully.

There will be no donor in shining armor willing to back what is perceived to be a lost cause.

I just wonder when McCain will suck it up and ride on into the sunset.

pipe Gene Autry out on the patio speakers.

End of the trail for Senator McCain.

And that is not an attack on his age, it is a comment about how that GOP kool-aid can destroy a mind. Once he started embracing * and his policies, McCain lost it all.

issues but I'm getting a wrong number. Some guy keeps picking up and rambling incoherently.

He CLAIMS to be John McCain.

one we see today who looks like a broken man?

I think he completely missed why so many people supported him in 2000. He was the rebel, and people were sick and tired of the status quo in Washington...even then! Unfortunately, he's just anoth casualty of the Shrub regiem!

I preferred (though still would never have voted for) that 2000 John McCain you are talking about.

He was a lot more palatable than this current model.

But that older maverick McCain appears to be long gone and out of stock.

Remember the movie 'Cool hand Luke' After they broke him he would fetch for 'the boss.' McCain appears a broken man. I feel bad for him.

Republican who stood for higher collective principle and not some corrupt and incompetent Republican administration.

But this John McCain these days just isn't that guy. It is sad., yes.

began to lose credibility. If he had stuck to his maverick spirit, he might have garnered more support. However, it appears to me that McCain is suffering from some psychological malady; he seems somewhat unstable in his decisions and his attitudes. He is also a big proponent of this war which is deadly. Pun intended!

kind at work.

Possibly an onset of dementia which may feature some blurring of distinctions.

I have no idea, of course, but there does seem to be something wrong.

McCain had every opening to break from Bush and establish himself as the GOP future boy, but instead decided to endorse sustained carnage in the Middle East.

That's just not smart politics, and could suggest that something more personal is in question about his health.

John McCain could never break with bush because he agrees with him. This is John McCain.

not be some underlying force at work, though.

Not offering proof, just hunching.

McCain's demise in the polls was precipitous.

Yet, when Rove went after his family in 2000 (S.C. push polls about his black adopted daughter and his wife's drug problems), John McChuckles said "well, that's just politics"......then dropped out.

John McCain.

You cite the SC push polls about his adopted daugher -- is she from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh maybe? -- anyway, the Bush campaign behaved disgracefuly.

thats literally all he has left.

People on DU tend to have good famliarity with MoveOn.org but a lot of U.S. voters don't exactly quite have a clue about what it is.

It's not as sizzling an issue with a lot of folks, especially people who don't evn have internet access.

In the past week there were one or two articles suggesting that mcCain had "retooled" his campaign efforts.

But so far I'm not feeling the groundswell of support. Are you?

him in and maybe he did but it sure didn't count for much or last very long.

think you nailed it on his not getting much of a sustained bounce out of it.

Maybe I should wait for the next national poll on that, but I think your analysis is going to be borne out by the facts.

something really, really mind numbingly vacuous comes out. Romney is about as deep as dinner plate.

Maybe he's buying support. He seems able to meet expenses, that's for sure.

He is terribly Chamber-of-Commerce-like.

I thought he might have faded by now, too. But there he is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

Puzzlin' evidence.

human character, sounds like.

:evilgrin:

a look at the real man. The one who narrowly avoided prosecution for helping Charles Keating loot the S&S industry.

That's the REAL McCain.

whipped Dubya in the 2000 New Hampshire primary.

That is the McCain the maverick remarks are talking about. Most of those people, though, haven't seen that McCain in some time.

Iraq appears to be the general reason, and the Senator's ill-advised endorsement of Bush's acceleration of the war the more specific reason.

Had he no choice that was one thing. But he did. And that's the odd swing of the rusty hinge in this case.

short tempered over nothing, getting lost in the back yard, zoned out in the middle of a conversation. I hope it isn't so, but his friends need to help him.

He needs to be in a safe environment.

his family will suffer with him.

But it is a possibility. From afar, I'm unqualified to say and can't see that well into his behaviors, but they appear to me to be the actions (and words) of someone who is not quite himself, not quite in focus, and perhaps recently inconsistent with who he was and how he was just a few years ago.

I don't rule out that he knows something about the Middle East's future that I do not know, and that might account for his stubbornness and intractability on Iraq and the "surge."

Absent that, though, his behavior is either quite odd from a political strategy point of view, or perhaps an onset of dementia.

Agree with you that his friends need to keep an eye out and make sure he's ok. Interestingly, Fred Thompson was a very close associate, friend, and advisor to the 2000 McCain when McCain ran for president against Bush in the primaries. We can all see what ol' Fred's up to.

staff turnover is not a good sign.

rush out the door.

Something not good and not right is taking place.

I was worried 2-3 years ago that McCain would present problems for us in 08 in places like Ohio, where he would appeal to the "Reagan Democrat" voters, and sweep Ohio on the strength of independents and Reagan Democrats.

I'm not worried about it tonight.

hit the headlines.

I would have thought that McCain, of all people, would have made that his number one cause.

It was a righteous concern and he was uniquely positioned to influence meaningful reform.

It would have revived his profile and a defender of those deserving defense, as a fighter, as a problem-solver, as a solutions guy.

And we did hear a bit from him on it. But we didn't hear much.

Instead he went about on the Sunday talk shows pimping Bush's Iraq occupation instead of helping where he could have really made a difference.

traded the family cow for magic beans, and, finding that the beans aren't magic at all, has not enough beans to cultivate and no cow either.

Not a good strategic spot to be in in the fall before the caucuses and primaries.

If McCain's poor judgment is just poor judgment, I respond one way. If it's the outer manifestation of a dementia and his health is in decline, physical or mental, then I respond another.

Barring a fairly amazing comeback, I think someone needs to sit the guy down and talk some retirement turkey.