McCain 'suspends' campaign, 10 days late.

[SirNitram]

Earlier today...

At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.

The two men seeking to be president briefly put down the hachets, call for calm heads and real solutions, urging the Congress to get it's proposals finalized and on the table. It would have been a historic moment, an act that the D.C. Press would openly masturbate to for how 'post-partisan' it was.

Then reality struck.

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night's debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

Hold the phone. Obama says they should make a joint statement. McCain agrees. Then, after months of 'The reason I hit him is because I love him.. Er, the reason I use sleaze attacks which would look out of place in any other election, is because he won't debate me', he wants the debate off, the campaigns to stop, and to rush into Washington. 48 hours ago, he was blowing this off, insisting he would outline his solutions on the campaign trail and not making any signs of voting. After all, he's not voted in the Senate since April 10th.

E-mails from the Obama campaign say they are inclined to let the debate go forward. While it is unlikely, I'd like Obama to say 'Okay. Let's go to Washington. We'll go out onto the Senate floor, and we'll debate the economy.'.

Like I said, 48 hours changed this. What changed in forty eight hours? New polls that put McCain at least three points down in all the Nationals.

[SirNitram]

Link

(CNN) — McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there's no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

Graham says the McCain camp is well aware of the position of the Obama campaign and the debate commission that the debate should go on as planned — but both he and another senior McCain adviser insist the Republican nominee will not go to the debate Friday if there's no deal on the bailout.

'VP debate? No, no. NOT IMPORTANT. Ignore the fact I have recurring skin cancer and am 72 years of age, and crippled for life. Ignore my health problems. The world seeing the VP is NOT IMPORTANT.'

[Derek Thunder]

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/ ... 44065.aspx

From NBC's Chuck Todd
If there's no deal before the debate, McCain is staying in Washington, period, a McCain senior adviser tells NBC News.

That said, they are committed to having the first debate in Oxford, Miss., and committed to having all the debates in the cities as planned, even adding a town hall or two if Obama wants to do that as well.

[LadyTevar]

From Countdown with Keith Olberman:

Senator McCain was supposed to appear on David Letterman tonight, but called him personally to cancel. The Senator was going to be leaving for Washington to join the Senate Debates.

However, while David Letterman is doing his afternoon taping, he finds that Sen. McCain *is* still in NYC, taping an interview with Kate Couric in the same studio! Letterman manages to get a live feed on the interview, and proceeds to mock it on his show, including a final question: "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride to the airport?"

The Letterman show airs tonight, check your local listings.

[SirNitram]

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/ ... 44065.aspx

From NBC's Chuck Todd
If there's no deal before the debate, McCain is staying in Washington, period, a McCain senior adviser tells NBC News.

That said, they are committed to having the first debate in Oxford, Miss., and committed to having all the debates in the cities as planned, even adding a town hall or two if Obama wants to do that as well.

McCain, weathervane that he's always been, has realized there will be a deal very quickly unless his arch nemesi, the social conservatives in the House, try to screw him up. Naturally, he makes a big statement like this, rolling the dice that people care more about him sternly walking in there, presumably to wag his fingers and tell them to 'Cut the bullshit', than whether they notice it was almost a done deal beforehand.

[frigidmagi]

Dude dissed Lettermen. Holy Shit dude what a fuck up. McCain I think just swallowed a bullet traveling at high speed.

[Cynical Cat]

Dude dissed Lettermen. Holy Shit dude what a fuck up. McCain I think just swallowed a bullet traveling at high speed.

Considering the Letterman is known to be a supporter of right wing causes, McCain fucked up big time. He would have gotten a respectful hand job from Letterman and he could have sold himself pretty well on the show. Instead he canceled on him and pissed him off.

[General Havoc]

There's so many aspects of this situation that McCain is or has been fucking up... I wonder what the hell he's thinking? Ditching Letterman to hold another interview in the same building, and lying to Letterman about why?

I mean, where the hell are McCain's handlers? Are they all really that stupid?

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[rhoenix]

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I know, a part of me almost hopes he'll be Darth Cheney 2.0 or something, and come out in November cackling evilly as he proudly proclaims that all these were mere distractions to draw attention away from his new, and fully operational Death Star.

But more seriously, I'm beginning to think the Republicans just tossed a sacrificial lamb up for their side in regards to McCain, as in all his antics seem generated to make sure the Republican base still has a pulse, up to and including his choice for VP.

[SirNitram]

The Atlantic reports..Link

John McCain's vow to return to Washington and get this mess settled out has lit a fire under the behinds of Democratic negotiators who worry that his presence will suspend their negotiations, give House Republicans a figure to rally around in opposition to a compromise, and generally weaken their negotiation position.

That's why they're scrambling to have a compromise in place before the 4:00 pm ET meeting with President Bush at the White House. If they do, then they only need worry about McCain's claiming credit for the sense of urgency, which would be inaccurate but hard to disprove. The fact is that, by 2pm yesterday, the House and Senate Democrats had settled their most important differences, the White House had caved on CEO pays, and the two sides were coming close to dealing with the bailout's oversight mechanism, its posture toward homeowners, and whether taxpayers would get ownership stakes in taken-over companies. Then McCain airdrops in --well, he's not actually in DC yet, so it was a virtual airdrop -- and it compresses the timeline even more.

My colleague Nora McAvalnah tells me that sources close to Senate Democratic leadership
now fear that McCain's true motivation for calling off his campaign and coming back to DC is simply to cast a "no" vote against the bailout, despite his private statements to the contrary. And it's a smart maneuver: nothing says "maverick," like voting against Bush and
standing with the American public, who remain very wary of the proposal.

McCain is going to politicize this even more, so everyone wants this shit done.

[SirNitram]

So it turns out there was no suspension. Still campaign events. Still interviews. Still taking money. Still airing ads. The suspension added up to bailing on Letterman.

And now, some WTF.



Puny mortals we are, our relentlessly linear view of time clearly is wrong here.