Staggering New Depths

So John McCain is taking his ball and going home. This is so ridiculous that I don't even want to talk about it, desperate is the word that comes most readily to mind.

After taking a big hit in the latest polls, and probably just being plain unprepared for a debate McCain is just running away, this is like a bad episode of SNL, serious candidates for the Presidency don't run and hide when things get tough, you don't get that option when you are the Commander in Chief.

The instant polls from Survey USA have resulted in a brief upswing in my confidence in the American Public. Pretty much no one wants the debate called off or the campaigns suspended, and a fair number of respondents think we need more focus on the economy, which as McCain has said he really doesn't know a lot about.

The first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama is scheduled to take place in two days. Should the debate be held as scheduled? Should the debate be held, but the format changed to focus on the economy? Or, should the debate be postponed?

Hold as scheduled: 50%
Focus on Economy: 36%
Postpone: 10%

Is the right response to the turmoil on Wall Street to suspend the campaigns for president? To continue the campaigns as though there is no crisis? Or, to re-focus the campaigns with a unique emphasis on the turmoil on Wall Street?

Continue: 31%
Focus on Crisis: 48%
Suspend: 14%

Perhaps as a warm up to standing up the voters by skipping Friday's debate, McCain blew off a scheduled appearance on Letterman last night. Dave was not pleased...


(via TP)

Maybe he snubbed Dave so that he could finally read the Paulson Plan...


(via TPM)

A few other comments on McCain's Roberto Duran impression worth checking out include Salon's Walter Shapiro and Joan Walsh, as well as Ezra Klein. The best reaction so far comes from Harold Meyerson writing in the WaPo:

As his strategists saw it, they had to confine the discussion to a comparison of the character of the two candidates. Alas for McCain, reality intruded over the past week, distracting the public from McCain's stellar attributes as a decisive leader with news of an impending economic collapse. So the task for his managers has been to diminish this new story to just one chapter in the ongoing saga of John McCain, the man who rides to the rescue.

Can McCain pull this off -- persuading the public to forget how he and his fellow Reagan Republicans changed the nation's economic rules in ways that allowed Wall Street to run amok, and refocusing its attention on his decisiveness at this moment of crisis? I doubt it.

Nobody wants McCain to come barging into Capitol Hill, and Obama has promised to fulfill his commitment to speak to the American Public on Friday night, John's gonna be left dribbling by his lonesome.