Thursday, October 23, 2008

??? McCain skipping his own election night party ???

UPDATED

I hardly know what to make of this.

John McCain reportedly does not plan to address his supporters in person on election night. He will make a statement to a small group of reporters and have his remarks "piped in" to the campaign event at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.

John McCain's election night watch party might be missing John McCain. Instead of appearing before a throng of supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4, the Republican presidential nominee plans to deliver postelection remarks to a small group of reporters and guests on the hotel's lawn.

Aides said Thursday that the arrangement was due to space limitations and that McCain might drop by the election watch party at some other point.

McCain's remarks will be piped electronically into the party and media filing center, aides said. Only a small press "pool" — mostly those who have traveled regularly with the candidate on his campaign plane, plus a few local Arizona reporters and others — will be physically present when he speaks.
What particular brand of jerk is this guy?

McCain's inability to conceal his contempt for Barack Obama has been a consistent feature of this campaign. It's not pretty, but it is understandable on some level.

This kind of dismissive contempt for his own supporters is something else altogether. What would explain this?

Does he blame them for his imminent loss? Is he planning to shun them on election night win or lose? And if so, why would you telegraph the move 12 days out? I can't imagine this news is much of a morale booster for McCain volunteers in, say, Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania, where the ground game is his only real chance to win. If the folks who have given McCain their blood, sweat, and tears lose their motivation to do that, he might as well wrap it up today and head back to Sedona.

UPDATE

John Harwood told Olbermann tonight that the McCain campaign claims the AP got the story wrong - that McCain does plan to be at the party.



Now, I wouldn't expect the AP to take this sitting down if they did not, in fact, get the story wrong. Those details were quite specific. I don't know how you get that wrong without just making stuff up.

If the McCain campaign is just trying to backpedal away from a PR disaster by throwing the AP under the bus, this could be the beginning, rather than the end, of a very painful moment for McCain.

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