McCain: I'm desperate. I'm losing. I want a TIME OUT!!!!
Republican John McCain says he's directing his staff to work with Barack Obama's campaign and the debate commission to delay Friday's debate because of the economic crisis.In a statement, McCain says he will stop campaigning after addressing former President Bill Clinton's Global Initiative session on Thursday and return to Washington to focus on the nation's financial problems.
The Republican presidential hopeful called Obama before he made the statement and told him he was going to suspend his campaign, according to a McCain senior adviser.
...in terms of the timing of this move: The only thing that's changed in the last 48 hours is the public polling.
Obama is saying that he sees no reason for a delay. Developing...
Josh Marshall nails it:
Isn't this the campaign equivalent of faking an injury when you're down late in the 4th quarter? Note too that McCain was in the midst of debate prep when he made this decision.Look at what appears to have happened. Obama reached out to McCain privately to agree to a shared set of bailout principles. McCain went off the handle again and tried to use the crisis as a way to call off the debates.
Obama Camp: THE DEBATE IS ON!!!
Obama supporter and chief debate negotiator Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., told MSNBC that "we can handle both," when asked about his reaction to McCain's call to postpone the first debate because of the administration's bailout plan.
UPDATE: Quick poll from SUSA shows that basically nobody agrees with McCain. In short, McCain is not only running the most insulting and desperate campaign in history, it's also intensely stupid.
A president needs to be able to deal with more than one thing at a time.
The Obama campaign said Obama had called McCain around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to propose that they issue a joint statement in support of a package to help fix the economy as soon as possible. McCain called back six hours later and agreed to the idea of the statement, the Obama campaign said. McCain's statement was issued to the media a few minutes later.From Yahoo
This of course, was after his meeting with Mitt. Where was Sarah?
This situation concerns me. We know the Republicans are good at one thing -- theatrics in a campaign. The McCain campaign obviously realized things are going very badly for him, and so they are trying to create stunts to improve his media image. If the Obama campaign doesn't push back on this fast, the establishment media will boost McCain by repeating this fairy tale that he's willing to 'suspend his campaign' (whatever that means) for the good of the country.
Nonsense, of course, but there it is.
The speech about Obama's ties to Freddie and Fannie when Rick Davis was up to his neck in lobbying fees from these entities still goes down in my book as the single biggest example of hypocrisy and cynicism in this whole campaign, but this current gambit gets the top grade for sheer audacity.
This man had better not be elected President.
OUCH
McCain just invoked 9/11 to support his call to delay the debate.
The idea of suspending his campaign and cancelling the debate is an attenpt to stall Obama's momentum and try to regain his credibilty on ecomomic issues.
The presidency is a tough job and you have to multi-task so if McCain can't deal with multi-tasking, perhaps he should not be running for president.
Now the world is falling and only McCain can save it by returning to Washington? Give me a break. Dear John, you aren't president yet, and if this is a preview of a McCain presidency, lurching from desperate maneuver to desperate maneuver, we can't handle it. McCain has had more positions on this economic crisis than the Kama Sutra. This is just one more.
1) however bad the economic crisis allegedly is, it isn't so bad that the voters should be cheated out of a chance to assess the two persons, one of whom will be the President on 1/20/09; and,
2) McCain, with an assist by the worst and least popular President ever, has proven beyond doubt that wherever McCain puts country it isn't first, because politicizing (to the point of dragging in 9/11 like he's Giuliani) the economic crisis is the surest way to signal to the markets that allegedly need stabilizing that the Democratically controlled Congress with a lot of scared Republicans will not cut a deal with Bush.
Even as the financial markets rallied Thursday and Friday, Orszag said, the credit situation was so dire that "short-term lending was virtually shut down."
Still not convinced?
Giordano also watched Fox News Channel so we don't have to and said that they're saying the debate should go on and that the candidates should be able to campaign and attend to the "crisis" at the same time.
I really really hope Obama takes advantage of the opening McCain has given him.
The drivers of this in the Congress will be people like Schumer, Dodd and Frank. Can someone explain to me exactly what value John McCain will bring to this process?
Here was McCain's problem. He was a hoping a bill would be agreed upon, led by the Democrats. Whatever it was, McCain would vote against it, together with some sort of populist line. Easy to do in this case, because unfortunately the right thing to do here is to bail out Wall Street, even though the bankers do not deserve it.
Not a bad plan, but pretty obvious. The Democrats smoked it out and made clear that they would not pass a plan unless McCain voted for it.
Well, if McCain is going to have to vote for a plan -- and he will have to vote for whatever Bush and the Democrats agree to now -- he might as well make it seem like he was a driving force behind it.
Another hail mary. Another reckless tactic. Not for America, but for John McCain.
I just refuse to believe the American people can be so easily fooled.
The guy who a week ago said the fundamentals of our economy remain strong suddenly suspends his campaign and wants to cancel the first presidential debate to deal with a crisis that his vice presidential candidate now says could lead to another Great Depression if not addressed immediately.
One more sign the Republicans are desperate to turn the plain financial meltdown on Wall Street into a Free Market Shock and Awe disaster so they can seize permanent control. Next thing will be declaring martial law and "postponing" the election. Hasn't Bush company been briefing McCain all along (with a token bone thrown to Obama)? Are we being set up for an out and out coup d'etat? Or, is McCain having a seizure and they are trying to conceal it? When was the last time anyone saw the old coot?
This "gun to our heads" Bush politics makes me more convinced that this is a final power grab--an executive coup as noted. We have faced bigger crises before, and real leaders, like Lincoln and Roosevelt, rose to the occasion. McCain is imitating Chicken Little. Very revealing, no?
Nico Pitney asks the same question.
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama rejected Republican Sen. John McCain's dramatic call Wednesday to delay Friday's debate because of the economic crisis."This is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama told reporters.
Obama agreed with McCain on the need for the two men to issue a joint statement of support for legislation to rescue the banking industry, but he declined McCain's call to postpone the debate, scheduled for Friday in Jackson Miss.
"In my mind, it's more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and describe where we want to take the country and where we want to take the economy," he said.
In other words, McCain, you don't even have a pair, but I have a full house.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Jessica Barba, 434-882-4163
Has Virgil Goode Caught the McCain "Debate Ducking" Bug?
September 24, 2008 -- Ivy, VA -- Rep. Virgil Goode appears to have caught the same "debate ducking" bug that has Sen. John McCain calling for a postponement of a scheduled presidential debate. After more than a month of attempts to schedule a debate at Hampden-Sydney College, Rep. Goode is refusing to commit to participating in the debate.
"Rep. Goode has participated in the Hampden-Sydney debate in every past election cycle. Why is he afraid to debate all of a sudden?" said Jessica Barba, communications director for the Perriello campaign. "He said yesterday that he's letting the lobbyists work on the bailout bill, so he certainly can't be 'suspending' his campaign to confront that issue. He has no credible excuse for ducking this debate. His constituents--especially those in Farmville who do not have access to the Roanoke-Lynchburg and Charlottesville news markets--deserve the opportunity to see both candidates debate the issues so they can make an informed choice in November. Mr. Goode does not own this seat; he has to earn it."
Virgil Goode also refused to participate in a debate in Danville sponsored by the Danville NAACP, Danville and Pittsylvania Education Association, Danville Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce, Pittsylvania County NAACP, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
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56% Republicans think the debate should be held as normalInteresting.
51% Democrats think the debate should be held as normal
was the polling really small?