First quarter fundraising estimates are pouring in, and it looks like the big loser is...John "Walk Freely Through Baghdad" McCain. Sadly for McCain, $12.5 million ain't what it used to be, especially when your main rivals are raising $21 milliion (Romney) and $15 million (Giuliani). Hell, even McCain's own manager said "we had hoped to do better."Meanwhile, Josh Marshall reports that McCain has now become a laughing stock for his cringe-inducing, "Dukakis-in-a-tank moment" in Baghdad. According to Marshall:
...yesterday here at TPM, David Kurtz referred to the McCain trip to Baghdad as a Dukakis-in-a-tank moment for the once-widely-respected senator from Arizona. And he really hit it on the mark. In fact, with McCain's lackluster fundraising and leaden poll numbers already in place I wonder if it might not become a defining moment.[...]
Politicians can be wrong and successful. But what no politician can handle or sustain is to be ridiculous. And isn't that what we have here? And especially from someone who, at least some seasons ago, some of us had learned to expect so much more from.
Very true. More broadly, McCain finds himself in big trouble for three reasons:
1) He's on the wrong side of the war in Iraq, big time.
2) Social and religious conservatives don't trust or even like McCain. And the Bush people have never really forgiven McCain, despite all of the Senator's attempt to hug, kiss, and make nice, for the bitter 2000 primary.
3) McCain has largely lost the "straight talk express" charm made him successful - to a degree - in 2000. That was McCain's main appeal to independents and even to Democrats like myself. Today, that's pretty much all gone, as McCain toes the party line to an absurd, comical extent in Baghdad and elsewhere.
Can McCain recover from all of these problems and gaffes? And can he do it fast, before one of his rivals leaves him in the dust? Of course, Rudy Giluiani's having his own problems, including headlines like this. And Mitt Romney, despite his monetary success, is pretty much nowhere in the polls (trailing Giuliani, McCain, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich in the the latest Fox News poll. Still, McCain's shockingly weak first quarter fundraising numbers, combined with the "Dukakis in a tank" debacle in Baghdad, call into question his entire candidacy. The question is, how damaged is McCain at this point? Is he essentially finished, or is there still hope for the former front-runner? We'll see, but my betting is that McCain's lost it...in more ways than one.
Your analysis is spot-on, but there may be one more critically important factor: McCain's biological and psychological age. There is no doubt that severe stress, such as the stress he suffered during five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, prematurely ages an individual. Each year of such stress can easily be the equivalent of 3 or even 5 years of normal living.
The upshot is that McCain, though chronologically 70, is biologically and psychologically well into his eighties. In a thread a few months ago at Daily Kos, a "DallasDoc" commented that McCain's often listless public demeanor suggested to him the presentation of early symptoms of dementia.
Whether or not McCain may be entering the early stages of Alzheimer's, it is difficult to see how someone who is biologically in his eighties can hold up to the rigors of another presidential campaign. He simply will not have the stamina or the mental flexibility to handle the pace. And his handlers do not seem to have the authority or the capacity to shield McCain's decline from the public.
I think that we are now witnessing McCain's tailspin, and he will be compelled to withdraw from the race for "health reasons" by the end of this year. He will not be a factor in next year's Republican primaries.
In Iowa, NH, and SC we are on the ground and running first or within margin of error.
Is he just playing coy? Or is he below not just 7, but 6 figure totals?