The "respectable loss" scenario
Perhaps the most interesting moment of last night to me was when David Gergen briefly floated what I've been calling the "respectable loss" scenario for McCain, the idea that he should give up any pretense of being the president and begin to work for his party's Congressional seats.
A tiny moment in it all, but when high profile people are on TV advising you to mitigate your loss.....
(Added: The power of this is not that McCain can change anything. It's the implicit working assumptions and their effect on anti-McCain enthusiasm in the GOP. 1) He's already lost. 2) He's screwed up so badly he's damaging "our" other candidates.
That's a powerful drag on McCain, and I expect the idea to grow.)
A tiny moment in it all, but when high profile people are on TV advising you to mitigate your loss.....
(Added: The power of this is not that McCain can change anything. It's the implicit working assumptions and their effect on anti-McCain enthusiasm in the GOP. 1) He's already lost. 2) He's screwed up so badly he's damaging "our" other candidates.
That's a powerful drag on McCain, and I expect the idea to grow.)
posted by mikevotes at
7:06 AM
2 Comments:
I'm not sure it's in McCain's character to do this. I'm not sure he can keep himself from "fighting" (or flailing) to the bitter end.
He cannot help Republicans running for Congress after spending three debates telling America how much he's not a real "party" Republican.... He's just a Reagan sycophant, don't you know.
By
-epm, at 8:33 AM
Well, he could go all positive to try and stop the sink. He could attack the "pelosi congress." He could ....?
I don't know.
But the bottom line I was really trying to make is that the idea that McCain has already lost is seeping into the conversation as an embedded assumption.
By
mikevotes, at 8:39 AM
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