My personal theory is that since he was burned by the fact that the party effectively picked Bush in 2000 while the primaries were still a horse race McCain is now trying to keep that same party leadership happy enough with him that they’ll get behind him when the campaign starts moving. So he’s on the party line for the moment but trying to do it keep it light so he can have a chance of getting the moderates when things heat up. It’s a strategy that I think is going to backfire since 2008 is almost certainly going to be a referendum on Iraq and if people tie a candidate to Bush they’re not going to win, but it might get him enough of the party hardliners to get the nomination…
Considering that he has pretty much always expressed a conservative ideology, the basis of any appeal that he had for the left was the idea that he was expressing his conscience in a forthright manner.
Now that it is clear that he will pretty much say anything and will put forth blatant lies, why should “the left” have anything to do with him.
By the way, his story that he’s been some kind of harsh critic of the handling of the war up to now is of course bullshit. Here’s Media Matters’ review of his statements regarding the war over the past couple of years.
His statements about the members of the armed forces’ support for the war was also at odds with polling on the topic.
In short, in response to the host of a fake news show, all this presidential candidate could do was to pathetically repeat lame talking points and misrepresent the truth.
[…shrug…] Ask the guy who said it should.
I’m talking to the only guy I’ve ever heard call him “the darling” of the left.
Well, maybe you should get out more. 
I’d give you one link, but then you’d demand more, and I’d end up wasting time copying and pasting the thousands of Google hits for you to rationalize or ignore. 
At any rate, what does my saying “the darling of the left” have to do with answering why the left should have anything to do with him. If I were on the left, I wouldn’t. The link above explains why they thought so highly of him, but it all seemed pretty naive to me. I don’t trust any of them, left or right.
I don’t know about “the left,” but in the past he sure got a lot of traction with slightly-left-of-center middle-of-the-roaders who couldn’t be bothered with paying attention to what the guy was actually about. He came off as forthright and principled (which up until now, IMO, he was). Unfortunately, that isn’t really enough.
Now that he has completely degraded into a talking-points kind of guy, the gild is off the lily.
I’m really glad that Stewart didn’t let the (apparent) fact that he likes McCain personally keep him from keeping McCain’s clueless hawkishness in the forefront. McCain’s attempts to get traction by saying the prosecution of the war was flawed (as opposed to the whole friggin’ idea of the war) was nicely undercut by Stewart’s forcing him to repeatedly say that “we’ve got a new strategy.” Because we all know who’s strategy that is, and how brain-dead it is.
McCain: “We all know whose side [the audience] is one.”
Stewart: “They’re on American’s side. Because they’re patriots.”
You want to play the zinger rhetoric game? Jon can sling it too, pal.
You’re right that he does do that in interviews from time to time, but I can’t think of a single instance in this particular interview where things didn’t go his way. It’s not clear to me that McCain was able to score any points… If anything, it was McCain who sidestepped questions and avoided things he didn’t want to talk about.
I had anticipated a bunch of softballs as well, largely because Stewart had been exceptionally soft and fellatory of Andy Card just a few days ago (and oddly rough on the author of the book about the Blackwater military contractors). I was surprised he went after McCain so well.
McCain got drove. Reminded me of O’Reilly on Colbert. Left me thinking “… and why again isn’t Jon a candidate?”
Another interview that the audience severely detracted from. Shut the hell up and let the guest talk.
Stewart truly started to lose it once- I’m not sure what McCain said that really pissed him off, but this was as serious as I’ve ever seen him. And I think he truly does care for McCain. McCain did his already less than impressive campaign no favors on that interview.
Did anybody see the Shandling show last night? Stewart started off with the following (and I’m paraphrasing because I don’t have the clip or transcript handy):
with a cut to a movie poster of McCain in gangsta bling.
I think this explains most of McCain’s behavior over the last 6 years: he’s been working under the assumption that, as long has he toed the party line, he would be the presumptive nominee in '08. Hence the ass-kissing, which has been particularly disgusting in light of Rove crawling around South Carolina in 2000 whispering, “Pssst. McCain’s got a nigger love baby! Pass it on.” The really pathetic part: even if McCain hadn’t ruined his reputation with all the subordination, the Bushies still would have stabbed him in the back and thrown their weight behind a different candidate for the Republican nomination next year–and McCain’s too stupid to see it. At this point, Jon Stewart using McCain as an ottoman is about right on the status meter.
Yeah, this shows that doing the right thing sometimes is the right thing. I assume McCain thought Bush would still have high ratings about now, so he’s stuck. I do believe he is honest about supporting the war, but lying like hell about complaining about mismanagement.
I think it really shows up in the past year or so (roughly since it became clear he was going to make one last shot at president). McCain 2006 would be unrecognizable to McCain 1999 and he’s blown all the good will he accumulated with moderates.
You could really see the conflict in him the other night. You’ll note that he didn’t pull out the same line of crap that the members of the administration pull out when confronted in interviews; instead he tried to deflect back to things he could be solid on. It was weaselly, though, and it wound up hurting him in the interview.
I think it may work as far as getting the nomination since the party leadership doesn’t seem to like the populist republicans that are currently leading, but I don’t see him being able to recover his reputation if he does.
I’m usually not a fan of the cheering when ever JS makes a point, but in this case, it really was the only opportunity he could get in a word edgewise. McCain was answering the softballs in his head and not addressing the debate on the floor, and stepping over Stewart’s rebuttal points by parroting the same talking points, as if rote repetition was eventually going to convince him.
I like McCain (the personality more than the politician) and JS clearly does, too, but he’s clearly blind to the way he’s publicly perceived now. He wants to be the folksy, moderate-friendly “outsider” but that just doesn’t play anymore, and it’s completely his own fault. Nobody of the top 3 GOP candidates more closely mirrors the posturing of the current administration, and his war record and public pronouncements as a “critic” aren’t going to change that.
Very well played on JS’s part. I like more and more the sheer intelligence and wit of Stewart. He deserves much better than Comedy Central.
I have some lingering respect for McCain’s war record and his suffering from it. I lost all respect for him when he let his family be tarred by the GOP smear machine way back in 2000. This guy will sit on anyone’s lap. as long as he can stay at the table.
Did you notice all of McCain’s forced laughter throughout the debate? It was like he was thinking, “I’m just going to giggle it up here for appearances, and pretend I don’t feel the bullshit-eating slug that’s burrowing its way through my brain.”
I was surprised to McCain using Donald Rumsfeld’s patented ask-and-answer-your-own-questions technique. “Are we rebuilding Iraq with no loss of life? No, we are not. Wouldn’t we like to have solid gold ponies? Of course we would.”*
I wish Jon had called him on it.
*These are not the actual statements McCain made. I don’t remember what the real ones were.
I was glad that Jon Stewart called him on this point, since some on the right argue that those opposed to the war are somehow un-American.