I don’t really pat him on the back for it either, but I think the expectation for what he was supposed to do in that situation is a little high. He’s not going to get into a discussion about the decency of Arabs as individuals with what consisted of essentially an angry mob. Nor is he going to ever qualify that answer in the future because the amount of benefit it would elicit is minimal at best, and would only serve to placate people who aren’t going to vote for him.
McCain is in a no win situation. He is either forced to defend his opponent against his own supporters or he has to condone/ignore what the nutjobs say. I think he is horrified to realize that he is now driving the looney bus and can’t figure out what to do about it.
The follow-up, one day after the incident described in the OP:
Instead of calling on his side or even both sides to tone down the rhetoric, he calls on Obama to repudiate outrageous and divisive comments. I gave him some points for his action on Oct. 10, but it didn’t take him long to forfeit those points.
“So he IS a Muslim Arab! I ain’t votin’ for no towelhead!”
If you watch the rest of the first video you linked to, McCain obviously didn’t convince the woman at all. She’s sending out letters with “information she found at the library” about all the “bad stuff” Obama is involved with.
/sigh/
That would be a fair answer if his campaign hadn’t spent the prior week provoking the crowd into an angry mob. You don’t get any credit for pissing on a fire you started.
Exactly right. It’s less than 2 weeks since McCain announced his new “get even more nasty” campaign. It was officially launched on the 2nd or 3rd, I think. Everyone laughed at McCain for so publicly announcing that he wanted to “turn the page” on the economic crisis and make the campaign a smear fest on Obama. So now, a week later, McCain tries to make a token effort to put out the fire he started, and he deserves credit for it? No way.
I do disagree with the “tacit approval” though. He’s the leader of his campaign and is running to lead our country. Any official McCain campaign strategy like this “make people stop worrying about their 401(k) by questioning Obama’s background” strategy automatically gets McCain’s official explicit approval in my book.
And Obama did! (just not the way McCain probably would’ve liked)
Meanwhile, McCain parses a Republican’s comparison of Obama to Bin Laden, using it as a springboard for his talking points instead of condemning it.
Yeah, class act all the way. :rolleyes:
I just listened to the exchange on the radio. It’s interesting. I couldn’t hear it on TV, but I could hear the audience laugh at the woman after she said, “He’s an Arab.”
That’s a little reassuring, at least.
Oh, by no means do I disagree. I’m merely addressing the idea that he should have made the distinction between “Arabs” and “decent family men” as not being mutually exclusive. He won’t ever do that, I was just explaining why.
The people who might be placated are independent voters who are fed up with negative campaigning. His choice not to appeal to them, which started with his choice of Palin, is a big reason he’s so far behind now, and getting behinder.
I’m sure the nutjobs would have voted for him anyway. I don’t get why they’re doing it, unless it is reflexive Rovianism, listening to Palin, or just being able to hear the cries of the mob before they sink into well deserved oblivion.
You’re right, I didn’t mean for that to come across as an attack against your point, it just seemed a good place to say that.
It doesn’t help McCain that the old lady in question reminds me of the Crazy Cat Lady from The Simpsons.
McCain often seemed decent and upstanding in years past. But he’s done some pretty crummy things too. It’s a mixed record. As of a couple elections back I held him in high regard, for a conservative and Republican (I’m the opposite).
He appears to be acting out of desperation, and his campaign has gotten uglier and uglier. It still hasn’t sunk to the point that W’s campaign did against McCain in South Carolina, though, to cite another reference point.
I think McCain’s campaign cultivates some vile misunderstandings in the public, while not quite saying things themselves, and the closer you get to McCain himself, the less ugly the statements are. This is hardly new, but it seems to represent a new public low for McCain.
Of course Arabs and Muslims are free to run for President, but it is not practically plausible one would win these days.
I, too, would like to reward McCain for defusing the particular reference the would-be Crazy Cat Lady was making. But it is a minor relative high spot in an otherwise pretty major decline.
And he goes right back to the well of sleaze:
After being presented with a perfect opportunity to publicly rebuke the knuckle-draggers and elevate his campaign to a bare minimum standard of decency, he instead defends the knuckle-draggers with a tu quoque defense based on a brazen lie.
Can I be subtle? McCain is scum.
McCain is claiming that people at Obama’s rallies are calling McCain a “traitor” and a “terrorist”?
I thought he’d gone about as low as he could go, but I was evidently wrong. What a horrible old toad he is. He’s gone right around the fucking bend.
You do know that McCain can’t raise his arms above his head, don’t you? 
They are already mentioning heavily the term Reverse Bradley Effect on NPR. If this truly is a lopsided event on the 4th of Nov. that’s what many will think happened.