I thought that was obvious.
As to the question – if McCain continuing to run were damaging the prospects of someone else who could carry the GOP standard against Obama, then, yes, he should drop out. 
Steve Rosenbaum, writing on the Huffington post, says that McCain will drop out before the Republican Convention for health reasons and leave the nomination to someone else.
It may sound ageist, but it looks to me like McCain doesn’t have the mental stamina to keep it together the whole way. He’s already firmly denying saying things he did indeed say, and being generally stubborn. Going forward he may reveal in a debate a lack of temper control, for example. The things I admired and might have voted for in 200 are gone, especially the independence he shed to kiss the party’s ass to get nominated.
With the right practice, and if he avoids lame talking points, Obama should be able to run rings around McCain in debates.
All this still doesn’t mean he should drop out just because.
I guess we’re now officially into Staggeringly Stupid Season, Silly Season having ended on June 21. I vaguely recall that people were saying the same thing about Kerry four years ago. Nobody who would run for President would ever, EVER drop out afer clinching the nomination and just hand the prize over to someone else. It’s not going to happen. McCain has waited at least eight years for this and probably longer. He’s not going to give up based on a Newsweek poll when he’s got four-plus months to try to fix things.
It’s this kind of thing that makes me wish pundist were more accountable for their prognostications. Because a guy who writes that with that level of bluster should never be taken seriously by anybody. Half of the people he suggests as new nominees are people who McCain beat in the primaries. What’s the reasoning behind suggesting people who lost to McCain are more likely than McCain to beat Obama?
[humorless nitpick]In fact, upon Hindenburg’s death in 1934 the office of president was abolished. There were no presidential elections during the period of Nazi power.[/humorless nitpick]
Inasmuch as Republican candidates are clamoring to align themselves with Barack Obama, I’d say McCain is just about forked.
Yeah, but his lack of Roman citizenship meant he’d never be named emperor.
He also had to face those nasty rumors that he’d fathered an illegitimate Scythian child.
Now, now, Diogenes. Just because the intro to the movie said “A long, long time ago” doesn’t mean that the Scyths (not scythians) were real or part of semi-recent human history.
But I’ll indulge you: If his child chose the way of the Scyth, the father isn’t necessarily to blame, there are plenty of unavoidable bad influences in the life of a human being and parents aren’t all-powerful. As long as McCain himself stays in the light side, he’s cool in my book.
And there was that photo of him hugging Caligula.
Nice one. 
Sure, the guy’s old, but c’mon…!
McCain is old.
That’s sad but it is certainly the meme. It is the distilled bits of common knowledge that we all share. Anytime anyone on Conan, or Letterman, or Leno make jokes about McCain, it’s ALWAYS about his age. ALWAYS!
That’s really not good. I am not sure that this will prevent him from being elected, but it’s certainly not a good place to be in. If someone else were to step up, who would it be? Romney has the most delegates, I suppose.
Really it’s just a question of whether or not he can keep it close enough to not be dumped by his party by the time nomination rolls around. He won’t drop out voluntarily. But anyway, at what level of consistently bad polling would he have to be at before someone stepped up and said, “Look John, we’re going to go another way”
Colbert, too. They’re running out of good age jokes, frankly.
They won’t dump him: if they did, they’d lose the election anyway. Throwing away two candidates would be an even bigger strategic blunder.
There’s no realistic level at which that is going to happen. First of all, nobody is in a position to say “we’re going to go another way.” The voters unequivocally chose McCain and the GOP, RNC, whoever, does not have the power to throw that away. And as the GOP candidate he’s guaranteed a certain amount of support in the polls. It’s never going to be 75%-25%.
Gozu, in the BBQ Pit, parody threads are generally supposed to provide links to the thread(s) being parodied. Parody threads in GD are sufficiently rare that we have never made an issue of setting guidlines for them.
Since the discussion has meandered into other areas, I’m going to leave this thread open, but I would strongly suggest that anyone wishing to post a parody in GD, (an act I do not encourage), follow the Pit practice of including links to the parodied thread(s).
[ /Moderating ]
“Hugging” is an…interesting word choice, if we’re thinking of the same photo.
To be serious, he could drop out, but, as brought up by others, it will almost certainly be damaging to his reputation and destructive of any future ambitions of his. I can think of several examples of candidates dropping out (mostly on the statewide level), and I can’t think of any examples of such candidates politically recovering from this.
There is a rubber band effect in American politics- and I think McCain would have to do something extraordinary and out of character not to benefit from it. The media (really, the whole country) will apply pressure to the poll leader, which usually has the effect of squeezing the polling gap.
McCain may be old, but he is no dummy, he’s agile and is pretty savvy with the press (if not with his message). I think absent a total meltdown on McCain’s part, and here I am thinking crazed screaming or physical violence, we will have a popular vote gap of less than 20%. He’s not going to punch anyone on camera and when he restrains his temper (even barely) it’s usually spun as a positive aspect of his personality. “McCain don’t take no shit”. So I think he’s not going to be embarrassed in the popular vote.
Conversely, if Obama really flames out, then he could lose by a lot. I think that’s a lot less likely, but his downside is as huge as his upside. McCain could get away with a lot and still get decent support, just because he’s a Republican and a known quantity. If Obama said fuck you to a reporter or someone found out he did cocaine two years ago, he’d be done. In that case Clinton might actually step in.
Duly noted.
Also, I’m not sure Obama would necessarily lose if he said “fuck you” to a reporter. He could spin himself out of it, Stolichnaya.
Heck, he might pick up some extra votes.
I’m hoping he does say it. Early in his second term would be a good time.
OK, maybe, but what if he said it all angry-black-like? And/or threatened to “pimp-slap” said reporter? What if for the rest of the campaign Obama talked like Tracy Morgan?
This is a fun game.