The debate tomorrow is going on, with or without McCain. If he’s a no-show, Obama turns it into an interview with Jim Lehrer and a Town Hall meeting where he takes questions from the audience. It will not be rescheduled.
I suspect John McCain isn’t stupid enough to let Barack Obama have that kind of unimpeded forum. He’ll be there.
Oh, he’ll be there all right. “I’d like to thank the venue hosts, and our moderator, tonight. I’d also like to thank this grandstanding upstart over here, who insisted I pull myself out of the national crisis room, where we’re trying to come up with a solution for one of the most pressing problems of our time, and haul my old bones down here to Missouri or Mississippi or wherever the hell we are, so I can go through the same twenty minutes of sound bites I’ve been regurgitating ad nauseum for the last six months. Dammit, where’s my truss? Daddy’s startin’ ta bust out from the pressure.”
otherwise known as the Straight Talk Express. Seems to me that’s consistent with his campaign’s tendencies. Talk about what a clueless dolt you are, and hope you score points for directness and honesty. “Look, my friends, I’m just an old, doddering nitwit hoping to live out ambitions I thought of before,well, I can’t really remember that far back. But it doesn’t matter where ideas begin, and it doesn;t matter where they end, either. Nothing really matters, when it comes down to it, other than patriotism, platitudes, good old American values and some other stuff I really can’t remember too well just now, if I may be totally honest with you. I am totally honest, by the way, even if I do say so myself, and even if I tell an occasional whopper. As long as I’m honest about that, my friends, that should be all that matters. Was I saying something? Never mind.” And the poll numbers edge up a little bit.
The McCain campaign team must be literally (yes, literally) shitting their pants every time they have a conversation with Sarah Palin, because it becomes more painfully obvious that McCain has selected a running mate who is not only grossly unqualified to be VP, but who seems to be growing more obtuse and clueless as the campaign goes on.
Sarah will win the debate. She will quote religious tracts, make clear how much she loves guns and endlessly say how she hates abortion and wants it outlawed , That will make her base happy. That is all she has to do. They will overlook the fact that she is a provincial bimbo and totally unqualified. It does not matter . Just make the evangelicals and neos happy and they will love her. She is being trained how to answer every question as if it were an attack against a baby.