[glb]

As there is no thread titled “Is McCain Finished?” or “Is McCain even Sane?” I guess I should post this here.

According to today’s paper, polling indicates that proposals seen as Republican are nationally met with some less than genial acceptance. (From Repub pollster David Winston)

If you look at voter registration during the primaries, yes even the early ones b4 McCain was chosen, Republicans lost a huge number of voters and Democratic gains were even more shockingly large. (Even in historically Republican areas such as the one in which I live.)

If you look at money raised by candidates and parties, by most measures Democrats are well ahead.

Republicans have a severely damaged “brand” as many of them have said over the past month.

McCain cannot distance himself too far from Bush lest he lose the “base”. But, if he doesn’t, he will be seen (not totally justifiably) as Bush II.

David Brooks, the resident NYT rightish columnist:

“McCain’s problem is that his party is unfit to govern. [Here he cites Winston] Of the GOP sponsored the sunrise, voters would prefer gloom. Many Repubs are under the illusion that they are in trouble because they’ve betrayed their core principles. The sad truth is that if they’d been more conservative, they’d be even further behind.”

He goes on to say how for years he’s been looking for conservative economic experts with remedies for the middle class economic anxiety. He found none; they are all on the Democratic/Liberal side. Therefore, he says, “McCain is forced to run in an intellectual void”.

Now, given that the US is mostly concerned now with the economy and Iraq, this would appear to be pretty bad news for McCain, who is on the wrong side of both issues.

Some national polling indicates a rather small gap between Obama and McCain. After both candidates undergo more and more examination, and after McCain is forced to debate Obama, this anomaly will shrink and the gap will inevitably widen.

Last, there has been a lot of press lately about Phil Gramm, McCain’s chief advisor and Gramm’s lobbying and ties to legislation to prevent early oversight/mending of the housing crisis. Gramm apparently has been taking a lot of $ from banks and companies that also do a lot of (perhaps illegal) business with our enemies, and emerging evidence of unsavory, perhaps illegal, offshore accounts.

I would humbly like to mention that I covered some of this on the “Secrets of the Housing Crisis” thread here a while ago.

I would also suggest that potential McCain supporters take a look at which lobbyists have been working for him, what they were involved in and why they had to resign.

Apologies for making this entry too long…