are you surprised at how bad of a candidate john mccain has been thus far?

[Lief 🗽]

Today, the 4th of July, Obama is on offense, campaigning in Montana. McCain, on the other hand, is taking a break in Arizona for a couple of days, after campaigning in the pivotal swing states of Mexico and Colombia.

[NOVA Green]

I wonder how much coverage McCain's visit to Mexico is getting amongst the Mexican-American community, or if the goal is simply to showcase him as a strong leader on international affairs, as well as national security.

[Reaganfan]

Surprised? No. He's uncharismatic and agrees with a President who has a 30 percent approval rating on 95 percent of the issues. Those types of things matter a lot more than most of us on this site think.

Given those facts, he's actually done quite well so far.

Agree. McCain can still very well win this election...and the animosity is stronger against Obama than against McCain, but alot has to do with the area.

Here in the Mid-west/Great Lakes region of Ohio/West Virginia/Kentucky/Indiana...the animosity against Obama is large...and it shows publically in a silent way (The voting booth,  SEE: OH/KY/WV/IN PRIMARY). However...out in a place like Colorado or New Mexico...they might be a complete 180 compared to what you see in Ohio or Kentucky.

[Flying Dog]

Surprised? No. He's uncharismatic and agrees with a President who has a 30 percent approval rating on 95 percent of the issues. Those types of things matter a lot more than most of us on this site think.

Given those facts, he's actually done quite well so far.

Here in the Mid-west/Great Lakes region of Ohio/West Virginia/Kentucky/Indiana...the animosity against Obama is large...and it shows publically in a silent way (The voting booth,  SEE: OH/KY/WV/IN PRIMARY).

The last polls of each primary were actually pretty spot on. Also, Obama did better in Indiana then the polls were saying.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Yes. This guy is the media darling that always got mentioned as a strong candidate "if he can get past the primaries." Looks like the CW was wrong again.

The CW is usually wrong.

[Dan the Roman]

McCain's real problem is that his staff is terrible. He engages in extreme cronyism, and whenever anything goes wrong he fires those furtherest from him even if they aren't responsible. The result is a campaign filled with people of little competence. Furthermore the campaign was non-existent in the primaries. He won because Thompson stole votes from Huckabee in SC, and because the opposition was split in Florida. Notice that he never topped the mid thirties and actually did worse than in 2000.

What gave him the win was the delegate allocation system, a system that had it been in place on the Democratic side, would have given Hillary the nomination. His campaign sleepwalked through the primaries with no gotv or campaigning and they are doing the same thing in general. The polls may be close, but the McCain campaign has literally no, and I mean absolutely no campaign apparatus. If the election were held today Obama would likely outperform his polls by 3-4% and McCain would under perform by the same margin.

This is what in my view is mixed in analysis of the election being close. The race is close, an election would not be right now, if it pitted thousands of Obama staffers and volunteers against a few dozen McCain ones.

[CARLHAYDEN]

McCain's real problem is that his staff is terrible. He engages in extreme cronyism, and whenever anything goes wrong he fires those furtherest from him even if they aren't responsible. The result is a campaign filled with people of little competence. Furthermore the campaign was non-existent in the primaries. He won because Thompson stole votes from Huckabee in SC, and because the opposition was split in Florida. Notice that he never topped the mid thirties and actually did worse than in 2000.

What gave him the win was the delegate allocation system, a system that had it been in place on the Democratic side, would have given Hillary the nomination. His campaign sleepwalked through the primaries with no gotv or campaigning and they are doing the same thing in general. The polls may be close, but the McCain campaign has literally no, and I mean absolutely no campaign apparatus. If the election were held today Obama would likely outperform his polls by 3-4% and McCain would under perform by the same margin.

This is what in my view is mixed in analysis of the election being close. The race is close, an election would not be right now, if it pitted thousands of Obama staffers and volunteers against a few dozen McCain ones.

A very good analysis!

In 2004 Bush had a highly effective GOTV effort, particularly in Iowa and Ohio.

McCain's main effort in this area is to repell conservatives with his paens to amnesty.