John McCain has had some trouble recently in breaking through the news — given the still fiercely pitched Dem primary fight — these days (and the fundraising is pretty anemic — $15M?) too. But there are interesting bits that are being reported here and there that we ought to take a good hard look at as examples of that prized quality of McCain’s — maverickyness. Of course, McCain abandoned any pretense to being a maverick when he decided to start pandering to the Christian Nationalists and neocons of the wingnut right as his path to the White House. This does mean, of course, that he has set himself up to run for the third term of BushCo, of which something like 28% of Americans are ready to buy again. So join me for a quick survey of the maverickyness here:
This headline of a Boston Globe article on the McCain struggle to come up with a health care policy is choice:
McCain camp working out healthcare details
Aides struggle to sort out his promises
And those promises are weighted towards cost containment and very little detail of a health care insurance marketplace that can provide some coverage for folks with pre-existing conditions or who can’t afford it. In other words, McCain’s advisers are working out talking points and hand-waving for a plan that basically addresses none of America’s concerns about healthcare.
McCain flips flops on the mortgage mess. This is, of course in contrast to his previous position: “Of those 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million are doing what is necessary – working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets – to make their payments on time. That leaves us with a puzzling situation: how could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?” From text of “John McCain’s speech on the economy”, New York Times, March 25, 2005. He really was against it before he was for it.
Then, there’s McCain telling Tavis Smiley that he doesn’t know where black voters are: “I know that I’m not going to get a majority of the African-American vote,” Mr. McCain said last week in a radio interview on “The Tavis Smiley Show.” “But I’m going to campaign all over this country. I’m going to go to South Philadelphia, I’m going to go to the Black Belt in Alabama, I’m going to go all over America, and I’m going to communicate, I’m going to talk with, I’m going to share the frustrations, the hopes and the dreams that the African-American community has.” South Philly is hardly one of the iconic places to go to communicate with the black community, but we’ll let the Philly Inquirer school him on this:
If McCain wants to win over black voters, first he’d better know where to find them.
South Philly has changed from a mostly Italian-heritage enclave to one that includes growing numbers of Asians and Hispanics. According to the latest census, while Philadelphia is a majority-minority city, African-Americans are less than a third of the population in South Philadelphia.
Lots of bonus points for this editorial calling out the press’ treatment of the McCain gaffes.
And best of all: If McCain can’t even spell his name, how can he defeat the terrorists? h/t Instaputz