Comment Rescue & More Evidence That McCain Is Going To Get His Ass Handed To Him
From the Jed Reportwe learn that McCain spoke to a 43% full town hall meeting (700 showed out of 1,600 expected).
What if McCain held a town hall and nobody came?
According to a video report posted by Scranton, Pennsylvania’s Times-Leader, John McCain’s town hall event in Wilkes-Barre earlier today featured an underwhelming turnout — more than half the seats were empty. About seven hundred folks showed up — a decent sized crowd, perhaps, but it left nine hundred seats empty.
Ouch!!
Stories like this are going to make it tough for McCain to raise money. Infact, I’m working on a post about how high profile Delaware Republicans have become tightwads when it comes to McCain (who wants to throw away good money on a nag – right?).
Now for the comment rescue, and I don’t have the exact quote, by Al Mascitti figures that we’ve had an uptick in our visitors from Wingnutia becuase school is out and these guys can’t find gainful employment.
Maybe. My theory is that they are aware (on some gut level) that McCain sucks and is going to get stomped and they are just trying to work through some angst about that and about having been proven wrong about eveything over the past 8 years.
This is kinda sad.
The problem in Pa. isn’t that nobody wanted to see McCain — it’s that his campaign didn’t tell anybody the stop was coming. It’s the sort of thing that shouldn’t happen at this point in a presidential campaign — but then, being so belligerent and knee-jerk confrontational that you slag your opponent for his statement at a Holocaust museum isn’t such a hot idea, either. In fact, it’s the sort of nastiness I expect from the Rove acolytes who have joined the campaign. That also seems like the source of the attack on the press, which is truly stupid, as it’s been pro-McCain for eight years now, despite its simultaneous fascination with Obama. This is a dreadful strategy, IMO, as I think the nastiness from the GOP and the Clinton camp was a major reason voters flocked to Obama in the first place.
I think that this story may say more about the state of the McCain ground operation than anything else. It is the job of the local organization to fill seats and of they can’t do that, they will have a tough time getting their folks out to vote.
Now, if he makes Romney his VP pick, they’ll have enough money to put the keys to a new car under all of those seats — Oprah-style–until November. Pity about those kids’ inheritance tho.
Seriously, Cass — the stop was unscheduled. Even the press didn’t know about it. That’s not a local ground problem, that’s an HQ doesn’t know WTF it’s doing next problem.
Think about the level of orchestration that has gone into the Obama trip and compare it to McCain’s people can’t even get coordinated enough to fill an 1800 seat auditorium??? Wow! I can’t wait to see what they do in Minneapolis in September. What if nobody shows up,like in Nevada?
McCain’s campaign is disorganized.
Ya think?
most likely they were cleaning their guns
or looking at man-bear pictures
Or clinging to their bibles.
As someone who was born and raised in good ol’ Wilkes-Barre, you have to understand that the locals are very confused right now. NE Pa is very democratic region. I think you get the picture. I’m surprised they got that many to attend on such short notice.
I wonder how short-notice it is. Doesn’t the Secret Service have to sweep the place, review security, background check the people on-site? It seems to me that it is very difficult to just pop into an auditorium (where at least 700 people knew he was coming) with no notice at all. Perhaps we are not in as much mortal danger as the residents of wingnutia would have us believe…
I have the same question as LG — How do you have an unplanned Town Hall meeting? Somebody had to arrange for the venue and tell at least the people who showed up…..didn’t McCain stop at a mall or store during this trip that was unscheduled?
OK, answered my own question. But even that had enough planning to provide a friendly local for the photo op…
Yeah, I think that McCain is using Iraq as his planning model.