McCain Campaign Gears Up For Final Big Push In Sagging States And In Debate

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s campaign is now gearing up for a big push to try and change the dynamics of the race. The obvious question is: is it too late? Several big key developments are now in play:

*Shoring up possibly weak states.
As the LA Times’ blogger Andrew Malcolm points out, GOP Veep candidate Gov. Sarah Palin is now heading for Indiana — a visit that Republicans months ago probably did not envision they would have to make:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will campaign in Indiana on Friday.

Not a good sign for the Republican ticket.

The 44-year-Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin wows the faithful wherever she goes. She’s mobbed by fans, especially young girls. She draws publicity. All good.

But the Republicans should not have to campaign in Indiana less than three weeks out from Election Day.

Latest state polls show the McCain-Palin ticket ahead by two points in the Hoosier state; Karl Rove’s national electoral map, published regularly here in The Ticket, shows the Republicans just having regained Indiana from the tossup category.

But it’s a measure of how the Obama-Biden campaign, rolling in money, has forced the GOP candidates to play defense far too long into the campaign. They’ve recently also been forced to shore up support in two other once-staunch-Republican states — Virginia and North Carolina.

Even if the Democratic ticket doesn’t take Indiana on Nov. 4, it’s forced the Republicans to “waste” a precious day of candidate time defending the heartland state and not chipping away at Democratic states elsewhere.

And it’s a matter of using up resources. McCain’s negative campaigning reportedly caused a batch of voters to donate money — to Obama. And various reports suggest Obama is using that money in key markets to flood the airwaves with ads…airwaves where the Obama ads are not being matched by an equal number of McCain ads.

*McCain says he’ll probably bring up the Ayers issue in this week’s debate because he says Obama raised it.

In reality, Obama raised the issue after the McCain campaign raised it, after Palin said Obama was “paling around” with terrorists, and after the McCain campaign used it in ads. Biden and Obama then joined a chorus of pundits who had wondered aloud why McCain hadn’t raised the issue to Obama’s face during the last debate. So now McCain says due to that, he’ll raise it. TPM:

McCain is already laying the groundwork to blame Obama for his apparent decision to confront Obama over Ayers tomorrow. …It’s Obama who has “probably ensured” that McCain will bring up Ayers. What’s so lovely about this is that McCain is now portraying his apparent decision to hit on the Ayers association as driven by a need to defend his honor.

You see, McCain wouldn’t have brought it up, but Obama questioned his manhood, so he’s now forced to overcome his reluctance to talk about Ayers in order to defend himself. It’s the old warrior’s code that’s making him do it.

This is yet another sign of how McCain 2008 differs from McCain 2000. McCain 2000 would have scoffed at a politician playing this kind of word game since Republicans, independents and Democrats are all aware that the Ayers issue was raised and used by the McCain campaign. Presumably, Obama is prepared to deal with the issue at the debate.

What’s going on?

First, there’s general political context. MSNBC’s First Read lays it out:

Despite the Dow’s ups and downs, the Biden-Palin debate, and the second McCain-Obama one, the race has continued on its current course where Obama has built his leads in national and state polls. In fact, a new round of Quinnipiac polls finds that Obama is now up by nine points in Colorado after the second debate (52%-43%), ahead 16 points in Michigan (54%-38%), up 11 in Minnesota (51%-40%), and ahead 17 points in Wisconsin (54%-37%). (Caveat: These polls seem a bit inflated compared with what the campaigns are showing internally.) Of course, with exactly three weeks go to, things in this race can certainly turn in a blink of eye. But it’s got to be pretty frustrating for the McCain camp to count on outside events to change things again.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. suggests that the larger issue here may be how the far right is now emerging as a major force from its former merger with the uneasy GOP coalition fostered by Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

Are we witnessing the reemergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?

…Since Obama was a child when Ayers was part of the Weather Underground, and since even Republicans have served on boards with Ayers, this is classic guilt by association.

…Ayers has been dragged into this campaign because there is a deep frustration on the right with Obama’s enthusiasm for shutting down the culture wars of the 1960s.

Precisely because Obama is not a baby boomer, he carries none of that generation’s scars. Most Americans (including most boomers) are weary of living in the past and reprising the 1960s every four years.

Yet culture war politics is relatively mild compared with the far-right appeals that are emerging this year. It is as if McCain’s loyalists overshot the ’60s and went back to the ’50s or even the ’30s.

What we are witnessing is the mainstreaming of the far right, a phenomenon that began to take shape with some of the earliest attacks on Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

The political context of all of this remains fascinating. Chris Cillizza reports:

Obama holds double-digit margins over McCain in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin and carries a nine-point advantage over his Republican rival in Colorado, according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal.

Obama’s ascendancy in these key states mirrors his growing lead in national polling. The latest Washington Post/ABC News survey put Obama at 53 percent to McCain’s 43 percent, while the daily Gallup tracking poll showed Obama holding a similar lead of 51 percent to 41 percent on Monday.

The latest polling confirms that the financial crisis and stock market crash that has gripped Wall Street and Washington over the past month has increased the importance of economic matters to voters — particularly in the industrial Midwest — and accrued almost exclusively to Obama’s benefit.

In Michigan, more than six in ten voters said the economy was the “single most important issue” in deciding their vote. Among likely voters, Obama increased his lead over McCain from a four-point edge in a late September Quinnipiac poll to a whopping 16-point lead in the most recent survey.

Obama’s 54 percent to 38 percent lead in Michigan helps to explain why McCain decided to pull down his ads and pull out the majority of his campaign staff from the Wolverine State last week — choosing to fight, instead, in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Maine.

The data was similar in Wisconsin and Minnesota where Obama gained 10 points and nine points, respectively, in his margin over McCain since the September Quinnipiac poll; the Illinois senator led McCain in Wisconsin 54 percent to 37 percent, and held a 51 percent to 40 percent edge in Minnesota.

If you take this together:

1. McCain is moving to shore up states once thought to be GOP shoo-ins.
2. McCain is planning to raise Ayers issue while some on the right clamor for him to use Rev. Wright.
3. The “mainstreaming” of the far right, using revamped themes that go back to the 50s or earlier.

It suggests that a McCain loss will generate a barrage of angry finger-pointing in the GOP. And a big GOP loss across the boards will spark a search for party scapegoats. What kind of GOP will emerge? It’s too early to tell. But you can predict now that, if McCain loses, the far right will be saying “I told you so” - that he had held back on the character attacks.

And what does all of this portend for the climate Obama will face if he wins the White House — and the next four years?