Leaking this kind of thing to the New York Times before the campaign has even ramped up is not a good sign for John McCain, almost as bad as the campaign reorganization that prompted the story in the first place.
The shift was approved by Mr. McCain after several of his aides, including Mr. Schmidt, went to him about 10 days ago and warned him that he was in danger of losing the presidential election to Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, unless he revamped his campaign operation, two officials close to the campaign said.
McCain is seeking to apparently “relaunch” his campaign. The man has had the nomination for months now, and for a good stretch of that time his eventual opponent paid him little to no attention as he was engaged in a close primary fight.
AND McCain is already buying up air time in Virginia, a state President Bush won pretty handidly. Defense, so soon?
In fairness, his LAST shakeup took him from being the guy who had no shot at winning the nomination to…well, the guy who won the nomination. I think this shows a hell of a lot more sense than Gore, Kerry, or Clinton showed; they kept listening to the same bad advisors until it sunk their campaigns. (Gore still won, but if he had run a competent campaign, it wouldn’t have been close enough to steal.)
But yeah, the fact that McCain’s playing defensively DOES bode badly for his campaign. Worse yet is who he’s hiring — trusting to the Rove team shows that he thinks this election’s going to be like 2004 instead of 2006.
Virginia? What I learned looking at the McCain website is that California is in play.
Thad:
McCain won by default. The base loved Huckabee but the money men hated him. No one liked Rudy once he started campaigning(I believe he only beat Ron Paul in one state). The base hated Romney(though the NRO crowd loved him for some reason). So that left McCain. It goes along with the normal Republican thinking. McCain was the next in line. It’s the Bob Dole and Poppy Bush thing.
Thad: trusting to the Rove team shows that he thinks this election’s going to be like 2004 instead of 2006
And what exactly did we get from the 2006 election? Oh, yeah. Democrats who cowtow to Lieberman because he might not be nice to them and utterly cave on FISA and withdrawal schedules because their too cowardly to grasp that the were elected by a clear majority to do just that.
Sean,
Not going to argue with you on that; you’re preaching to the choir here (and frankly I’m so disgusted with my own first-term Democratic Congressman, Harry Mitchell, that I’m planning on leaving the House section of my ballot blank come November).
I’m just talking about what it takes to win elections, not what happens afterward.