I am still worried that it is a carefully orchestrated conspiracy. McCain looks like he stood up and Bush still wins.

http://dontbealemming.com/2006/09/16/are -we-seeing-boogeymen-when-it-is-just-sha dows.aspx

Posted by the Lemming Herder at Don't
Be A Lemming!

Shouldn't we be calling our senators, or Snowe and Collins in particular, and asking them to vote -for- the Specter amendment? Because then they'll have to reconcile the House and Senate bills, which almost certainly won't happen in two days?

Matt, how could you have ever been unworried about a McCain candidacy?  Do you have any idea how hard it will be to beat him in the general if he gets the nomination?  If the final match up were Hillary vs. McCain we would be lucky to get New York and Massachusetts.  We shouldn't kid ourselves a McCain 08 nomination from the Republicans is the absolute worse case scenario.

about McCain is that he is so old.  If elected, he would be the oldest President ever to serve a first term.  Also, I don't know if anyone has seen any video of him lately, but he seems to look unsteady.  I don't mention this lightly, but I think it relevant to the question of his fitness to be President.  I highly doubt he would withstand the rigors of a presidential campaign.  

McCain is not going to be elected. He like Frist having bent over for this president, does not have the "it" factor necessary to be a president.

Vapid as this sounds many republican friends make decisions on who will be leader based on this nefarious "it" factor.

I don't. But my friends who are republicans do. I don't know who the republican candidate will be but I can say for sure it won't be McCain,Guilliani, or one of the Bushes.

But ... your take on McCain always amazes me.  This giant phony will eviscerate anyone we nominate in 2008.  NO ONE gives a shit -- or even knows -- about the inside-baseball crap on who "won" on the torture bill.  Have you never seen how the media treat this guy?  Their coverage of him in 2008 will make their take on Bush look like what they did to Gore.  I work in a liberal office that still largely thinks McCain is 'not like the others.'  We had better hope like hell some other GOP dirtbag beats him out, or we can prepare to be creamed and then sickened for 4-8 years. And I'm too old to wait that long for another decent President.

John McCain completely crumpled on the key issues here, giving in to the White House.

It was just the old good cop/bad cop shell game. McCain got to look "reasonable" by pretending to challenge bush and Bush got to seem "reasonable" by barely compromising in the end. The entire kabuki play was probably concocted in Rove's office.

How long is this session going on tonight?

Is it still effectuve to call at this late hour or should we be waiting for the offices to open tomorrow morning?

Any chance we can get a staffer on or near the floor to supply some color commentary at mydd?

One of the things I love about this site is that it has been consistently calling out the false image of McCain as one of our own.

What you have seen with DC Dems unwilling to take him on has a lot to do with his base.  Dems are afraid of McCain's base.  No, not moderate republicans, his true base is the Bob Scheiffers/Don Imuses/Tweetys of the world.
As goes McCain, so goes the Beltway media.
To take on McCain would be to know that the media would basically take his side on most issues without question (see Tucker Carlson's book about his 2000 campaign for examples).

This needs to stop now, because the more I talk to my Liberal friends, the more I notice that McCain has innoculated himself pretty well with them.  It will take a long campaign to show liberals that he is not who he sells himself as.  And we all know what happens when republicans who campaign as center-left get elected.

They govern any way BUT.

I can sadly say that I lived in Arizona and voted for McCain and after pulling this I have absolutely lost all respect for John McCain

The main thing standing between McCain and the nomination is the Right Wing Base. As much as Tweety and Russert were enchanted by his temporary stand for principle, the true believer 'wingers just hate him that much more for it. Somebody crazy like Coburn or even Gingrich goes nuclear against McCain, he might not get the noimination. Add in his age and his health, I think he's got a 50/50 shot at best. If he gets the nomination, I'd sadly predict a 90% chance of  getting the White House. The Beltway press loves him twice as much they hated Gore.

A successful bid for President by Senator McCain is unlikely even if he were to get the nomination because he has two strikes against him.

First, he is a member of the "Silent" Generation, those born between 1925 and 1942.  No member of this generation has been elected President.

For reference, the recent generations are:

Generation   Birth years   Presidents

Great Power cycle: Cycle:
Missonary      1860-1882     Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt
Lost                1883-1900     Truman, Eisenhower
G.I.                  1901-1924     Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush
Silent             1925-1942     None

The Millenial Cycle:
Boomer         1943-1960     Clinton, Bush
Gen X             1961-1981     None yet
Millenial         1982-1999     None yet
unamed         2000-20??

The only time in American history when the sequence of Presidents ran backwards was before the Civil War.  Polk, a member of the Transcendental Generation, slipped in ahead of Taylor, a member of the Compromise Generation.  Buchanan, a member of the Compromise Generation, was elected eight years after Fillmore and Pierce (both Transcendental Generation) held the office.  Time seems to have passed Senator McCain by.

(For an indepth explanation of generational cycles, read "Generations:  The History of America's Future From 1584 to 2069" by Bill Strauss and Neil Howe, Quill Press, New York, October 1990)

Second, in the entire history of the U.S., only four Senators have been elected President without having been a Governor or a Vice President.  The most recent example was Kennedy, who had exceptional charisma.  He barely won against Vice President Nixon thanks in large part to the televised debates of 1960.  The six Senators who ran for President in the last 45 years were defeated:  Goldwater, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dole, and Kerry.  By contrast, the only governor to have been defeated in a Presidential contest in the last 45 years was Governor Dukakis (Silent Generation) running against Vice President Bush (G.I. Generation) in 1988.

There is a big difference in personality between an effective senator and an effective governor.  Senators are collaboraters.  Senators "log roll" and "go along to get along".  It is the nature of the legislative process.  Senators tend to give long-winded speeches using large words.  Governors, on the other hand, are executives.  They are "in charge".  The effective ones are good at making decisions, sometimes with imperfect information.  Governors command and direct, and the more decisive they are, the better.  The most effective ones speak in short, simple, easy-to-understand phrases, with ample use of easy-to-understand, short words that are typically one or two syllables.  

The American people instinctively understand the difference between an effective Senator and an effective Governor (or Vice President), and, when it comes to voting for President, they look for the executive personality and normally vote accordingly.  The path to the White House runs through a governor's office (or Vice President), not the U.S. Senate.  By and large, "Governor" is the magic word.

As long as the Democratic Party nominates an effective governor or ex-governor, it is highly unlikely that a GOPig senator can win.  However, if Senator Clinton is the Democratic nominee, then all bets are off.  Obviously in a Clinton-McCain match up, the winner would be an ex-senator who never was a governor.  That contest would be a very close race and a McCain victory is possible but not guaranteed.

The few tens of thousands of dollars McCain spent pumping the travelling press full of shrimp and imported beer in 2000 may be more telling in the long run than Sen. Clinton's hundreds of millions of dollars.

Talk about ROI....

nm

 There was once a time in which a small part of me held some respect for McCain for what he endured in Vietnam.

 That part of me is gone. John McCain is a pathetic, disgusting human being, and he deserves every hardship he's endured in his life. He is a traitor to his country, a craven moral coward, and a betrayer of every last principle of human decency.

 The man is lower than a dung beetle. He belongs in the Senate like Paris Hilton belongs in a convent.

 To hell with him.

McCain has almost zero chance at the GOP nomination. He is loathed by the base of the party. Try posting on some balanced sites or talking to Republicans on a regular basis and that will be clear in a hurry. There was even a poll that demonstrated it a month or so ago, that people who give Bush high favorable numbers think very low of McCain, somnething like a 20 or 30 point gap. There is no way McCain can survive that in a primary season. The base will look elsewhere.

I'm convinced it will be Guiliani. Again, I'll point out the Strategic Vision polls. They ask Republicans their 2008 preference and Guiliani is the overwhelming choice in every state other than Michigan, where McCain leads. Guiliani's edge over McCain is in the 20 point range in many of the states. We will reject Hillary on electability but electability is Guiliani's ace. He puts New York and the northeast in play and his views on the social issues can help him among swing voters.

It's at our peril we assume he will be denied the nomination. Just last night I talked to a far right wing friend who I hadn't seen in 6 months and when we started talking politics he immediately championed Guiliani for 2008.

I comes down to who the Democrat Party puts forward.

Another wimp like Kerry or Dukakis?

Or a fire-breathing populist like Gore or Dean.

The Hill has no chance of being nominated with the blogosphere and most Demcrat Party members against her.