Looks like it backfired

[Gutenberg]

McCain's dropping like a stone in the polls.

Rasmussen Reports (conservative polling service, used by Fox News) has Obama up by 5 points. On Tuesday McCain and Obama were even.

Worse for McCain, his lead in Ohio and Florida is down to one percentage point:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c...cking_poll

Edit: by "conservative" I mean "careful, unlikely to make a leap of the imagination," not "right-wing."

[Greg the dogsitter]

I prefer Obama versus McCain. This is quite a price to pay, though...

[mikeylikesit]

I'll wait. The buried 'hate' vote will be significant, I'd guess it at 6-8% (of poll figures), it won't go away and it will vote.

[$tevie]

I cannot figure out what McCain thought he was going to accomplish. He appears to be extremely self-serving by trying to use this crisis to his advantage -- instead of putting "Country First" as the GOP would say -- and he has also ended up looking very ineffectual if you ask me.

[mikeylikesit]

The question is who's calling the shots? McCain or his advisors.

[$tevie]

It's hard to say with McCain. He's liable to have run off against his advisers' advice in the belief that he was being a Maverick. :oldfogey:

[michaelb]

mikeylikesit wrote:
I'll wait. The buried 'hate' vote will be significant, I'd guess it at 6-8% (of poll figures), it won't go away and it will vote.

I think this is absolutely true. And sad. Electing a black man as president in the country is still a long shot, but the key factor will be how many of those voters and votes are really on the margin and undecided.

[mikeylikesit]

You are not entitled to that 'smilie' , Pops has a copywright on it. You owe him a royalty.

[swampy]

Yawn.. "call me if you need me".

[Silencio]

Well, McCain wasn't needed either, but he ran off pretending to be a knight on a white horse anyway. Neither McCain nor Obama sit on the Senate Banking Committee, so what purpose would they play at this point in the process anyway?

And not that McCain has said or done anything of consequence since storming back to DC. This move was a transparent ruse to draw attention away from his flagging campaign and get out of a debate that the vast majority of the American people still want to see.