Isn't there another problem here: he's conceding that the Republicans won't retake the House or Senate? No, I don't think they have a chance, but isn't it a problem when the de facto leader of your party says you have no shot at winning?

Looks like the McCain camp is taking the Economists advice for his only remaining chance...
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12429421

Nevermind the gridlock appeal. The card McCain's people will probably play hardest is keeping qualified voters who might vote Democratic out of the voting booth.

In some battleground states such as Ohio, expect to see insufficient numbers of voting machines, voting machines that "break down," challenges to legitimate voters, and such terrible Election Day gridlock—I mean real gridlock—that some people never get a chance to vote.

Democrac and the notion that every citizen has a right to vote? Who the hell cares about that? McCain has an "election" to win.

Crankily yours,
The New York Crank

But I thought McCain was constantly telling his party to go f*ck itself, and was practically sore from all the reaching across the aisle he does! Does this mean that he will be a rank partisan if elected?

Does anyone know if he's gonna run for Senate again in 2010?

According to NPR his attack this morning is that Obama is inexperienced. Try to keep up!

Vote for gridlock! Ha, that's the best one yet. Is hockey mom going to make that her new paranoid mantra?

New Slogan:

Tired of eight years of incompetence, how about four years of impotence! Yay!

Crankily yours,
The New York Crank

Sorry, those OH folks have had early voting for a month now? If they can't figure it out and get a ballot in the cue then there really is no hope for Ohio. To quote Michael Biehn from Aliens:

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.. It's the only way to be sure."

George Will has been advocating for this for weeks. It's a strange argument-- essentially, it's "I'll hold back the tide of change" in a change year. Yeah, good luck with that.

I don't think it's a bad argument. Actually, I'd like the Republicans to return to being the fiscally conservative party (dropping the Religious Right and neocon factions), and help keep the Democratic spending in check. In the meantime, the Democrats should act like progressives and make, you know, progress.

With each 'trivial' line of attack McCain is scraping the bottom of the barrel for those few votes that, cumulatively, he hopes will put him barely over the top in a few key states. There is no vision here-and he has no intention of putting one out there. Recent shifts in the tracking polls show that this might be working. A hundred people here who think Obama is unamerican, 50 there who don't want the D's to control two branches of government, 75 over there that are afraid of the black man, and pretty soon you've won Florida by a couple of hundred votes. Give him credit for pursuing the one chance he has left, and then go vote.

What's wrong with gridlock??

In most years, I would have no problem with gridlock, but this is a year when things have to get done...especially to save the US economy. Amazingly, BushCo may have provided the necessary conditions for universal healthcare to be enacted.

I think the argument has some merit, actually. The problem for McCain is that he's waited until now to unleash it.

If this had any hope of gaining traction, it's something he should have pushed before the debates. At the moment, it's going to look like more desperation.

Eighty percent, maybe as many as 90 percent believe we need to change direction. So McCain campaigns on going nowhere? I don't think so.

He's better off with the charge that Obama is a "socialist." The American people hate communism, socialism and liberalism in that order. Obama is a socialist and pals around with terrorists. That's as good as it's going to get. And he used to take street drugs. Go with it, McGrumps!

Not just gridlock, but partisan gridlock. There will be no putting on good airs after the noxious campaign McCain/Palin have waged. It'll be crossing the aisle and saying, "f-you".

If this had any hope of gaining traction, it's something he should have pushed before the debates. At the moment, it's going to look like more desperation.

Eh. Going on TV and saying, essentially, "my party sucks and isn't going to have control of the government anytime soon, so you should vote for me to slow down the impending leftist arugula-eating agenda" isn't exactly something that would fire up the votes for McCain.

This is more "play to the base" stuff. Except this time the "base" is the "libertarian" portion of the base that most of the Republican Party has been actively telling to fuck off for the last few years. He's hoping to scare up some votes from them instead of having them stay home or worse vote for Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin.

("libertarian" in quotes because anyone who calls themselves a libertarian but is willing to vote for the GOP after the last 8 years is, frankly, suspect in their "pro-liberty" cred.)

McCain seems to believe in hexes and magic incantations. He changes his message and strategy every couple of days. Did someone tell him that the best way to the presidency was to appear to be a septuagenarian with the attention span of a hummingbird?

So after six weeks running as a guy who can work with the other party, now he'll run as a guy who will work against the other party?

This is giving me whiplash.

It's striking how McCain seems to go out of his way to campaign within the frame that Obama has made for him.

Excuse me for being skeptical, but I find it hard to believe this "new" attack strategy is one McCain will push with consistency.

What has he done consistently so far? NOTHING.
Joe the Plumber, socialists taking over D.C., terrorist friends,I'm proud of Gov. Palin's accomplishments, I know how to fix the economy, I know how to get Bin Laden, I know how to solve everything just trust me, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. How can anybody can take his campaign seriously.

I guess they have totally given up on actual policy.

They haven't blamed Obama for 9/11 yet, but I am sure they are working on it.

Like so many of McCain's arguments, this might have worked in previous years but the appeal is now lost. I expect anyone who buys into this is already on McCain's side now.

The problem is that Congress' low rating is a combination of a) Republicans who will never give anything Democratic a positive rating and b) Independents and Democrats who are frustrated that Congress has not sufficiently stood up to Bush since giving Democrats control in 2006.

Since (b) is the largest part of Congress' negative rating, it's unlikely that independents would want to continue the gridlock for 4 more years.

Furthermore, both low-information and high-information voters correctly perceive that the real power is in the administration. The party that holds the Presidency has much more influenced on the direction of the country than that party that holds Congress. Which is why we did so well under the Clinton-Republican combination.

So, all McCain's argument is likely to do is possibly persuade a few Obama voters to vote Republican in the Senate. It won't help him.

Voting for mixed government is actually one of McCain's strongest arguments. What is gridlock to one person is checks and balances on government power to another.

While there often are advantages to mixed government, there are a couple of reasons this argument is not compelling this year.

One is that there are three branches of government, not two. Further Republican appointees to the Supreme Court would push the court too far in one direction, making Democratic appointees preferable for those who prefer more balanced government as opposed to government which tilts too far in one direction.

The second problem is that in order for there to be benefit to having the Executive and Legislative branches in different hands we would need to have policies from both parties which we want considered, or prefer a compromise position between the two. With the Republican Party having moved so far to the extreme right, McCain has nothing to offer policy wise which would provide any advantage to Obama working with a Democratic Congress. Just making a generalized argument for split government is not enough. McCain needs to give actual policies where his views are preferable to Obama's.

Next, look for McCain to resurrect that winning GOP slogan from 1984: "Stay the course."

Why wasn't this an issue in 2004? Did Bush tell people to vote for Democratic congressmen so that the government would be balanced?

As someone who talks to independents and undecideds I believe the multi pronged McCain strategy might work. They believe government should do nothing and getting an excuse not to vote for Obama and give McCain the chance to keep the "socialists" in check actually resonates with some of this independent undecideds.

I know it's easy to write off any desperate move by McCain as having no chance but this is part of a larger mosaic camp McCain has been trying to paint once the economy started kicking their asses and as part of this larger whole it will siphon off votes for Obama. Start with the premise that undecideds want an excuse NOT to vote for Obama and all McCain has to do is give people enough excuses that resonate with them.

Enough to win? Probably not but maybe enough to get it close enough to steal in Ohio.

I love this argument - Mr Bipartisan "I work across the aisle", "I buck my own party" is now offering to not be bipartisan, to not work with the other party, and to fight needed reforms. WOW - elect me, I'll veto everything!

Can thie election be over now? Pleeeeeeease!

I know everyone here thinks I am a Republican troll but...

There seriously is something to be said for divided government.

I know most people disagree with me but I would rather see the Democrats with 57 votes and the Republicans with 41 than either having to count on Lieberman for the 60th vote or just counting Sanders as #60.

It helps to work with the other party because they won't be as able to destroy things if they have to consent to let the law pass.

Imagine if the bailout bill had passed with only Democratic votes? And that bill would have had a Republican President sign it. Now think about how bad things would be if every Republican could stir up trouble and not have to worry about being even a little bit responsible.

When the campaign blame game begins in earnest, I know there will be plenty to go around.

It would do some good however, to focus on the day to day of the campaign. What messages they were trying to convey and the results of each particular stunt.

In hindsight, this should be transparently clear. One example being the initial response to the economic crisis through the suspension of the campaign. The goal being to stop the discussion of his campaign's free fall. But to submit to the narrative that inevitably killed his chances (erratic and un-knowledgeable of all things economic) was a poor choice.

I am sure there were others that could have doomed him as well, but resting on the notion that any republican would have been doomed is unwise.

The more I read about McCain, the more it appears to me that he really doesn't want to win. McCain is running for president for the campaign not the office.

Not content with losing the support of everyone else, he had to go with the one argument that will cause him to lose the support of Joe Lieberman.

The idea of divided government seems to have a certain appeal to both Libertarians and Independents or moderates.

The Libertarians hope that having one party control the House, Senate or executive and the other party controlling the other two will lead to gridlock and smaller government. While moderates hope it will lead to compromise and bipartisanship.

Unfortunately, what you frequently get instead are massive omnibus bills that combine as many spending and policy issues as possible to 'buy' votes from both sides.

Or you can get scorched-earth partisanship in which both sides seek advantage in the next election cycle by blocking real progress on issues important to the other side's base, and setting up votes intended to fail on various hot-button issues so they can put the blame on the other side.