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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Is McCain Trying To Kill Debate?

By The Daily Dish
Sep 25 2008, 11:18 AM ET

I don't buy this entirely, but it does worry me that we get closer and closer to the election and we have had no substantive debates and no meaningful interaction with one vice-presidential candidate:

McCain's let's-postpone-the-debate idea may not be a real possibility now that Obama has indicated he won't play ball. But here's a factor to consider with the proposal itself: by the time the next scheduled (or, as McCain would have it, "first") presidential debate takes place, 16 states will already be voting. That includes battlegrounds like Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.



It's bad enough that voters in a half dozen states are casting ballots right now, before a single debate has been held and after only one opportunity to hear one of the vice-presidential candidates field questions from a reporter.
 

McCain cannot face the actual campaign on this issues - because he's on the losing side of almost all of them - and so it's all about bells, whistles, shiny objects, drama queen spectacles and propaganda. And in McCain's rattled head, he tells himself that he's pure because he once offered a series of public debates with Obama and Obama turned him down. That's enough for McCain to launch into this totally bizarre and unstable fall campaign. Yes: I said "unstable." What other word currently describes him?

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