Milbank: In quiet, half-empty rooms, McCain campaign "teetering between long shot and lost cause"

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: The Senator From Arizona and the Senator From Arizona
By Dana Milbank
Monday, November 3, 2008; Page A02

PETERBOROUGH, N.H.

Maybe John McCain is taking this Barry Goldwater thing just a bit too far.

He won the conservative icon's Senate seat from Arizona when Goldwater retired in 1986, and he has held Goldwater as a role model ever since. On Monday night, McCain will end his presidential campaign in the Arizona town where Goldwater launched his '64 presidential run. And, if the polls are right -- a big "if," admittedly -- McCain is about to emulate his mentor in another way: He could be heading for the worst presidential defeat of a Republican since Goldwater.

In the final hours, McCain's campaign is teetering between long shot and lost cause, and by some measures the candidate seems to be embracing the Goldwater ideal of noble failure....

"Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight!" McCain exhorted a group of 2,000 supporters in Scranton, Pa., on the same day Barack Obama drew 60,000 fans in Columbus, Ohio, and 80,000 in Cleveland. "Nothing is inevitable here! We never give up! We never quit! We never hide from history! Now let's go win this election!"

The mood, however, did not match his Churchillian rhetoric. At McCain's first event of the day, in Wallingford, Pa., it grew so quiet at one point before his speech that a single preschooler's voice could be heard above the crowd chanting "John Mc-Cain!" Assigned to warm up the room, former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge gave a subdued speech mentioning how fond he is of gardening....

***

The Mac then flew up to the University of Scranton, where a third of the college gym was blocked off by a curtain, making the rest of the gym look more full. The candidate read from the teleprompter roughly the same pep talk he had read at his first stop: "I can sense the momentum and the enthusiasm. . . . We're going to win this race. . . . Americans are figuring it out in the last 48 hours. . . . A few points down. . . . The Mac is back!"...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/02/AR2008110202409.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[Ishoutandscream2]

1. Heh! Go ahead and flame me, but this thing is over

There's way too much Obama support, and it will offset whatever voter fraud there may be. This thing is as close to a done deal as possible.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. They are still trying to paint it as close in order to set up a theft again:

In a conference call with reporters this weekend, Davis said, We're pretty jazzed up about what we're seeing in the movement in this election."

"We are witnessing, I believe," he said, "probably one of the greatest comebacks that you've seen since John McCain won the primary."

<snip>
“I’ve been saying for some time that from our polling I think it's much tighter, a 3-point national race on Friday,” said Ed Goes, a Republican pollster who consults with the McCain campaign. “I think this race is going to be extremely tight.”

<snip>Last week McInturff wrote in a memo, “All signs say we are headed to an election that may easily be too close to call by next Tuesday.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081103/pl_politico/15196

[skooooo]

3. Got pie??

Better get some pie before tomorrow night, so you can join everyone in eating pie to celebrate Obama's win.