Howard Fineman: YES, McCain can turn it around tonight...he was willing to die for his country. POW!

[Amerigo Vespucci]

...and, doggonit, people like him!

:eyes:

ANALYSIS
By Howard Fineman
MSNBC
updated 2 hours, 36 minutes ago

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27067414/

NASHVILLE - It’s do-or-die for Sen. John McCain, but he is used to that.

The guy’s been left for dead — literally, in one case, and politically in many others — more times than a pack of General Custers.

So it is ironic but appropriate that his pivotal campaign moment tonight is in a city known for country-music troubadours of last chances.
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A week is a year and a month a lifetime in politics. It is an interactive universe; straight-line extrapolations are worse than useless. Still, the clock is winding down on McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin in their race to catch senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Tonight’s town hall debate at Belmont University, moderated by NBC’s Tom Brokaw, is McCain’s last real opportunity to alter the dynamic of the race. The cliché is “game changer,” but that is what he needs. There is one more debate on Oct. 15, in New York, but that is almost certainly too late to have much impact.

Can McCain turn things around tonight and, if so, how can he do it?

The answer to the first question, given his history, has to be yes.

McCain is like that trick birthday candle: you keep blowing it out but it keeps springing back to life.

I think I know the reason why this is so. There is something about what McCain represents — a soldier willing to die for his country.

[villager]

1. Wasn't Fineman shockingly out of "whore mode" once or twice this election season?

Obviously didn't last long...

[leftofcool]

2. How many media whores are there under the bus now?

Getting' crowded under there.

[two gun sid]

3. Yes, he was so willing to die for his country....

he traded military information to save his leg.

I'm a vet and I say fuck McCain.

[Bread and Circus]

4. Wow, I tried to read that article. It was just aweful.

[mediaman007]

5. Oh, I hope he doesn't plan to die for his country tonight.

That would mess everything up.

[RoccoR5955]

18. what color is he going to dye? n/t

[ErinBerin84]

6. Finaman is always very generic, but the last line is kind of laugh out loud over the top

I'll see what he says after the debate tonight. Actually, I probably won't, so someone should post it later.

[stray cat]

7. High risk professions or patriotism: Coal miners are also willing to die for their country

They supply needed energy at risk to their own life in dangerous jobs. I guess fisherman do to another high risk profession. Reporters particularly in Iraq and Afganistan are willing to die for the news to get to Americans.

[high density]

8. Fineman fails to realize that people have seen McCain's positions and they do not like them

Nor do they like the idea of Sarah Palin and her Bush+Cheney impersonation. After a while that trick birthday candle burns down completely. That happened a few weeks ago when McCain said the fundamentals of the economy were strong.

[TwilightGardener]

9. Oh, gag. The reason McLoon keeps coming back is because he's

a power-hungry maniac fully enabled and cheered on by the media. They started working on his primaries "comeback" in the fall of 2007, and now it's a set-in-stone media narrative, about how at one point he carried his own suitcases, blah blah, but the old POW never gives up, didn't give in to the North Vietnamese and won't give in to bad poll numbers, blah blah bullshit. Just when they finally start deconstructing the myth of the maverick, they are building the myth of the never-say-die old warrior.

[FrenchieCat]

10. We can always sent him a couple of email

Address to Howard Fineman, [e-mail]

Perhaps employing some of Gen. Wes Clark's quotes..... "John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war.

"He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world, but he hasn't held executive responsibility," Clark said. "That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded _ that wasn't a wartime squadron."

"Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,"

"Everybody admires John McCain's service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There's no issue there. He's a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot _ and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam _ that doesn't prepare you to be commander in chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn't give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/30/clark-mccain-a-hero-but-l_n_109988.html

[ClarkUSA]

11. Um, folks... calm down. Fineman is raising expectations for McCain's debate performance.

Do any of you watch KO? Fineman is constantly dissing McCain in ways large and small on KO and the Rachel Maddow Show.

[lamp_shade]

12. What ClarkUSA said. He's just raising t he bar. They're all doing it today.

[Median Democrat]

13. Fineman's Description Also Applies To A Cockroach

Fineman:

"McCain is like that trick birthday candle: you keep blowing it out but it keeps springing back to life."

Thsi descriptiom could also apply to a cockroach or the undead.

[ElboRuum]

14. Good analogy!

Yes, McCain is a helluva lot like that trick birthday candle that keeps springing back to life.

You get a trick candle one year, and you're amused a bit, and the person who put it on the cake is guffawing like he might throw up his stomach.
Next year, yeah, all kinds of haha, same guy.
Year after that, now you're getting annoyed and looking at the person who put it on with a vicious glare, but the guy thinks he's a scream.
The next, you just rip the candle off the cake the second you spot it, toss it in the sink, and resolve to stop inviting the shithead who thinks its so damn funny.

[City Lights]

15. Howard Fineman won the Mediawhore of the Year award for a reason.

Still wearing that crown proudly I see.

[Skidmore]

16. Howie, I fail to see how McCain's history qualifies him to sort out our economic mess.

Magic birthday candles aren't the answer. Neither are lies served up as rabid attacks. If McCain wants to give his life again for his nation, he can bow out tonight.

Howie, you need to read my note to Dana Milbank.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7347820

Too many power lunches and cocktail parties do not a journalist make.

[Drunken Irishman]

17. Yo, he's right. McCain needs a game-changer or it's over.

McCain can't just barely win this debate, or tie, he needs something major to happen or he's done.

Look, the first debate is always the most important, since it's the viewers' real first chance to see the candidates side-by-side. The second debate isn't nearly as important, but it's still more so than the third, which by the time that rolls around, most voters will have already made up their mind.

McCain has to hope Obama trips up and says something stupid, he gets a monumental zinger in or he somehow so amazingly connects with the voters.