McCain Fears Obama

It seems that John McCain will do what he has to to pump up a Hillary Clinton nomination, sparing himself from having to face Barack Obama in the fall. With his nomination on the Republican side a near certainty, McCain has trained his focus on Obama as he hopes to tilt that race in Clinton’s favor. Yesterday the attacks began in earnest as the Arizona senator derided Obama’s soaring rhetoric for lacking specificity.

”There’s going to come a time when we’re going to have to get into specifics. I have not observed every speech he has given obviously, but they are singularly lacking in specifics…To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope, it is a platitude.”

The attacks continued when McCain’s economic adviser, Kevin Hasset, alleged that Obama “plagiarized” Hillary Clinton’s economic stimulus package. The wording was harsh. The full text of the attack along with the Obama camp’s response can be found here. McCain’s attacks hold little water as he has been painfully vague himself in his policy proposals.


Why is the Senator bothering to inject himself into this as yet undecided fight? The polls consistently show that McCain runs stronger against Clinton than Obama by anywhere from 6-11 points. Obama runs very strong among independents and some moderate Republicans, the same constituency that McCain is courting. But McCain’s biggest fear is that the conservative wing of his party, jaded by what they see as liberal tendencies of their nominee, simply stays home in November. With Hillary Clinton on the ballet this is far less likely as she is a most reviled figure in conservative circles and would surely drive Republican turnout in a way that Obama would not.


Obviously if the McCain camp sees Obama as a more formidable opponent than the Democratic establishment in the form of super delegates are seeing the same thing. There is nothing this core group of Democratic loyalists want more than to take the White House this fall and if they believe Obama offers them the better shot you can be sure they’ll be abandoning Clinton in droves in the coming weeks.

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