Candidate McCain vs Senator McCain

It is the one thing i dislike about the dems. They are unwilling to tell it like it is. They tip toe around issues and worry that it will make them look mean or reflect negatively on them. They have the stench of fear wafting from them. It is not hard to understand why after watching first Gore then Kerry lose in situations where they had no business losing. They had to watch as the GOP tore apart Max Cleland a true American Hero. They deal with a media who have long since abandoned the idea of personal integrity and promoting the truth and have instead prided themselves on fake balance and their own opinions.

It is for those reasons that i think we here the Dems afraid to go after McCain in a real way. The prominent Dems always lead with their feelings of friendship with McCain as Amy Sullivan explains:

A number of speakers have made reference to their personal friendship with John McCain, carefully noting how much they admire him, before going on to criticize him. And that's effective to a point — "more in sorrow than in anger" plays differently than straight-on attacks.

But Democrats might find it would be more effective if they explained why they're so disappointed with their friend John McCain. How did this great guy they admire so much became a candidate whose positions appall them? It wasn't a fluke, it wasn't like he had a personality transplant. And the answer would seem to fit perfectly into a powerful Democratic narrative. John McCain changed because that's what he had to do to win the Republican nomination. That's what the reigning conservative ideology and interests demanded of him.

It is very simple, John McCain sold out. He sold out for power and he sold out for ambition. He is doing what he thinks it takes to win. Maybe he is doing it out of an ends justify the means rationale, get into power to save America, i dont know. I do know he wrote this in his memoir

"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I'd had the ambition for a long time."

Even if you disregard his internal thoughts the evidence is overwhelming that McCain will do anything to get elected. There are at least 75 confirmed swings in major positions since he began his Capt. Ahabesque pursuit of the presidency.

You can feel the dems edging around the main point but just staying outside. The main point is the synthesis of the Kerry and Clinton and Biden speeches. McCain is a candidate who has sold out everything he ever believed in to win the nomination of a party whose world view has brought us the last eight abysmal years. It was his choice to abandon truth in pursuit of power. He embraced a demonstrably disastrous and discredited world view for power. Its not only cynical and pathetic its dangerous. What would a man willing to sell his soul for power do in office?