“Uneaten potato chips, rigatoni, and a McCain cake”

/in /by

Gosh. MI. OH. Aren’t those the two swing states on which McCain’s entire campaign depends?

If so, it bodes poorly for his campaign that his campaign threw parties last night for supporters to hear his speech … and nobody came.

Apparently, in Canton OH, former Hillary supporter Ernie Talbert got stuck with an uneaten John McCain cake after everyone left the party he hosted long before McCain spoke.

The McCain campaign had issued a list of a dozen convention-watching parties for the media to attend across Ohio. The only one in Stark County was at the Canton home of McCain supporter Ernie Talbert, 50, a Speedway cashier who had supported Hillary Clinton in the Ohio primary. When McCain’s speech started, only he, his son and the media were at the party, as the few visitors who had shown up had left. However, the director of McCain’s local campaign later appeared.

Talbert said he had been told by the campaign that at least 20 people would show to watch McCain’s speech on his small television set. Instead he was left with uneaten potato chips, rigatoni and a McCain cake.

"I put all this stuff out and nobody shows up," he said. "I"m not real happy about that."

And in Farmington Hills, MI–the local office of the two real estate investors that John McCain seems more concerned about than all the people who’ve lost their houses in MI– the Republicans did little better.

Michigan Republicans tried to organize parties to watch John McCain’s speech but at least the two the Free Press visited Thursday turned out to be pretty intimate affairs.

McCain’s many fans probably loved his speech to the Republican National Convention, but they did so in some place other than the Farmington Hills McCain headquarters, where the crowd at a "house party" to watch the speech dwindled to two volunteers and a handful of staffers too busy to watch TV by the time he got under way just after 10 p.m.

Mind you, I’m hearing there’s a special focus on MI’s Oakland County this year, which is MI’s fastest growing county and very much a swing county. If McCain doesn’t win MI, he probably doesn’t win the election. And if he doesn’t win Oakland, he’s not going to win MI.

It may be that everyone went home, with the intent to watch football, only to watch Kwame say his farewells.  It may be that, after watching Palin’s speech, Republicans had seen all they needed to see. But if this reflects the real enthusiasm of Republicans in these key areas of swing states, McCain’s in trouble.

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  1. Leen says:

    Let’s hope “McCain’s in trouble”. We all know he should be. Until Nov. let’s keep pushing in what ever neck of the woods we are in.

  3. racymind says:

    I think they have been passing around the same McCain cake since August 29, 2005. In November, they are going to try to get the USA to finally eat the damn thing. All I can say is…

    Ick!

  6. skdadl says:

    You remember that photo of McCain’s Katrina cake, Bush and McCain holding it up together? I can never get past the sag in the piping at the front of that cake. Why would the piping sag that way? It’s the oddest thing.

  10. mkls says:

    So sorry, John.
    We had a great house party for Obama last week, with more than 20 people there, and there were at least a dozen parties in our town in Virginia that same night.
    (Come to think about it, that’s about a dozen TVs or more that weren’t tuned to Obama’s acceptance speech – because everyone was watching mine.)

  11. Leen says:

    On a far more serious note.
    John Dean nails Palin’s lack of qualifications.
    http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20080905.html

    “Governor Sarah Palin Does Not Qualify Under the Implicit Constitutional Standards

    When Nixon selected Ford to be his Vice President, and Ford selected Rockefeller, the government was divided, with the Democrats controlling Congress. Yet a Democratic Congress approved both Ford and Rockefeller to be Vice President based on inter-branch comity. Surely no one would argue that Sarah Palin is in a league with Ford and Rockefeller when it comes to experience.

    Nor does Palin possess anything close to the experience qualifications of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, or the President pro tempore of the Senate, Robert Byrd. Indeed, I feel confident that Palin could not get confirmed for any of the top presidential succession posts, namely the posts of Secretary of State, Treasury and Defense. Palin’s lack of qualifications have been widely noted. Newspapers from her state have raised questions of her qualifications.

    Recently, I was in Alaska, just after Palin’s name was first floated as a possible McCain running mate. Although I am not a Democrat, I gave a keynote speech at the Democrats’ state convention. During my visit, a senior Democratic Party official said to me that he sure hoped McCain would select Palin, because based on his observation of her record Alaska, he opined that, : “She’s screwing up Alaska big time, and she could probably assure defeat for McCain.” His wish may be coming true.”

    ##The big question is will lack of qualifications keep some of the stuck in the mud voters in Ohio and elsewhere from voting for the McCain/Palin ticket. If all goes according to the Rove teams plan lack of qualifications does not matter. ticket

      • phred says:

        bmaz — any idea why the response has been so slow lately? Are there more people visiting the site or is there some maintenance going on? Just curious. I still have comcast (though I’m hoping to dump them soon) and am wondering whether they are implementing their network control in a mischievous way…

  12. freepatriot says:

    a reformer who refuses to answer the fucking questions ???

    turns out that palin ain’t gonna cooperate with the troopergate investigation after all

    so that’s another lie

    now mcsame is responding to Obama’s economy statements, but he STILL hasn’t figured out A FOOKIN PLAN

    john mcsame feels your pain, he just has no fucking clue what to do about it

    and sarah palin has yet to answer an unscripted question

    so let’s hope Michigan understands how incompetent and corrupt the mcsame campaign is

  13. freepatriot says:

    there are technical issues that are being worked on

    you technicians always say that

    just jiggle the whatchamajigger and stop makin excuses

    and while you’re at it, why don’t you just admit your innertubes are made of duct tape an cardboard

    seriously, why are tbogg and fdl working better than ew’s site ???

    it’s all the same software isn’t it ???

  14. Mauimom says:

    Marcy, please bring us more reporting like this. All the MSM can provide are “polls” that seem to have been conducted in an outhouse. And now that Fournier controls the AP, most small papers that rely on AP stories are slanted by his taint.

    I’m also curious what “traditional” Republicans think of this situation. Y’know, the rich guys and the “genteel” people who look down on Palin and her ilk. Are they really going to get behind this ticket? Are they happy their “beloved” party has been hijacked by these yahoos? How do they feel about all that $$$$ they donated to the RNC & McCain?

    Rove et al. were always so smug about “using” the crazies to ensure Republican victories. I guess they never gave a thought to the possibility of the inmates taking over the asylum.

    Finally, does anyone know what the status is WRT McCain & public financing? Is he stuck with the “acceptance”? If so, what’s happening to all the Big Bucks Caribou Barbie is supposedly bringing in? Inquiring minds, and all . . .

  15. JohnLopresti says:

    Counterpunch has some interesting material from books by J. St.Clair excerpted to their website this week, mostly about the Presidential candidate.

  16. JGabriel says:

    This is kind of odd, considering that McCain’s speech apparently drew a television audience of more than 38 million. I wonder why there’s such a dichotomy between the large audience and the small numbers of people who actually want to share the experience or enthusiasm for their candidate.

    Of course, it would be glib to suggest that the demographic supporting McCain was probably in bed or in their nightclothes by the time he came on.

    I suspect that EW’s speculation about the McCain supporters only needing to see Palin might have some truth in it, at least to the extent that Palin’s fundie base seems far more enthusiastic about her than they do about McCain himself.

    .

  17. Rayne says:

    A tweak to the graf about the real estate investors –

    Bill and Sue Nebe, mentioned in McCain’s speech, are realtors in Farmington Hills and affiliated with Keller Williams realty.

    The office building at which the McCain campaign office is located and which they had a so-called party is Trott Center, owned and operated by Trott & Trott. David Trott is a Republican bundler; his firm provides foreclosure services to companies like Countrywide, handling the nasty work of threatening mortgagees and evicting them. More on them to follow, if sources cooperate.

  18. behindthefall says:

    Do you think that a campaign of ‘hope’ could take a leaf from FDR’s book and begin to hammer on the well-known, patriotic, and rousing “All we have to fear is fear itself!”

    They want to fear-songer? Let’s make them admit it!

  19. emptywheel says:

    Yeah. Now that I look at the numbers, McCain got almost 1.7 million more men than Obama. Part of that is expected–but I bet part of that is because NBC flipped IMMEDIATELY into the convention.