John McCain just can’t get any respect – or maybe I should say support – these days. Barack Obama decides to accept his historic nomination as the first African-American presidential candidate of any major political party before 75,000 supporters at Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado. Obama supporters from all over the country claim the tickets within 24 hours. In fact, nearly 650,000 Obama supporters are denied tickets to the event.
McCain, the other hand, wants to introduce his VP pick to 10,000 of his supporters tomorrow in Dayton, Ohio. McCain wants this event to be a well attended barn-burner to prove to the world that he too can pack’m in just like Obama. Yet, McCain can't get anyone to come to Dayton. He's still trying to give the tickets away. In fact, attendance at the Dayton event may be so poor that McCain may be forced to engage in some parasitic PR to introduce his VP - McCain is now thinking about announcing his VP in an ad directed to the massive television audience expected for the Obama speech.
Poor McCain. He has to rely on Obama’s popularity to get his message out. This guy just can’t get any respect.
This story is more than just a sad and pathetic tale of the McCain campaign. This story is a story about political process and strategy. This story substantively reflects on the relative levels of activist support within the Obama and McCain campaigns. Simply put, the Obama campaign has more activist support than it can handle, while the McCain campaign has so little activist support that it cannot even muster a meager crowd of 10,000 people to attend a VP announcement.
This is news worthy. Every major U.S. new outlet should tell this story because it’s true and is perfectly illustrative of both the tremendous excitement surrounding the Obama campaign and the abject gloominess of the McCain campaign.
Will this story get any coverage? Hey.... look over there! What's up with those pretentious white columns Obama is putting up? I mean.... geez, could that guy be anymore of an eliteness? Common folk don’t use big white columns like that?
What story were we talking about again?