I wouldn't mind so much, but...

This photo doesn't really relate to the post, but I couldn't resist (source)

Here's what McCain had to say about his chances in tomorrow's election:

The candidate did all he could to stir the crowd's passions. McCain, who until recently opposed offshore drilling, vowed: "We'll drill offshore!" ("Drill, baby, drill," the crowd answered). McCain, who voted in support of the $750 billion financial bailout, declared: "We're not going to spend $750 billion of your money bailing out Wall Street bankers." He even invoked a favorite conservative boogeyman, the openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, who he said wants "to cut defense spending by one-fourth."

Having roused the lethargic audience with fear of Frank and love of drilling, McCain thought it safe to "give you a little straight talk about the state of the race today."

"Just two days left, a couple of points behind," he said. "My friends, the Mac is back!"

The Mac then flew up to the University of Scranton, where a third of the college gym was blocked off by a curtain, making the rest of the gym look more full. The candidate read from the teleprompter roughly the same pep talk he had read at his first stop: "I can sense the momentum and the enthusiasm. . . . We're going to win this race. . . . Americans are figuring it out in the last 48 hours. . . . A few points down. . . . The Mac is back!"

I don't mind McCain saying that he thinks he's going to win. It's expected of politicians, even those who don't really have a chance. But why did he say that he was giving the crowd "a little straight talk"? That's not straight talk. That's blowing sunshine up people's asses. Straight talk would sound more like this:

My friends, we're a couple of points down in Pennsylvania, which is a must-win state for me. We're a couple of points down, by which I mean we're about 10 points down. I've been criticizing John Murtha for saying that a lot of Pennsylvanians are racists, but the fact is that I agree with him. In fact, I'm counting on that. It's the whole reason I've been spending so much time in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that the polls show that I haven't got a prayer of winning the state.

The fact is, unless Barack Obama is caught within the next 24 hours with either a dead girl or a live boy, I can't win unless people set aside their concerns about the economy long enough to remember a time when it was absurd to imagine hiring a black lawyer, let alone voting for a black president. So join me in my fervent hope that people fear black men more than they fear losing their jobs and their homes. Let's all work to keep voter turnout low, especially among ethnic minorities. We can still win, even though the odds in our favor are vanishingly small!

But of course, "straight talk" was always an empty phrase for McCain, no more meaningful to him than "my friends" or "maverick" or "country first".

(cross posted at appletree)