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.