McCain Feeling Heat

Apparently, the McCain shipwreck, er, campaign's internal polling numbers must be inline with Dr. Merrill's poll numbers, as this looks like an act of desperation in a state that really shouldn't be in doubt this late.

John McCain and the Republican National Committee are now running robocalls attacking Obama as weak on terrorism -- in McCain's home state of Arizona, according to multiple readers from the state.

The call signals genuine worry about McCain's home state at a time when several polls show the race to be much closer than expected there.

McCain's robocall, which was played to us over the phone by Mary Joe Bartel, a retiree who lives south of Tucson, attacks Obama as unprepared to defend the country from terrorism, singling out Joe Biden's recent remarks about the likelihood of Obama being tested by an international crisis early in his first term.

Go to Josh Marshall's link above to see the text, and hear the audio of the robocalls if you really have a penchant for self-abuse.

The bottom line is this is an utter disaster for McCain. He's already being outspent in battleground states. He's having to fight to defend states that Bush won handily four years ago. And now he's got to play defense on a state that should absolutely have been in the safe column.

Even if he wins Arizona, the fact that the race will finish close has to give a lot of hope to Bob Lord, Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell, Gabrielle Giffords, and a ton of lower ticket Democrats that they won't have to count on quite as many cross ticket voters to vote for individual Democrats.

Make no mistake. McCain has no coattails, and may even be a drag on his party here on election night.

UPDATE: Raw Story has more, including local reaction from Don Bivens, State Democratic Party Chairman.

Bivens says they are asking the DNC & Obama for some reasons to help turn up the volume to 11. Rumor has it Barack has more money than he can use between now and November 4. It'd be nice to see some of the money, and maybe a campaign stop from one of the surrogates (I'm assuming Barack will have higher priorities between now and November 4). Nothing would say schadenfreude quite like McCain losing Arizona...particularly since he may have another statewide race against a tough candidate in two years.