McCain all but gone

From The Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John McCain's media team has resigned, an indication that a campaign shake-up two weeks ago is continuing to backfire and further imperil the Arizona Republican's presidential candidacy.

Political ad-makers Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, veterans of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, on Monday emailed the new campaign manager -- lobbyist and longtime McCain adviser Rick Davis -- to say that they were quitting. The two men told friends they had considered leaving for days, as they hadn't been paid and the campaign's financial straits raised questions of when and how much they would be.

[. . .]

Since Mr. McCain accepted the resignations of former campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver two weeks ago, and put Mr. Davis in charge, more than a dozen senior staffers have left from the headquarters in northern Virginia as well as state offices in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- all states with early nominating contests. Several fund-raisers have cut their ties to the campaign, which reported a debt at the end of the second quarter.

Now the loss of the Schriefer-Stevens media team is considered a new blow, Republican strategists say. The McCain campaign had long planned to begin running ads this fall in early contest states; those plans are at risk given Mr. McCain's debt, compounded now by the difficulty of getting donors to invest in a troubled campaign.

You know I don't think that I'll post any more on McCain's troubles. It isn't just like kicking a man while he's down, its more like kicking the corpse after it's already dead.

I've never believed that McCain had the slightest chance of being chosen as the Republican nominee. He has spent too much of his Senate career stabbing other Republicans in the back in order to get face time on the Sunday shows. That kind of thing tends to leave very bad blood in its wake and this is coming back to bite McCain in a major way.

Unless he does something extraordinarily outrageous (or very praiseworthy, as I try to be fair) I don't think I'll comment on McCain again until he officially withdraws from the race.

And please, someone who honestly cares about McCain, take him aside and tell him it's time to go. He will only embarrass himself further by staying in.