Think Progress is Helping John McCain Sometimes

AgentX has left a new comment on your post "HAT TIPS to CNULAN AT SUBREALISM, and to ThinkProgress on the Veterans-related video":

"Lord have mercy; he's done it again! McCain got in front of a mike and embarrassed himself, again. And this one's a real whopper! It's been seen by 28,000 people in one day!"

In comments at YouTube, on commenter said,

That stupid laugh: "uh-huh, uh-huh". Is it me or is this guy just sickening? It's fun, but sad watching McCain in these Town Hall settings. On issues with the economy, foreign policy, Iraq and any other subjects, McCain is always quickly outwitted and overwhelmed. I listen to this old fool and his plans to make things better and just shake my head. What an embarrassment. That smug, arrogant look he always has makes me want to vomit. Pig5689

OK, Agent X, but where's the "whopper". Sure he mentioned "the Outdoor Footwear company Crocks", which has been insider trading and cheating shareholders:

Shareholders sue Crocs over stock price drop
Fort Collins (Colo.) Coloradoan | 231 days 6 hours 8 minutes ago
DENVER - Executives of shoemaker Crocs Inc. have been accused of misleading shareholders about operations while they sold at least $58 million in stock before the price plummeted on the third-quarter earnings report.

But, where's the big embarrassment here? Francis L. Holland writing at The African American Political Pundit Blog:

This is what I said at DailyKos, just before I was banned there:

I define “white male supremacy”: as “the belief that white males, no matter how much and how often they fail, are still, by virtue of their male gender and white skin, inherently more qualified than blacks and women who succeed.” – Francis L. Holland, December 13, 2006 at DailyKos.

And everything about this election in 2008, shows that I was correct: Barack Obama runs not just against a man, John McCain, but also and much more importantly, against the white male supremacy paradigm. Barack Obama has to show NOT ONLY that he will be a better president than John McCain, but also and more importantly, that John McCain is not inherently superior to Obama by virtue of John McCain’s white skin.

It ought not be hard to demonstrate that the party that prefers to end an expensive and futile war that is wildly unpopular is preferable to the party that proposes to continue that war indefinitely. It ought not be hard to convince the public that the party whose current president has a 29% approval rating ought not be selected to perpetuate the policies of that same lousy-ass president.

And polls show that when adding undecided voters to the McCain column, (as might arguably happen in November) the race is actually a dead heat.

I think many of the people watching this video are eating it up. They're part of the 29% that still love and support George W. Bush in spite of all of his failures, because he is a white man on a white supremacist mission that favors the rich and disadvantages the poor and the middle class, and anyone who has to work for a living.

However, there are even more people dedicated to some aspect of the Republican program, like anti-abortion, the perception of commitment to lower taxes, military adventurism of the sort we see in those popular Rambo and Arnold Schwartznegger movies, etc. To the extent that McCain speaks to these issues in his speeches, no matter how much he mangles them, ThinkProgress does a SERVICE to McCain by giving these videos extra play, more eye-views than they would have received otherwise.

The only videos of John McCain that should be circulated are those that show him to be unstable, a liar, or to hold positions that ALL Americans disagree with. For example, consider his votes against health care benefits for returning veterans. In spite of those votes, half of American still supports him, so highlighting those votes may actually result in greater turnout by the half of America that supports that for some reason.

This strategy of believing that everything that seems idiotic to progressives should be put into the Internet bullhorn could well backfire, giving McCain's proposals more play on the Internet than those of his opponent. Instead, Think Progress should exercise some discipline and disseminate ONLY those videos that EVERYONE, regardless of political stripe, will find to exclude McCain from the running.

John McCain will embarrass himself and show America that he cannot be president because he is unstable. But this video isn't that.