McCain's Long Road To Obscurity

Every candidate who passes through Philadelphia has to eat a cheesesteak at one of the two approved iconic cheesesteak stands, Pat's and Geno's. Some candidates make crucial mistakes in this "acting like working people" show, such as John Kerry and his uncouth request for a truffle-and-diamond cheesesteak, or Obama's recent request for an all-arugula sandwich on toasted panini with a side of hundred-dollar bills.

Other candidates eat their cheesesteak and nobody cares. Read the following eyewitness account about one of John McCain's stops for a spooge-and-steak 'um treat:

So the week of the convention, I was walking by Pat's and there were a few cops standing around and a white stretch van was there. John McCain, (fresh from being booed at a speech at Penn, I later found out) just plopped out of the van and sat down alone at one of the benches and ate a cheesesteak while one photographer snapped a picture. Again I gawked for a minute, but it was super boring, so I left.

Sad, no? Let's make it sadder. THIS STORY IS FROM SEVEN YEARS AGO, during the RNC convention in Philly in the summer of 2000. Scott Shrake at Huffington Post provided this pathetic glimpse into the past, but I can back up at least part of it, because I was booing McCain over at a UPenn auditorium that very day, during the so-called "Shadow Convention" held by Arianna Huffington herself.

McCain still had some "moderate" fans left over from the surprising kick-in-the-cunt he gave Bush Junior in New Hampshire, and anybody with even a remote chance of keeping Dubya from getting the nomination was still worthy of a little attention. What might "the maverick" do?

Remember, nobody much liked Gore at that point because none of us had any idea what would happen over the next eight years. People (hippies, students, the whole Battle of Seattle crowd) were excited about Ralph Nader, and even Pat Buchanan -- okay, not really Pat so much -- and what if McCain did something wacky like run as a Green with Wesley Clark or something?

Hard-core rednecks already hated McCain because he had actually served in the military and heroically got tortured by our ultimate enemy of that moment, some little dudes in a jungle somewhere. And corporations hated him for his dirty talk about "cleaning up politics" and limitinglobbyingfree speech, so the Republican support wasn't really there outside of weird New Hampshire. So his last possible supporters sat in a hot, muggy hall with a bunch of stinking hippies, and John McCain's nice old mom and her twin sister, and Arianna gave a nice introduction and here comes Walnuts, who promptly endorsed George W. Bush, expressed his undying love for the same RNC that had just destroyed him with bizarre racist mulatto-baby campaigns and other filthy Rovian tricks, and the crowd of hippies booed him off the stage.

So then he dragged his ass over to Pat's and sat there alone eating a goddamned cheesesteak at like 10: 30 in the morning on a miserable hazy summer day in a ghetto.

That's when McCain ran out of supporters: Seven years ago.

 Motorcades: Size Matters [Huffington Post]