McCain Needs a Loan

The Trail reports that the McCain campaign is apparently out of money and with the only path to victory via Iowa and New Hampshire, it's do or die time. He needs the money and apparently the only way to get it is through a loan of up to $3 million. Michael Shear points out that this is not unheard of and can even work, as in the case of John Kerry.

But taking a loan does not necessarily mean a win is completely out of reach. In 2004, Democrat John F. Kerry took a similar late-season loan, secured against his personal house, and used the money to secure his nomination.

At this time in 2004 though John Kerry was at one point the top candidate and was falling behind to latecomer Howard Dean, who was raising tons of money on the newfangled internet and was telling Democratic supporters everything they wanted to hear.

The important difference is that John Kerry was the fallback candidate so when the Howard Dean campaign collapsed, John Kerry was still there to fall back to. If Rudy collapses in January, John McCain is not the fallback candidate, in fact there are three fallback candidates before we even get to McCain, Romney, Huckabee, Thompson.

So it's much more likely that John McCain may end up more like Senator John Glenn of Ohio, who was still dogged by campaign debt years after his 1984 failed presidential run.

Also of note is that supporters in South Carolina are running ads in an entirely separate venture from John McCain and bypassing campaign finance rules. Notable since campaign finance is one of his signature platforms. And so he is publicly decrying his supporters:

Separately, a newly created group was airing an ad Friday in South Carolina that portrays the Arizona senator and two of his congressional allies as "leaders who share our priorities" of supporting funds for U.S. troops and opposing pork-barrel spending.

"I have no clue about it," McCain said in a brief interview in Meredith, N.H. "I didn't know they were doing them. I didn't even know about it until a short time ago."

In a statement issued later, he added: "If anyone considering an outside expenditure thinks they are benefiting me, I would prefer they do not air the ads. If there are ads up, I believe they should come down."