Mark McKinnon is the saddest of sad Republicans in all the sad land. This weekend he sadly penned a column forTina Brown's Toothsome Amphigory Concerning Certain Swamp Monsters about how his old friend John McCain was forced, by the economy, to run a mean campaign about nothing. Also, John McCain is Seabiscuit and Barack Obama is Secretariat. That means Obama, like FDR, will win the "Triple Crown" of the Presidency (i.e. polio).

John McCain's awful campaign has been so unfortunate, and unavoidable, and sad, and everybody would think David Axelrod was an idiot if his candidate weren't winning.

There is a fundamental question we always ask in political polls. Is the country headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track? [...] Only nine percent of respondents think the country is headed in the right direction. I know what you’re thinking. “Who are those nine percent?”

So, by this measure, John McCain should be polling at about nine percent. And yet, Schmidt and company ran a good enough campaign that McCain went into the Republican Convention tied. And came out of it ahead. The only real surprise in this race is that it was ever close.

Nine percent? That is setting the bar really low. But anyhow! Many months ago Mark McKinnon looked into a crystal ball and saw that his hero John McCain would turn into a despicable loser by the end of the campaign, so he got out early. Good for him! But does this make John McCain any less of a despicable loser, for running a campaign full of awful stunts and dumb cheerless ads and racist innuendo? No, but that does not matter, to Mark McKinnon! What matters is turncoats like Mike Murphy taking potshots from the sidelines:

Of course almost all the shots come from consultants and hacks who didn’t get hired, or were fired by the McCain campaign. Or were part of some past presidential campaign in which they still revel in the glory and clink toasts to one another as if they cured the measles. Many of these people, who profess to “love McCain,” are firing blistering shots at the campaign through the press, which serves only one purpose. And it ain’t to help McCain.

Yes MURPH you have killed the dead ghost of John McCain's dignity instead of curing measles. PWNED, the end.

The McCain Mutiny [The Daily Beast]