WCCO showed video from McCain rally

[HopeFor2006]

And they cut away just before the crowd started booing.

[dflprincess]

1. I thought the local media has been real tooly about this visit.

Just falling all over themselves about how wonderful it is that McCain wants to stop the attacks (probably because, like any bully, he's afraid Obama will confront him at the next debate). The New York Times appears to have a slightly different take:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11campaign.html?ref=politics

McCain Lauds and Attacks Obama in Same Day
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

LAKEVILLE, Minn. — After a week of trying to portray Senator Barack Obama as a friend of terrorists who would drive the country into bankruptcy, Senator John McCain abruptly changed his tone on Friday and told voters at a town-hall-style meeting that Mr. Obama was “a decent person” and a “family man” and suggested that he would be an acceptable president should he win the White House.

But moments later, Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee, renewed his attacks on Mr. Obama for his association with the 1960s radical William Ayers and told the crowd, “Mr. Obama’s political career was launched in Mr. Ayers’ living room.”

The dizzying statements came on a confused day when Mr. McCain’s campaign pounded Mr. Obama as a “liar” in an incendiary television commercial about Mr. Ayers and as Mr. McCain abruptly announced another economic policy proposal, this time a plan to suspend mandatory withdrawals from 401(k) retirement accounts.

The events reflected Mr. McCain’s frequently lurching campaign. For the past several weeks, as the polls have shown Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, gaining increasing ground, Mr. McCain’s traveling road show has veered from message to message and from pumping up hostile crowds to trying to calm them down. Each news cycle seem to bring another tactic as the campaign appears to be trying anything and everything to see what might work.

His temporary embrace of Mr. Obama came as Mr. McCain was repeatedly implored by voters at the town-hall-style meeting to “fight back” against Mr. Obama at the next presidential debate, on Wednesday, and to stop him from becoming president. But unlike at an earlier town-hall-style meeting this week in Wisconsin, where Mr. McCain sharply agreed with voters who urged him to punch back, this time he drew a line...."

Much more at the link.

Oh, and I finally found a crowd estimate or 2,200 - which pretty much packed the auditorium (or gym) they were using.... All the way to Minnesota to pack a room with a lousy 2,200 true believers. It doesn't strike me as the best use of his dwindling campaign time.