Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin.

The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.” ~Ed Schultz

Six days to the VP debate, that is.  Add this report from Schultz to the first call for Palin to step down from the ticket from a former supporter, and you have the makings of total disaster for the McCain campaign in this next week.  The word disaster was honestly the first that came to mind when I heard the VP announcement as I was driving back to Chicago.  I remember saying, to no one in particular in my car, “Total disaster.”  Because I don’t want McCain to win, I wasn’t concerned that choosing Palin was a disaster for his chances, but I nonetheless felt a sense of wonder about it in the way that insane, futile attacks on fortified positions might inspire a certain strange admiration.  I wondered at the time, “What could they have been thinking?”  Of course, they had been thinking, “Mac wants Lieberman, which is even more insane, so let’s settle for the merely deranged.”  Now they are paying the price.

After the Republican convention, I joked that the convention theme was, “Can we have a mulligan?”  It seems to me that the McCain camp would very much like a do-over on the VP selection, but they know that if they dump Palin now it will definitely be over.  If he dropped her now, or if she resigned for whatever reason, the combination of media triumphalism (the narrative would be, “so much for experience and judgement!”), liberal Schadenfreude and conservative despair would be so great that McCain wouldn’t stand a chance.  Even though his result is now more likely to end up resembling Dole’s rather than, say, a respectable Ford-like defeat, he will have to trudge on and accept whatever happens.  He might even earn some grudging respect late in the day; perhaps some generous Obama supporters will liken his campaign to the charge of the Light Brigade.  He is, after all, so very concerned about Sevastopol, as he reminded us tonight.  The entire Palin episode has been like some drunken bacchanalia that gave way to a terrified awakening several weeks too late.  When her critics were painting her as a new Eagleton, her supporters were laughing at them as lunatics filled with hate, and now they are beginning to think that the haters may have been onto something.  The GOP is experiencing self-immolation, and I can’t say that I am very bothered by that.