McCain Ditches Town Halls for Larger Crowds

John McCain hasn’t held one of his trademark town hall meetings since early October, and it’s not only because they started turning nasty, Politico reports. Though the question-and-answer format revealed some distressing misconceptions in the McCain faithful, town halls also are much smaller than more spectacular rallies. “The final weeks are all about volume, volume, volume,” a political scientist said.

McCain has not taken questions at a public appearance since October 10th, when he had to assure a supporter Barack Obama was a “family man” and not an “Arab.” Though a town hall session is planned for New Hampshire tomorrow, McCain has been taking his message to larger crowds. “I’m not sure that if he had more town halls it would change the dramatic fall in the polls that we’ve been seeing,” another watcher said. (More Election 2008 stories.)