John McCain is in Santa Barbara, California, today.  He’s there to promote his latest stupid idea: drilling for oil on California beaches.  McCain is apparently politically tone-deaf enough to push for more oil rigs in Santa Barbara, where a massive oil spill in 1969 helped to inaugurate the environmental protection movement. 

Analysts say that McCain is really not speaking to Californians with his offshore oil drilling plan.  He’s really speaking to Midwesterners.  The idea is that people in Ohio and Iowa won’t care about leaky oil rigs off the picturesque Santa Barbara coast – Midwestern swing state voters will vote for lower gas prices.

McCain seriously underestimates the intelligence of Midwestern voters.  Everyone knows that the price of gasoline is going nowhere but up.  It doesn’t take an expert to conclude that getting new oil rigs up and running takes years, so McCain’s fabulous plan to destroy California’s beaches will have exactly zero effect on gas prices this year, next year, and the year after that.  Does anyone really believe that gas prices will be lower in 2011 than they are today?  Sales figures of SUV’s suggest that even Midwestern voters think not.  Somehow, I think the “gas price” issue can’t really be the one McCain hangs his hat on because no one will believe that he can actually do anything about it.

McCain is desperate for an issue that he can use to outflank Barack Obama.  Since McCain has no health care plan, no plan to end the war, no economic plan, and no education plan, he figures that he’ll beat Obama by proclaiming that he’s going to lower the price of a gallon of gas.  Good luck running on that, McCain.  At least you’ll have the oil company vote.