They also however point out there is a precedent for candidates missing roll call votes, historically.

I’d love the Obama campaign to use McCain’s absence on the FISA vote as a line of attack, given their own candidate’s 180. But alas, they’re much smarter than that. They want to sweep the FISA issue under the rug ASAP.

I’m not saying that they should or should not be on it. But I do think that when something really means something to someone (or someone’s constituents), you take action. Isn’t that why you vote for someone in the first place?

As for FISA, I can’t think of too many greater instances of treason to the Constitution and the country as that vote.

Hedges perspective is right on:
http://tinyurl.com/5fa9rg

Heck, anything over 60 is enough…

But if you want another “right now” example of great import to 51% of the population, how about equal pay for equal work?

From Think Progress: (which has a video of this)

“Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) participated in a town hall meeting in Wisconsin. During the discussion, he claimed that he is a strong supporter of equal pay for women and other workers:

We haven’t done enough. We have not done enough. And I’m committed to making sure that there’s equal pay for equal work. That there is equal opportunity in every aspect of our society. And that is my record and you can count on it.

“In fact, McCain seems committed to just the opposite. In April, he skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have rectified the Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear “that made it much harder for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims.”

“In fact, on that very same day, McCain said that if he had been in the Senate, he would have voted against it because the bill “opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.” He also dismissed the importance of equal pay, saying that women simply need “education and training“:

“They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else,” McCain said. “And it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.

“The issue is not “education and training.” When denied equal pay by her supervisor, Lilly Ledbetter was doing the exact same job as her male counterparts and received numerous performance-based awards.

“As the Wonk Room notes, in 2000, McCain also opposed an amendment aimed at providing “more effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex.” In 1985, McCain voted against a study to investigate pay differences among federal employees and determine whether they were the result of discrimination.”

Ben – if you want to bring on the challenges to Obama’s voting record, you can start with my blog – I wrote twice about him missing votes and how it really pissed me off.

But here – the focus is McCain – and the fact that he was in Ohio during that vote only makes it worse.