It's not as if he was going to win the state anyway, but John McCain officially quit trying to win California in November by announcing that he would try to lift the ban on off-shore oil drilling. Like the liberals in Cape Cod who don't want their views ruined by a tiny windmill in the distance, the conservatives along the CA coast don't want to look out at oil rigs. The guys with the money remember the Santa Barbara spills and almost all of the elected Republican officials here are against it, including Ahnahld. It's really a non-starter here.
McCain's strategy appears to be to "sacrifice" CA in order to appease folks in Ohio or PA or other close states. But, here's the thing: drilling off the coast of CA, TX or FL may have an effect on oil prices in the future, but it won't do shit about them now. Also, it's pandering because lifting the moratorium leaves drilling up to the states and there's no way CA would go for it. FL's governor Crist has obviously started his campaign for VP by changing his position on the issue, but there's no guarantee that they would allow drilling.
This also shows that McCain thinks more about tactics (get more oil) than strategy (how do we become less dependent on fossil fuels) when it comes to his energy policy. When we chase a finite resource (oil or ethanol) there will always be shortages and price spikes because of supply and demand pressures. The huge run-up in food prices should be teaching him that. There will be ancillary costs to using any type of energy (even solar power requires the manufacturing of collectors and use of habitat for solar farms and transmission), but at least the source is as close to infinite as it gets. With this change in position, McCain shows that he's only interested in an energy policy that will keep the tank full for the rest of his life.
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