Slate’s John Dickerson has a good explainer on McCain’s tactics which he says has nothing to do with winning over these heavily Democratic constituencies. As he tours the country, McCain is getting himself acquainted with voters and the press who absolutely love the maverick in him.

He’s not really chasing the traditional Democratic vote from poor blacks, Hispanic, Native Americans and the whites in the poorer section of Appalachia. He’s showing the independent voters, whose support he needs to win the White House that he is his own man. “That's OK,” says Dickerson, because McCain is showing his authentic side.  "People can come in and do what they want," says Mark Salter, McCain’s adviser and ghostwriter of most of his books. "They can praise, chastise, and argue with him. This isn't just his style. It's a part of his message."

McCain’s biggest problem is the guy currently occupying the White House, but he was careful to keep enough distance from George Bush during this weeks hearing on the Iraq war. What he can always count on, are friends in America’s the liberal press.

Neal Gabler, says the reason press swoons for him, could be because political reporters really haven’t seen his like since John F. Kennedy. He calls him “the first real postmodernist candidate for the presidency - the first to turn his press relations into the basis of his candidacy.”

While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are extremely sparing in the access they grant even big shot US reporters, McCain is quite the opposite as the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza evoked in The New Yorker last month.  On a typical campaign day McCain’s Straight Talk Express goes from one stop to another while he sits on a horseshoe-shaped leather couch talking “until the room is filled with the awkward silence of journalists with no more questions.”

Gabler calls  postmodernist presidential candidate is his because he lets the  press in on his own media machinations, openly talking about them on the bus, revealing “reveals the absurdity of the political process as a big game” and his own gleeful cynicism about it.

Whether its schmoozing the press on the bus, or patiently listening to voters and letting them ask repeat and follow up questions in his town hall session The McCain  campaign works on the basis that even voters who oppose him, on the war in Iraq for example, come away liking the man. This and his Duracell Bunny-like energy is what brought him out on top in the Republican primaries. As Dickerson sees it the McCain tour will draw a contrast with Obama. (whom they, like most others already assume will win the nomination). The Republican attacks will centre on the accusation that Obama is “a big phony” who doesn’t put him self out in front of tough audiences and keeps the press at bay. "

Of course it could all backfire when McCain tells the hacks on the bus that it’s all a cynical ploy and they decide, for a change, to report it.