Todd Akin

Spinning bad news into good news is the job of every political campaign. Nevertheless, Missouri Rep. Todd Akin’s campaign for the U.S. Senate just tried to spin his collapsing poll numbers in a unique way.

After a week when his comments that “legitimate rape” will “rarely” result in a pregnancy dropped his 8% lead to a 10% deficit, Akin said that incumbent Claire McCaskill should drop from the race because her campaign is hopeless.

That’s right. Akin, who has created one of the all-time political bungles, is having his campaign give political advice to an opponent who holds a comfortable lead over him.

“The fact that Claire McCaskill is only polling at 48 percent after 72 hours of constant negative attacks on Todd Akin shows just how weak she is,” Perry Akin, the congressman’s campaign manager and son, said in a statement Thursday. “If she can’t break 50 percent after a week like this, Democrats should ask Claire to step down. Todd is in this race to win; we will close this gap and win in November with the support of the grassroots in Missouri and across America.”

On a second look, perhaps Akin has a point. If Akin can still poll 38% of the vote after disregarding science, commonsense and questioning the legitimacy of one of the most horrible crimes in the world, then he does have hope that voters may forget his ill-advised words. However, that reflects as badly on the nature of some Missouri voters as it does on Akin and McCaskill. That hardly justifies a victory cry.