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TechnoratiWar Meets Values on Campaign Trail
Will the Big Winner of 2008 Once Again Be a Conservative Culture-Wars Narrative?
While the Iraq war has largely faded from our TV screens, some 85% of all voters still call it an important issue. Most of them want U.S. troops home from Iraq within a couple of years, many of them far sooner. They support Barack Obama's position, not John McCain's. Yet when the polls ask which candidate voters trust more on the war, McCain wins almost every time.
Maybe that's because, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press, nearly 40% of the public doesn't know McCain's position on troop withdrawal. In a June Washington Post/ABC poll, the same percentage weren't sure he had a clear position. When that poll told voters that McCain opposed a timetable for withdrawal, support for his view actually shot up dramatically. It looks like a significant chunk of the electorate cares more about the man than the issue. Newer polls suggest that McCain's arguments against a timetable may, in fact, be shifting public opinion his way.
McCain's Only Chance: Values-plus Voters
Pundits and activists who oppose the war in Iraq generally assume that the issue has to work against McCain because they treat American politics as if it were a college classroom full of rational truth-seekers. The reality is much more like a theatrical spectacle. Symbolism and the emotion it evokes -- not facts and logic -- rule the day.
In fact, the Pew Center survey found that only about a quarter of those who say they'll vote for McCain base their choice on issues at all. What appeals to them above all, his supporters say, is his "experience," a word that can conveniently mean many things to many people.
The McCain campaign constantly highlights its man's most emotionally gripping experience: his years of captivity in North Vietnam. Take a look at the McCain TV commercial entitled "Love." It opens with footage of laughing, kissing hippies enjoying the "summer of love," then cuts to the young Navy flier spending that summer of 1967 dropping bombs on North Vietnam and soon to end up a tortured prisoner of those he was bombing.
McCain believed in "another kind of love," the narrator explains, a love that puts the "country and her people before self." Oh, those selfish hippies, still winning votes for Republicans -- or so McCain's strategists hope.
Obama agrees that the symbolic meanings of Vietnam and the "love generation" still hang heavy over American politics. The debate about patriotism, he observed, "remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s... a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq."
Obama is right -- sort of. The so-called culture wars have shifted away from social issues to war, terrorism, and national security. The number of potential voters who rate abortion or gay rights as their top priority now rarely exceeds 5%; in some polls it falls close to zero. Meanwhile, Republicans are nine times as likely as Democrats, and far more likely than independents, to put terrorism at or near the top of their most-important list. And Republican voters are much more likely to agree with McCain that Iraq is, indeed, the "the central front in the war on terrorism."
Sociologists tell us, however, that the "culture wars" so assiduously promoted by conservatives are mostly smoke and mirrors. Despite what media pundits may say, the public is not divided into two monolithic values camps. Voters are much less predictable than that. And few let values issues trump their more immediate problems -- especially economic ones -- when they step into the voting booth. The almighty power of the monolithic "values voters" is largely a myth invented by the media.
Yet, the "culture war" story does impact not only debates about the war in Iraq, as Obama said, but all debates about national security. Beyond the small minority who are strict "values voters," there are certainly millions of "values plus" voters. Though they can be swayed by lots of issues, they hold essentially conservative social values and would like a president who does the same. This time around, it's a reasonable guess that they, too, are letting war and security issues symbolize their "values" concerns. Put in the simplest terms: They are the McCain campaign's only chance.
So just how much of a chance does he really have? At this point, only two-thirds of those who say they trust him most on Iraq plan to vote for him. That means less than 30% of all voters are solidly prowar and pro-McCain. But another 12% or so who do not trust McCain on Iraq say they'll vote for him anyway, keeping him competitive in polling on the overall race. Most of them are surely part of the huge majority who, whatever they think of his Iraq specifics, trust McCain most to protect us from terrorism and see him as the person most desirable as commander-in-chief. (There's that "experience" again.)
The crucial voters are the 10% to 20% who want troops out of Iraq soon, won't yet commit to McCain, but "trust him" most to do the right thing on Iraq and terrorism. They are choosing the man, not the policy position, on the war. A lot of them fall among the 5% to 20% -- depending on the poll you pick -- who won't yet commit to either candidate.
McCain can swing the election if his campaign can only convince enough of them to vote with their hearts, or their guts, for the "experienced" Vietnam war hero, the symbol of the never-ending crusade against "Sixties values." So he and his handlers naturally want to turn the campaign into a simple moral drama: Sixties values -- or the nation's security and your own? Take your pick.
Obama's American Values
Could that "values" script get a Republican elected, despite the terrible damage the Republicans have done -- and for which voters blame them -- in the last eight years? Many Democrats apparently think it might. They're afraid, says Senator Russ Feingold, that "the Republicans will tear you apart" if you look too weak and soft. That's why the Democratic Congress, weakly and softly, continues to give the Bush administration nearly everything it wants when it comes to funding the war in Iraq, as well as eavesdropping on citizens at home. And the Democratic presidential candidate now goes along, with little apology.
The Obama campaign recognizes the larger "values" frame at work here. Look at the commercial its operatives made to kick off the general election campaign. In it, Obama says not a word about issues. He starts off by announcing: "America is a country of strong families and strong values." From then on, it's all values all the time.
And the "strong values" the commercial touts are not the ones that won him the nomination either. Not by a long shot. You'll find nothing about "change" or "hope" there. It's all about holding fast to the past. Nor is there a thing about communities uniting to help the neediest. America's "strong values" -- "straight from the Kansas heartland" -- are "accountability and self-reliance... Working hard without making excuses." You're on your own. It's all individualism all the time.
Sandwiched between self-reliance and hard work is the only community value that apparently does count: "love of country."
Obama's second ad (which Newsweek described as "largely a 30-second version" of the first) features images of the candidate warmly engaging hard-hatted and hair-netted workers, all of them with middle-aged wrinkles, blue collars, and white skins. Both commercials ran in seven traditionally Republican states as well as 11 swing states. As they were released, Obama gave major speeches supporting patriotism and faith-based initiatives.
As Republican consultant Alex Castellanos put it, the Obama campaign made "an aggressive leap across the 50-yard line to play on Republican turf." Before they sent their man around the world to focus on war and foreign policy, to meet the troops in Afghanistan and General Petraeus in Baghdad, they felt they had to assure the "Kansas heartland" that he shares true American values.
And Obama's message-makers know where that mythical "heartland" really lies: not in Kansas, Dorothy, but on a yellow brick road to an imagined past. The America conjured up in his commercials is a Norman Rockwell fiction that millions still wish they could live in because they feel embittered (as Obama so infamously said) by a world that seems out of control. They prefer a fantasy version of a past America where so many, who now feel powerless, imagine they might actually have been able to shape their own destinies.
Perhaps the frustrated do cling to "guns or religion or antipathy to people who are not like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment," as Obama suggested. But his ad-smiths know that they cling far more to illusions of a secure past, when (they imagine) everyone could count on clear, inviolable boundary lines -- between races and genders, between competitive individuals in the marketplace, between the virtuous self and the temptations of the flesh, between the U.S. and other nations, between civilization and the enemies who would destroy it.
All of these boundaries point to the most basic one of all: the moral boundary between good and evil. McCain and Obama are both wooing the millions who imagine an absolute chasm between good and evil, know just where the good is (always "made in America"), and want a president who will stand against evil no matter what the cost. They want, in short, a world where everyone knows their place and keeps to it, and where wars, if they must be fought, can still be "good" and Americans can still win every time.
The Republicans have a code word for that illusory past: "experience." Their "Sixties versus security" script offers a stark choice: The candidate who clearly symbolizes the crossing of boundaries, most notably the American racial line, versus the candidate whose "experience" and mythic life story are built on the same mantra as his Iraq policy: "No surrender."
The McCain campaign is not about policies that can ensure national security by reaching out and making new friends. It's about a man who can offer a feeling of psychological security by standing firm against old and new enemies.
The Media's "Ordinary American"
Who would choose psychological security over real security? The mainstream media have an answer: "the ordinary American." Now that the "values voter" of the 2004 election has largely disappeared, the media have come up with this new character as the mythic hero for their election-year story.
It began, of course, with Hillary Clinton's primary campaign comeback -- portrayed as a revolt of those "ordinary people," who might once have been Reagan Democrats (and might soon become McCain Democrats), against the "elitists" -- or so the media story went. Her famous "phone call at 3 AM" ad suggested that "ordinary people" value a president tough enough to protect their children. As her husband once put it: "When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right."
Now the "elitist" Obama still has a "potentially critical vulnerability," according to the Washington Post's veteran political reporter Dan Balz: "Voters do not know whether he shares the values and beliefs of ordinary Americans."
Balz's colleague, Post media critic Howard Kurtz, called the second Obama commercial a "White Working-Class Pitch" designed to show that Obama is "on the side of average workers." The New York Times's Jeff Zeleny echoed that view: "One of his most pressing challenges is to assure voters that he is one of them."
The centrist and even liberal media are as busy as conservatives propagating the idea that, to be one of the average, ordinary Americans, you have to prize (white) working-class values considered "Republican turf" since the late 1960s: individualism, self-reliance, hard work for "modest" (which means stagnant or falling) wages, faith, and a patriotism so strong that it will never surrender.
The American Everyman, the hero of this year's media story, is an underpaid worker who may very well vote Republican against his or her own economic interests, and all too often against the interests of loved ones who hope to come home alive from Iraq or Afghanistan.
What about all those Democrats who voted for Obama because he offered a vision of a new politics, a way out of Iraq, and a new path for the United States? What about all those who earn too much or too little, or have too much or too little education, or the wrong skin color, to be part of the white working class? Evidently, they are all extra-ordinary Americans; "outside the mainstream," as media analysts sometimes put it. They may represent a majority of the voters, but they just don't count the same way. They don't fit this year's plot line.
Of course it may turn out that the old melodrama of an "experienced" Vietnam hero against the "summer of love" no longer draws much of an audience, even with both campaigns and the mainstream media so focused on it. No matter how things turn out on Election Day, however, it's beginning to look like the big winner will -- yet again -- be the conservative "culture war" narrative that has dominated our political discourse, in one form or another, for four decades now. With Obama and both Clintons endorsing it, who will stand against it?
For the foreseeable future, debates about cultural values are going to be played out fiercely on the symbolic terrain of war and national security issues. The all-too-real battlefields abroad will remain obscured by the cultural battlefields at home and by the those timeless "ordinary American values" embedded in the public's imagination. It's all too powerful a myth -- and too good an election story -- to go away anytime soon.
Creating New Stories
Yet there is no law of nature that says the "ordinary American," white working class or otherwise, must value individualism, self-reliance, patriotism, and war heroics while treating any value ever associated with the 1960s as part of the primrose path to social chaos. In reality, of course, the "ordinary American" is a creature of shifting historical-cultural currents, constantly being re-invented.
But the 1960s does indeed remain a pivotal era -- not least because that is when liberal, antiwar America largely did stop caring much about the concerns and values of working-class whites. Those workers were treated as an inscrutable oddity at best, an enemy at worst. Liberals didn't think about alternative narratives of America that could be meaningful across the political board. Now, they reap the harvest of their neglect.
It does no good to complain about "spineless Democrats" who won't risk their political careers by casting courageous votes against war. Their job is to win elections. And you go to political war with the voters you have. If too many of the voters are still trapped in simplistic caricatures of patriotism and national security created 40 years ago -- or if you fear they are -- that's because no one has offered them an appealing alternative narrative that meets their cultural needs.
It does no good to complain that such working-class views are illogical or stupid or self-destructive. As long as progressives continue to treat "ordinary Americans" as stupid and irrelevant, progressives will find themselves largely irrelevant in U.S. politics. And that's stupid, because it doesn't have to be that way.
What can be done to change this picture? Facts and logic are rarely enough, in themselves, to persuade people to give up the values narratives that have framed their lives. They'll abandon one narrative only when another comes along that is more satisfying.
Democrats started looking for a new narrative after the 2004 election, when the media told them that "values voters" ruled the roost and cared most about religious faith. The result? Democrats, some of them quite progressive, are creating effective faith-oriented frames for their political messages.
No matter who wins this year's election, the prevalence of the "ordinary American" voter story should be a useful wakeup call: It's time to do something similar on a much broader scale. This election year offers an invaluable opportunity to begin to grasp some of the complexities of culturally conservative Americans. Equipped with a deeper understanding, progressives can frame their programs of economic justice and cultural diversity within new narratives about security, patriotism, heroism, and other traditionally American values.
That will take some effort. But it will take a lot more effort to stave off the next Republican victory -- or the next war -- if the project of creating new, more broadly appealing narratives continues to be ignored.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. His email address is: chernus@colorado.edu.
Copyright 2008 Ira Chernus
38 Comments so far
Show Allladybug - I know irs sudden, but available for a dinner for two friday night?
oh come on. take a stab at it. Tell ya what 100 bucks for the dope that get it right. how that for a deal.
ok yes humor is subjective. I don't know if this canuck fella has ever payed a real gig -ya know show in frony of people - but I have and that joke of his would get rotten tomatoes thrown at me i told it. There is no punch, no delivery not even any old fashioned humor. Abe simpson - from the FOX news network? You mean to tell me a dumb kids show makes you people laugh? WTF? Despite what you preach you guys have bought into the moders corporate crap. Anyway so have I so we can be considered company.
Here's a good one. work with me on this one. Forget your TV and your Corporate FOX news Simpsons stuff and use your heads.
Whats does a Mississippi wind chime look like?
"Humor is VERY subjective."
Hence the reason you need to consider your audience.
"Dying is easy; comedy is hard."
-Donald Wolfit
Good luck with that.
4thefuture July 31st, 2008 2:46 am
I meant the full blown anti-war effort. I remember occasional protests as early as 63 I think, but it was fairly scattered and centered mostly in a few places in California till 68 or so as I remember. But I could be wrong. I was out of country part of those times.
canuckchuck!
"Why didn't the show what George Bush Jr was up to during the Summer of Love? Or could they find him anywhere in '67? Maybe he disappeared in a cloud of cocaine dust?"
Twice in one week! LOVED THIS ONE!!!!
Oh hi canuckchuck!
marc,
I like to laugh a lot, even though this is all serious stuff for me. But I want to laugh at smart humor. Not dumb jokes that have nothing to do with the topic in question.
If you want to make us laugh, learn something from canuckchuck, he is the master of irony and a very smart at it.
Here is my idea for an Obamma rebuttle ad...In the voice of Abe Simpson...
"Hi I'm John McSame, and I am a grumpy old man!! Whaaa! Who does that negro whippersnapper Obama think he is? He needs to be put back in his place! In my day, no negros would dare challenge a superior white man! We had ways of dealing with those uppity darkies back in MY day!! Whaaa!
Hey, you kids get off my lawn!! Whaaa!
He scares me with his black skin, his new fangled internets, wireless telegraphs and that scary negro terrorist fist bump he does with his wife! Whaaa!
Why does the world have to change? Can't we all just go back to killing anonymous Asians? Or at least murder some more baby A-Rabs!! Change scares me! Whaa!
Humor is VERY subjective.
yes, McSame is "experienced"...much like my 1969 Volkswagon is experienced....it tends to pull to one side, often won't start in the morning, emits noxious gases when running, and is soon to be relagated to the rust heap.
"Take a look at the McCain TV commercial entitled "Love." It opens with footage of laughing, kissing hippies enjoying the "summer of love," then cuts to the young Navy flier spending that summer of 1967 dropping bombs on North Vietnam and soon to end up a tortured prisoner of those he was bombing.
McCain believed in "another kind of love," the narrator explains, the kind of love you express by blowing up innocent women and children from 20,000 feet.
Why didn't the show what George Bush Jr was up to during the Summer of Love? Or could they find him anywhere in '67? Maybe he disappeared in a cloud of cocaine dust?
marc melchiori -
"Rule: Being Crass or Tasteless Doesn't Automatically Make Everything Funny"
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Uncyclopedia:How_To_Be_Funny_And_Not_Just_Stupid
Yet when the polls ask which candidate voters trust more on the war, McCain wins almost every time.
I could never figure out why that is? Other than most of those polled listen to Republican rhetoric and aren't really aware they are listening to far right propaganda! Choosing to believe every word these people throw at them. The Republican's are the ones who did nothing to prevent 9/11. It could have been stopped if someone in this arrogant administration had taken the warning signs to heart and opened up their ears and listened to intelligence chatter. Instead of going after Bin Laden the man responsible for 3000 deaths. Bush chose to start a war in Afghanistan that hasn't done a thing for the terrorism problem. After that he started one in Iraq on the same pretexts. The public needs to be reeducated themselves to face the reality of the situation. The Republican's haven't done anything but fumble the ball constantly. We are in the mess we are due to their ignorance. Grow up American's and check the facts. Don't just take some journalist's word for it!
klever, so what should I do. Not try to add some levity to this site. Do any of you fools think that any of your opinions matter. Do any of you think your going to change the world by posting silly rants on any web site. Your all wheels in a cog - me included! Live life, laugh a little, don't take everything so hard and serious. Sure make some comments about politics but learn to laugh. The long black stinky joke is a gem. try it out on a freind.
Thomas More said: "I'd like to point out that the Anti-war left didn't show up till the late sixties."
What exactly does this mean, "didn't' show up?" Show up where?
As for late sixties - I was out there demonstrating in February of 1965 after Johnson bombed N. Vietnam. Late sixties? Not the way I count. So, if you had been correct in your date, what was your point supposed to be?
Regarding 'war hero," war criminal is more credible, based on the facts of our actions there,attacking another country which had not threatened or attacked our country.
It's disappointing to find an article based on "narrative" that still describes the U.S. military involvement in Iraq as "war."
And not one of the previous progressive posters (subtracting the troll's five contributions) has corrected that narrative to the more accurate label of "occupation."
Apparently, the propaganda war has already been won.
Or lost, depending on your perspective.
Why is McCain a 'war hero? By the time McCain was shot down in Vietnam the war was already lost and they knew it. It is more likely that he could be found guilty of war crimes.
marc melchiori;
Are you auditioning for CD's stealth racist comic? I'm holding out for Michael Richards.You're way too lame.
Samson - I am in complete agreement for the need to shatter the McCain War Hero Myth (as well as the McCain The Maverick Myth), but there is a problem.
If the Dems were to attempt this, they would get slaughtered. Look what happened to Clark for simply (and rightly) making the reasonable assertion that being shot down in a war, or spending time as a POW, is hardly a qualifier for the presidency.
McCain never led anything. He was a slacker, as you have correctly pointed out in the first response on this site. And what did he do in Vietnam? Bomb civilians from 30,000 feet up. Yeah, real heroic stuff.
So he gets captured. Okay, bad luck and God bless him but how the hell does being captured by the enemy make someone a hero?
Audie Murphy he ain't.
Sepia toned??? is that what you call the skin condition my grandmother has??? God is she an awful bitch. She's no different that those welfare queens who keep takin and taking and taking. God bless here heart.
Eric Barth July 30th, 2008 5:24 pm
"Life to many Americans (especially the Greatest Generation) is a sepia-toned movie. War was the most important event of the lives of many American men of the 20th Century and I guess fighting for its own sake and being a man is more important than critical thinking. Vietnam was another illegal war and an atrocity. How many more before we gain sanity?"
This may be the silliest thing I've read in a while.
"I guess fighting for its own sake and being a man is more important than critical thinking."
Maybe I just misunderstand?
"Life to many Americans (especially the Greatest Generation) is a sepia-toned movie."
I don't believe life was a sepia toned movie to my parents who were part of indeed "the Greatest Generation" If we could have done as well as they did we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today.
TIM 1234: Great points.
The demographic Chernus' article seeks to identify as the one the campaigns are oriented towards is also that of the serial killer: the angry white guy who lives alone, blue collar worker, etc. Great place to aim!
ERIC BARTH: The reason for all the glorification of war, directly through media and indirectly through sports (teams/fighting/competition/winning is all) is to guarantee among the citizenry a ready fodder for the next war; and so far as war is made profitable for soulless elites, it will continue. This is why I rage against the ethos of Mars rules, and see its disease in overt and covert forms operating in too many places... like how about the new military-sponsored video "games" made to induct impressionable young minds, particularly boys who need to find their place in the grand baboon hierarchy, their rank in the macho race, into that final declaration of ultimate homage to Mars... becoming a soldier!
So long as the more inclusive values are shunned by societies in favor of me-first, competitive, dog eat dog hierarchies, the mental state that makes war possible is maintained. To disable it begins with disarming its imagery, and replacing that with the vision of an altogether different society: Another World is Possible.
not funny
No matter how McCain spins it, Americans will still see the war as the #1 issue, because the war funding is so intrinsically connected to the lack of support of domestic issues that affect their lives each and every day.
Last year, we spent $133 Billion on the Iraq war. If our elected officials had been investing in our economy here at home, we could have paid for: health care for 3,920,9905 people for one year, Head Start for 18,251,681 students for one year; and we could have powered 137,823,834 homes with renewable electricity for one year.
To bring this information home to all Americans, Progressive Future has built an online tool called the Invest in US Calculator. The calculator takes a person's 2007 income before taxes and tells you how much of that person's tax money went to fund the war (average: $235), and how many seconds of war that bought (average: .04 seconds). Then it tells you, with that money, how many days of health coverage that could pay for (average: 25), how many days of Head Start education (average: 12), how many days of heating a home with renewable energy (average: 78), and how many days of veterans' higher education benefits (average: 5) that money could have paid for. Then we are asking users to sign our Invest In US petition, which we plan on taking to Congress, the Platform Committees, and the media to push for new priorities for tax spending.
http://progressivefuture.org/invest-in-us-calculator?id4=BLCD
Tough crowd tonight, man is it tough out there. All right here one from the old act - a joke nearly 10 years old - but still packs a punch.
Ok, Ok, - - How do ya fit 100 cubans in a shoe box? Yeah 100 Cubans in a tiny little shoe box???
Tell 'em its a raft! Get it - a raft! Oh God that a great one. You guys are free to use it - I refuse to charge a dime for that one.
Ha just when ya thought it was all about obama and mccain I throw ya a zinger. Come on - ya got to admit its a good one!
Life to many Americans (especially the Greatest Generation) is a sepia-toned movie. War was the most important event of the lives of many American men of the 20th Century and I guess fighting for its own sake and being a man is more important than critical thinking. Vietnam was another illegal war and an atrocity. How many more before we gain sanity?
Samson July 30th, 2008 12:49 pm
I tend to agree with many of your points, but I have to say McCain or any other that survived 5 years as a POW of the NVA has my admiration. Hero has been brought up before and I'd say thats a bit strong for getting shot down.
As to any cooperation he or others might have given, I sure wouldn't want to judge. I'd bet you that I'd sing like a nightingale if they had me.
I'd like to point out that the Anti-war left didn't show up till the late sixties.
And of course the surge worked. Excellent tactic. But a tactic is all it was. Now what? There's the problem.
"Maybe that's because, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press, nearly 40% of the public doesn't know McCain's position on troop withdrawal."
McCain opposes a timeline, but says we will withdraw troops based on advice from the military. His withdrawal plan defers to the military.
Obama support a timeline, but adds that he will only withdraw troops with the consent of the military. His withdrawal plan is actually redeployment, and involves leaving 60,000 -80,000 residual troops, and redeploying our forces into Pakistan and Afghanistan. He states that redeployment may cease at any point at the request of the military. His withdrawal plan defers to the military.
Setting rhetoric aside, they have the same plan, and the military is in charge of it.
"Barack Obama is ultimately articulating a position of sustained troop levels in Iraq based on the conditions on the ground and the security of the country. That is the very same position that John McCain has long held," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.
Bottle - you tellin' me the joke sucks? I mean come on... no giggle, not even a smile? That one killed in Topeka! Nothing???? What do i gotta do here for a laugh, recite a Bush state of the union speech or somethin'. You guys take yourself waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to serious. What - are all of you that important to the world that you can't even have a laugh every so often. Come on... the next thing you now it will be 8:00 thursday and time for work -- then you will say to yourself ...... Self that dope tellin' the jokes is funny - even if he sounds like Archie Bunker.
Don't ye get it..... the lawn jockey...lantern...skin color...prisoner of war...
Dumb struck PBS once again with this discussion 7/30/08 on one of the blab shows:
"The Surge: Did it Succeed?"
Could any other topic be as asinine? The fad religion of the braindead right, surpassing all other evangelisms, is "THE SURGE."
The only way the surge could succeed would be if the Iraq War succeeds. And the only way that can happen is if John McCain brings back a million Iraqis from the dead, heals all physical and mental wounds incurred, resettles
additional multi-millions of Iraqis, brings back another million killed by our sanctions even before the present chapter of the Bush boy wars began.
Definition: "Bush boy wars." Physical age has nothing to do with overgrown adolescence. There is George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, Senator McCain.
Another point I think may be a possibility is that the idiot masses look at things simply.
If all goes to pot, like in Iraq or so, it will look like it was bush's and the reps fault.
If it goes bad after the dems made changes to the plan, the right wing media will blame them.
In essence, they're still afraid of public opinion, yet polls consistently show disapproval for the war.
As far as polling showing more thinking McCain would do a better job regarding Iraq, I don't what to say. I think the Pavlovian dogs still salivate when the terror bell is rung, and that's incredibly sad state of the american psyche.
What gets me is that people seemed to react better to obama when in past when he seemed to show more stones. I think they're making a bad gamble in doing this, but hey, it didn't work for Kucinich either. But, that i think was largely the media as well.
"But the 1960s does indeed remain a pivotal era — not least because that is when liberal, antiwar America largely did stop caring much about the concerns and values of working-class whites. " This is ridiculous. White voters from the working class were doing fine economically thanks to FDR. The impact of the destruction of policies was not yet evident but the 50 year plan to undo everything he did was in full swing. Teamsters supported Nixon and waved the flag and bashed Hippies, blacks and gays. Wallace got 25 percent of the vote. Uneducated people who did not fully grasp what being "Pawns in their game" actually meant were only too happy to wave the flag and pretend the horrors of Viet Nam were non-existent. The rightward ho movement of the working class resulted in the demise of their quality of life. Now still unable to connect the dots one guy grabs a shotgun and goes into a church to shoot "leebrals". The fact is Americans are brainwashed and cannot tolerate the destruction of their fictitious beliefs about America. So they blame the "leebrals" for their problems. It is a rare individual who can overcome the programming of the corporate media. After FDR about 45% of workers were in Unions, now it is only 7% and most of those are public unions like police, teacher, etc.. There is no place for them to go to learn anything about economics other than MSNBC. Big corporations support only anti-union anti-people policies that make them money. In the sixties teachins at schools and dialogues with unions made attempts to bring the working class back to its left wing roots-but the current prosperity (soon to end) was enough to convince them that the hippies were extremists and that the only problem with the war was that the media covered it and we lost. America has a history that is not very nice-face it. Obama has stopped moving up in the poles despite awful blunders by McCain and splendid examples of leadership from him. The 20% who support Bush, the 12% who think he is a Muslim, the 5% that watch Fox propaganda and listen to ubiquitous right wing radio, the Born Agains who are for war 'cause Jesus is gonna come', and 65 percent of Americans who don't believe in science are enough to form an unmovable base for McCain. These people cannot be reached because their belief system is formed. Like the Nazi youth who were the last ones to surrender to the Allies- emotionally immature people cannot give up core beliefs. Now add in the 25 percent of Democrats that voted for Wallace and you see the problem Obama has. Many of the poor whites are just waiting for a reason to vote against Obama. Racism is built into them and even though on an intellectual level they may be aware McCain has nothing to offer them-he is white. That is why we will see a flurry of negative racist adds. 25 percent of the country is out there like CIA mind control victims waiting for the right button to be pushed. A Willy Horton ad, reparations, tax, terror, muslims, welfare, anything that can push buttons of the programmed racists will be tried. Coupled with the vote fraud in Colorado and other states...no chance.
Alright alright.... now here is a joke that killed in Topeka last week. I'm tellin' ya I had 'em rollin in the aisles and fallin' outa their seats. Here goes...
What the difference between Obama and McCain.........
Obama looks better in the lawn jockey outfit holding a lamp at the end of my walkway - not because he's black but because McCain can't hold his arms out straight. HA HA HA, Oh God, Oh thats great.
Ya gotta picture it - me in my tux with a cig hangin' from my lips the smell of scotch on my breath... its priceless - even my mother in minn/st paul laughs at that one. No for real she nearly wets her diaper with that one1
I'm tellin' ya - Topeka loved it.
It can't be said often enough, the two selected illigitimates are players in another abysmal sporting event. Wretched lies and a firehose of idiocy from talk radio, blogs and printed garbage from the tyrannical 4th estate. If you get off on the debate of irrelevancy, that's just fine.
Additionally, PEW research is hack propaganda outfit off of K street in DC, particularly gifted at spewing nebulous, pointless tripe by the binder full. The ivory tower, loaded with rotten integrity and the reek of hypocricy and hostile left wing intellectualism. All bundled and served to keep the business of our slave nation greased.
I disagree with much of this article.
What the regressives have is control of the media. Whatever they want is broadcast, printed, etc. It hardly makes a difference exactly what.
The regressives can start any rumor, throw any mud, and the media run with it. And the all-too-willing sheeple believe what they're told.
So they're told that the 'American Everyman' exists and is straddling the fence over whom to elect and will decide on the basis on 'experience' or 'values' or whatever wedge issue will work best.
Just another fiction, but told and retold incessantly until enough sheeple bleat in unison.
What about me - I'm a we. Maybe I don't have the same political ideals and asspirations as you. Maybe I want nothing to do with your version of America. If I say leave me alone in your version of America does that mean I have to go along with you anyway. Do you have all the right answers. Does your political philosophy have all the answers to the nations ills or my paticular ills? I say NO and alot of other people here might agree with me.
Please leave me alone, leave my family alone, leave my wallet alone, leave my home alone, leave my healthcare alone, leave my automobile alone, leave my planet alone. And yes I'm a very alone type of guy.
The most powerful way to do what Mr. Chernus suggests in the last piece is to start to be very forceful with the idea that WE represent American values.
We represent freedom. We want a government that doesn't spy on its own people. We want a government that doesn't torture or disappear others.
We represent what Lincoln called a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
We represent what Madison and Jefferson wrote about when they spoke of fears that a strong standing army or strong financial concentrations were the greatest threat to liberty.
Pull out a fife and drum, put on a three cornered hat and wrap a bandage around your head and get out and start to forcefully make the case that we represent the true values of America while those who wrap themselves in the flag are actually destroying that America.
The other fascinating thing is that the Democrats always lose because they look weak and soft. Kerry was portrayed that way. And between watching him fold his campaign and surrender instead of challenging the election results, and watching him stand meekly by why a student was tasered in front of him, one would have to say they were correct.
The strange part is that the Democrats seem to think that the way to avoid looking weak and soft is to give into the Republicans on every issue.
Of course, the opposite is true. If the Democrats really didn't want to look weak and soft, the answer would be to go onto the attack.
-- Impeach the President and Vice President
-- End the war by blocking funding with a fillibuster
-- Stop the expansions of the wars.
-- Take actions to help American home owners and workers in the bad economy.
If the Democrats were aggressively attacking on all those issues, its rather unlikely they'd be viewed as weak and soft. That's so obvious, one must ask why aren't they. And the rather obvious answer is that the money that backs that party wants them to be just like the Republicans.
What fascinates me about McCain is that he's only able to pull this 'war hero' act because the Democrats allow it. In fact, the Democrats even seem to play up to it and support it.
A full-fledged frontal attack by the Democrats pointing out that ...
-- McCain's whole Navy career is basically based on his being the son and the grandson of Navy Admirals. He barely got out of the US Navy Academy with grades at the very bottom of his class. If Daddy wasn't an Admiral, would he have graduated or washed out?
-- He destroyed four other Navy planes before being shot down. Again, if Daddy wasn't an Admiral, would he have still been flying.
-- A pilot being shot down does not make him a war hero. That instead would have to be viewed as an extreme failure of the mission. Not only did he not destroy his target, but he lost the Navy both a valuable plane and a trained pilot.
-- There have been hints that McCain collaborated with the N.Vietnamese communists while in captivity. See articles on Counterpunch.org. And the BBC ran a fascinating interview with the former warden of the prison who talked about all the wonderful conversations he had with McCain.
A full attack on this by the Democrats would help shatter this 'war hero' image. And this strange belief in the polls that McCain would be an effective military leader is based entirely on this fictional war hero image. Frankly, I'm not sure how being a pilot committing war crimes by bombing civilians, then being a POW leads to 'experience' in leading the nation in a quest for empire, but that's the myth that's being put forward.