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| Home Front: Politix |
| Why John McCain just may win |
| 2008-02-09 |
| "The Tiger in Somerville" Why? In a counter-intuitive way, Iraq, ‘Nam, and Vietnam Syndrome. I’ll explain. (As I’ve been explaining to my friends who are liberal Democrats over the last few months.) Independent voters are not just socially liberal suburban women (Junior League Republicans, etc.). They are also tough blue collar men. They don’t like the Republicans on economics issues — they don’t care for free trade, globalization, anti-nanny statism, or any of that stuff. But they don’t like to lose — they’re proud, patriotic Americans. They are — I’m sure that you’re sick of the term, but it’s apt — Reagan Democrats. Both major Democratic candidates have boxed themselves in — unnecessarily, as I’ve been saying again and again — on Iraq. People don’t like the situation in Iraq. If you poll them, they say that it wasn’t worth it, we shouldn’t be there, etc., etc. That is the data my Democratic friends rely upon, when they say that Senators Clinton and Obama’s positions on Iraq — withdrawal within 60 days of inauguration — are on solid ground. But — here’s the rub — they don’t want to lose. So around 55-60% of people at the same time have consistently been willing to follow the battle plan of General Petraeus. The Democratic nominee is going to be running on a platform with the explicit plank of retreat and withdrawal from Iraq. This is an elemental signal to this Reagan Democrat portion of the populace — they hear the words “retreat & withdrawal”, and they get images of helicopters leaving embassy roofs in their heads. Their response — even people like Buchanan and Scarborough, both of whom thought that Iraq was and is a pretty bad idea, and who don’t like Senator McCain very much — is, “I’m damned if that’s going to happen again on my watch.” John McCain is the one candidate who is credible on this issue. He has the moral authority to say, “look, this is a terrible sacrifice our country is asking of its servicemen, but the consequences of retreat are far worse.” This is biographical — first, look at what he did in his time, second, his two young sons are serving. . . . What John McCain is going to do is what he did in spring and summer 2007 — he’ll go on the Daily Show again and take on Jon Stewart mano-a-mano, he’ll paint his campaign bus and plane pitch black with the sobriquet “No Surrender” and tour the country’s legion halls and town halls, and he’ll have about fifty interviews like this one with every major media personage. Pre-surge, this was a losing argument, as we saw in 2006. Now, however, given McCain’s political ownership of the surge… It’ll all be “No Surrender”, “I’d rather lose a campaign than lose a war”, and “I choose to win”, and, in spite of the fact that the majority of the American people does not agree with him on the issue, he’ll have a very real chance of taking a majority of the country with him — on, as has been said before, the backs of belligerent older (or middle-aged) men who don’t like the Iraq war but are damned if the country is going to go down to dishonour and defeat on their watch. (And who also don’t like hippies.) For an example of how it’ll look, see how McCain handled New Hampshire, a rather anti-Iraq war state. And expect to see this (imagined) exchange more than a few times. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 Or, as someone put it succinctly, McCain is the only alternative to either the Wicked Witch of the East Coast, or Mr. Beauregard Jangles. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-02-09 13:46 |