Antiwar voters favor McCain by large margins

[eridani]

No, not people who are antiwar because they think it's immoral to attack a country that was never a threat to us, but the majority who don't like it being so expensive and hard on our soldiers.

This would be quite enough of a problem even without Clinton sharpening the guillotine that will cut her own neck off as well as Obama's. The trend is already there, but she just made it a whole lot worse by using Republican framing. She may have given us a McCain presidency.

Maybe we still have a chance if we can make use of McCain's temper tantrums.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/79351/

But when the issue is war and peace, Democrats should be as wary as George Tenet about predicting a "slam dunk." Frank Rich, like so many others, assumes that voters who are against the war will choose the candidate who is against the war. Ah, if only our fellow citizens were indeed so logical, how much easier it would be to forecast elections -- and what a different nation this would be.

In fact, the polling numbers from late February and early March already show a less logical, more disturbing trend. A clear majority still think the war was a mistake. But when the question is which candidate will do best handling the war, McCain wins every time. In an LA Times/Bloomberg (LAT/B) poll, it's no contest. He outpolls Clinton on the question 51-35 and outpolls Obama 47-34. A Washington Post/ABC (WP/ABC) poll pitted McCain only against Obama. Though the result was closer, McCain still won 48-43. Yet 63% in that poll said the war was not worth fighting.

In a New York Times/CBS News (NYT/CBS) poll, 58% said the U.S. should never have attacked Iraq. Yet again McCain gets the highest score on "making the right decisions on Iraq"; 58% are confident about McCain (27% "very" confident), 57% about Obama (only 20% "very" confident), and 50% about Clinton. Among the crucial independent voters, McCain gets 62% confidence, while Obama gets only 54% and Clinton 51%. Though 83% of Democrats say the war was wrong, a whopping 42% are confident McCain will make the right decisions on the war, while 21% of Democrats have no confidence in Obama and the same number no confidence in Clinton.

<snip>

Some pundits argue that the Democratic candidate have no choice. McCain's campaign against "cut-and-run" surrender -- which boils down to a charge of Democratic cowardice and treason -- is so powerful that his opponent will have to confront it head on and end up making it the central campaign issue. In other words, the Republicans have already found a way to control the terms of the fall debate.

If that's true, the current poll numbers send a warning sign. A lot of voters who oppose the war will be logically consistent and vote for the candidate who wears the label "antiwar" -- but perhaps not enough to give that candidate a victory. The voters who decide the outcome may be those who oppose the war yet choose McCain, because they feel that his superior character makes him best suited to deal with the war.

That drives rational progressives nuts, but their rage and despair won't change the outcome. What could change the outcome is a strategy that faces up to the irrational facts. That might mean starting right now to shift the focus from war to economy. It might mean reframing the war as an economic issue, and finding some other symbolic vehicle for the battle over "character" issues. It might mean whatever other approach the Democratic strategists can invent.

[eridani]

1. This is a serious disaster for either candidate

What are we doing about it?

[leftofcool]

2. Shades of '72

[Kolesar]

3. Executive summary: It's about the "3 am commercial" ... eom

[eridani]

5. Yes. Using Republican memes hands elections over to them n/t

[Kolesar]

6. Add a grainy picture of Mohammed Atta ... eom

[Peace Patriot]

4. If there is one thing our political establishment did not want...

...it was for this election TO BE ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR.

$12 billion per week to the war profiteers.

1.2 million innocent Iraqis slaughtered to steal their oil.

Many more millions of refugees, wounded, sick, tortured.

$10 trillion U.S. deficit over the decade.

Constitution in shreds.

Big tax cuts for the rich. Their war; we pay.

America is no longer a peaceful country: our emperor can do wars of choice, preemptive war, torture prisoners, indefinitely detain anyone at all, spy on everybody--whatever he/she damn pleases.

----------

So-o-o-o-o-o, they set about the task of confusing the American people, starting way back in late 2002, during the build-up to the war, when they told us that our election system was dysfunctional because they couldn't count the hanging chads (and thus got Bush appointed president), when in truth the election theft industry had supplied soggy paper for the FLA punchcards guaranteed to create hanging chads (see Dan Rather's "The Trouble With Touchscreens," www.HD.net). Got to "modernize" voting with electronics. The Anthrax Congress thus passed the infamous "Help America Vote Act" in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution, Oct 02 (and closely related to it). HAVA provided a $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle, to fast-track voting machines, all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. Oh, and, not incidentally, 56% of the American people opposed the war on Iraq during this period (late 02/early 03--NYT poll Feb 03; other polls 54-55%). (54-56% would be a landslide in a presidential election--and believe me, it was.)

CONFUSION #1: "But the Democrats wouldn't let them do that, would they?" Friend of mine said that to me, about the voting system. Answer: It's not what they WOULD do; it's what they DID do. They fucked us, for the war. But the confusion continued. Surely they wouldn't...

CONFUSION #2: Next, the war and its ramifications (all of the above) should have been the only issue in 2004. Our political establishment set about PREVENTING the war from being the issue. They destroyed Howard Dean's anti-war campaign with the doctored "shout" tape. And here you see the war profiteering corporate 'news' monopolies working in concert with the election theft industry and the War Democrats to DENY US a clear choice on the war that could conceivably have overwhelmed the election theft machines, if a clear choice had been available. Instead, the DLC (War Democrats) foisted a candidate on us who had voted FOR the war, and who greeted the Democratic Convention in 2004 with a military salute and the words, "Reporting for duty." The antiwar protesters were "caged" well away from the convention, and faced Darth Vader robocops if they misbehaved. The war didn't exist inside the convention hall. The convention was like a dream--all rah-rah, zis boom bah about nothing.

CONFUSION #3: Even so, the grass roots blew the Bushites away in new voter registration, nearly 60/40, in 2004. People were flocking to the Democratic Party to oust Bush/Cheney, the bastards who had lied about WMDs and who were torturing prisoners in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Conventions and numerous other laws and treaties--and who were running up a $10 trillion deficit and stealing money from the taxpayers, hand over fist, in the war zone. Voters figured at least the Democrats would bring some accountants to the table. Kerry won--by a landslide (5-7%), but everyone was told that he didn't. The official results, tallied by rightwing Bushite corporations, using their new toy--'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls--said Bush won--and the corporate 'news' monopolies "adjusted" their exit polls (Kerry won) to force them to fit the results of the 'TRADE SECRET' formulae (Bush won), and that was that. Message: The People (56% against the war; 63% against torture "under any circumstances"; 90% against the humongous and growing deficit) had ENDORSED the goddamned war, despite all. But had they?

CONFUSION #4: Bush's approval rating plummetted to 49% on the very day of his 2nd crowning...ahem, inauguration--and began its freefall to, what is it today?--18%. Something wrong. WTF is going on? (The war is going on, that's what.) The pundits blame the Democrats' election loss on the Kerry campaign, the "swift-boaters," the Bushites' "invisible GOTV in the churches" (Rove), gay marriage, and on everything under the sun EXCEPT 'TRADE SECRET' VOTE COUNTING. A few savvy pundits cast a glance at the disenfranchisement of black voters in Ohio, but quickly look away. All is misdirection. All is disinformation. All is psyops. "The system worked"--it kept the war going. Cuz that's what "the system" is for.

CONFUSION #5: YOU 'voted' for this! YOU stupid, gullible voters. YOU went and registered Democratic and then VOTED FOR BUSH. Dumb fucks. Leftist Democrats beat up on "the voters." Fat, lazy, stupid, brainwashed, mall-shopping, redneck pinheads--they cried. DailyKos chased the "voices crying in the wilderness" about election fraud away. The topic was tombstoned almost everywhere (except DU). The Democratic Party establishment brought an "Iron Curtain" down over it. "Nothing to see here--move along!"

CONFUSION #6: More people die. More billions stolen. And then we hold Congressional elections. 2006. SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people, by this time, are opposed to the Iraq War and want it ended. They vote, and, hey, 70% of Congress STILL WANTS THE WAR, and votes to lard Bush/Cheney with billions MORE of our non-existent tax dollars to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights. The war is ESCALATED. MORE troops are sent over. Troops suffering two, three, war zone missions, of increasingly long duration. 12 months. 18 months. Halliburton, Blackwater, et al, still stealing billions of dollars. And the "new," "Democratic" Congress ends up with a 22% approval rating! Virtually the same as Bush--despised, reviled, hated by the vast majority of the American people.

CONFUSION #7: But they don't care. WTF do they care what the American people think? The political establishment has gone whacko. And still, we don't see it. STILL it's a "conspiracy theory." All our votes 'counted' with 'TRADE SECRET' programming code, owned and controlled by RIGHTWING BUSHITE CORPORATIONS, with virtually no audit/recount controls--which means that NO ELECTION since 2003 or so has been VERIFIABLE, let alone verified! That this might just be THE PROBLEM is A CONSPIRACY THEORY, while the ACTUAL CONSPIRACY, to shove an unjust war down the throats of the American people, proceeds apace, to this day, with no one noticing (except us leftist/terrorist/conspiracy theorists out here in La-la Land).

CONFUSION #8: 2008. After "trade secret" code primaries (and some contradictory caucuses that are NOT COUNTED by Diebold & co.), we're left with three candidates for president, two of whom are gung ho, 100% WAR CRIMINALS, and a third who is not sure. (Spoke against the war, then voted to keep funding it.) And, by this time, the voters are as whacko as the political establishment. They DON'T KNOW how to end the war. They think maybe MCCAIN will end it. It's kind of like 1964, when LBJ portrayed himself as the "peace candidate," and portrayed his opponent, Goldwater, as a trigger-happy nuker, and everyone VOTED FOR PEACE, and LBJ then ESCALATED the war on Vietnam, and, before it was over, TWO MILLION PEOPLE were dead in Southeast Asia, and over 55,000 U.S. soldiers. Maybe we should have voted for Goldwater. He wouldn't really have nuked Vietnam. He was actually a pretty sane guy. So maybe these torn, lying, fork-tongued, war profiteering, neo-liberal Democrats, who can't get their act straight, cannot end the war. Maybe only a Bush Cartel ass-kisser can.


--------------------

It is no wonder that the American people are confused. Much has been done to confuse them. Much of it by our own Democratic Party leadership. I mean, it's really confusing--as my friend exemplified--when your own party, the peoples' party, the "big tent" party, the party of FDR, the labor union party, and the party who had "learned the lesson of Vietnam," turns the vote counting system over to RIGHTWING BUSHITE CORPORATIONS without even a whimper of protest.

I think it's funny when our Congressional leaders say they "don't have the votes" to stop the war, ban domestic spying, keep Bush from torturing prisoners, restore the Constitution, or impeach a regime whose list of "high crimes and misdemeanors" is long enough to circle the earth. It's a howl. And we need a new Alan Ginzburg to express it. "Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl!" It's enough to make a whole generation insane. And their parents, and their grandparents, and their children. Are we all insane? No, I actually don't think most Americans are. Just confused. Heads rattled with disinformation from all sides--the Bushites, the Democrats, the insanely fascist corporate media, the DLC, the Council on Foreign Relations, the AEI, the Chalcedon foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals--one million dollars from Howard Ahmanson--same billionaire who funds Diebold's brother, ES&S), Exxon Mobil & co., the Bilderberg Group, and all the real whackos of our age: the panicked super-rich, who think they can buy Machu Pichu and ride out global warming, and maybe colonize the Moon.

The howling confusion disables us, and we need to get over it--to block our ears to it--and get to work, and restore transparent vote counting, as a start, and reclaim our country from those who have stolen it. It is an historic task--to restore this democracy and pass it along to future generations. We will get no help from our leaders. They are playing games we cannot even fathom. Unbelievable, traitorous games. We the People must be the leaders, and lead ourselves out this darkness and confusion.

[Vinca]

7. But . . . McCain likes war. nt