Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The "Mainstream" on Iraq

A new CNN poll shows 60 percent of Americans both oppose the war in Iraq and believe at least some U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2006.

It was the CNN poll's highest number opposing the war - which has steadily been climbing - since fighting began in March 2003 when 72% of Americans favored the war.

What's interesting is that people in the media continue to espouse the idea that these positions - opposing the war and favoring troop withdrawal - are "far left" positions. So either 60 percent of Americans make up the "far left" of the country, or the pundits are just flat wrong like they always are.

Hell, look how crazy they are going over Senator Lieberman's well-deserved defeat in the Connecticut Democratic primary by Ned Lamont. The facts are that the mainstream of the Democratic Party and the mainstream of Americans believe that the war was a mistake and want to at least start bringing the troops home, and Joe Lieberman was outside that mainstream.

And everyone else who is also outside the mainstream may soon share his fate.

1 comment:

Alexander Wolfe said...

I am so tired of the endlessly repeated idea that Lieberman's defeat represents a hijacking of the Democratic party by the "radical" left or whatever (an idea trumpeted mostly by conservatives, by the way.) Lieberman was defeated for a lot of reasons, his stance on the war probably being the primary one. But the fact is he was far out of step with a large part of his own party, and with a large part of the voting public of Connecticut. When that happens, politicians tend to get voted out, to be replaced by someone more in tune. This isn't a seismic shift in the party; more of a realignment of a political seat in one state.