Signs are that in 2008 we–the liberal part of the Democratic community–will again “vote against our interests.” Even though we talk about how we’re against the war, and how the soldiers should come home, and how America should have a peace-oriented foreign policy, when it comes down to it, we won’t vote for a presidential candidate who runs mainly on a peace platform.
Why does it look that way? Because of the results of a simple poll…
Yesterday I put up a simple poll
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/8/22/103047/599
asking whether people would vote, knowing what they know now, for Kucinich over the other candidates. Dennis Kucinich, recall, was the only strongly anti-war option in the presidential primaries.
The poll only had a dozen votes, and the methodology is flawed in many dimensions. No question about it.
But I had expected, given the many vehement and angry diaries about our horrible situation in Iraq, and the general agreement that we should not be there in the first place and should be working to get out ASAP, that there would be a collective feeling that perhaps a vote for a peace candidate would be at least moderately popular.
Instead, the results are that HALF of the poll participants would STILL vote against the peace candidate.
Now, obviously this poll is pretty weak in several dimensions, and it’s not really a vote, it’s just a random non-scientific self-selected set of opinions, but it does raise the question:
What will it take to get people–mainstream people, not liberal populist bloggers, but regular Democratic and Republican voters–to vote for a candidate who offers the “peace” option? If we don’t get on the peace train ourselves, how can we expect candidates to take this issue seriously?
At this point it looks to me as if in 2008 we’re going to end up with the same “strategy” that we did last time around…