An independent peace candidate would threaten both parties, says alexander cockburn |
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Both Democratic and Republican politicians are becoming uncomfortably aware that they may have seriously miscalculated just how unpopular the war in Iraq is with a very large number of American voters. Fence-straddling on the war, let alone calls to 'stay the course', are being seen as increasingly dangerous or fatal options.
Take John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, former PoW in Vietnam and - until recently - deemed a sound bet to win his party's nomination as presidential candidate. McCain saw his task as the simple one of banging the war drum more loudly than his rival, Rudy Giuliani, and deriding the Democrats as wimps and traitors to the flag.
Today, the McCain bandwagon is axle-deep in news stories freighted with grim talk about his 'doomed bid'. Mockery greeted his carefully planned photo-op last month in a |
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| Mockery greeted McCain’s photo- op in a Baghdad market, where he appeared in body armour amid a huge army escort |
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Baghdad market, where - wearing body armour and amid a huge armed escort - he proclaimed that at last the tide was turning and the US press was ignoring the good news from Iraq.
His problems and those of Giuliani can be boiled down to the message of an Iowa poll released earlier this week: 56 per cent of registered Republicans want the troops out of Iraq within six months. Any candidate shouting 'Stay the course in Iraq' is doomed.
But do the Republicans have a candidate with a simple call to bring the troops home now? Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has been saying this for months, but thus far he's dithered on the edge of an announcement that he's in the race.
After recapturing Congress last November, the Democrats paid plenty of lip service to 'the message from the voters' about getting out of Iraq. Substantively, they didn't plan to do much.
Then the Democratic leadership discovered that the voters really had sent them a very explicit message and didn't want to be  |
Dispatches from Alexander Cockburn
