Oh, yeah -- that's going to hurt McCain

[jducoeur]

I had suspected it, but this poll from CNN confirms it -- most people think that the Iraq War is part of why the economy is tanking.

Regardless of whether it's true (I happen to think it is, but I'm sure it will be argued), it's a very potent weapon for the eventual Democratic nominee. An argument that boils down to "Your War is why Americans are losing their jobs" is wildly over-simplistic, but likely to hit home quite effectively. McCain has put his entire reputation on the war, and while he may be able to sway people on the moral argument, I suspect that winning the pragmatic one is going to be a lot harder. The more people think about this link, and see McCain's justifications for the War, the crankier they're likely to get. Even Clinton can argue that she's been trying to disengage for a good while now, and that that might have spared the country the worst of the economic impact.

(Of course, this assumes that the economy is still in recession in November. I suspect that it will at least be perceived that way, even if a turnaround has started by then -- it takes time to shift the public perception, and I don't expect this particular setback to be either mild or quick...)

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

There is a nice article on this in the New York Times.

In the end, the issue here will not be what the prime cause is (which is certainly NOT the war per se), but how the dollar and the debt of the US have limited the scope of action of the US and its responses to the ballooning of both bad debt, and its lack of isolation in the economy.

One might also wonder about the ordinary business cycle. It booms and busts, and will never do another - but the Bush Boom was particularly weak, while the bust is fixing to be righteously bad. One can certainly argue that these facts are part of both the Iraq War and the tax strategies of the Bush Administration, both of which McCain supported.

I think one could argue, at some stretch, that the strain on the US middle class has lead to a transfer of reliance upon home ownership as an investment, and how the US economy's fundamental weaknesses in the consumer sector were transferred to housing and equity, and that the reliance upon this faux prosperity of concretely spending otherwise unrealized gains was part of the Bush Economy that McCain supports - but somehow that's both weaker, and more subjective.

And no longer much of a political rallying cry.

But, in the main, jducoeur is substantially correct in how the US voter is both confused, and easily lead to conflate these things - which will be ashes in the mouth of McCain.