Inauguration Day 2009 was not only a historic day for our nation, it was also a turning point for the antiwar movement: It was the day Democrats stopped opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At least that’s the conclusion that can be drawn from a new a sociology paper on the partisan dynamics affecting the antiwar movement.
My collaborator, Michael Heaney, and I have a new working paper called “The Partisan Dynamics of Contention: Demobilization of the Antiwar Movement in the United States, 2007-2009.” The key argument is that the decline of the antiwar movement can be attributed, in part, to the fact that Democrats have stopped using the peace movement as a platform for anti-Bush sentiment. In other words, at its peak, the ranks of the antiwar movement were swelled by partisans. Once Obama won the presidency, and other issues emerged, the movement shrank when Democrats stopped showing up. The remaining protesters were more likely to be non-partisan or third party, and these non-Democrats were more likely to disapprove of Obama’s management of Iraq and Afghanistan. When Democrats gained power, the movement converged on a core of peace activists who were not strongly identified with the Democratic party.
You can download a PDF of the paper here.
March 24th, 2010 | 9:56 pm
I wish I could say I was surprised! The attacks on Bush for being simultaneously an idiot and an evil mastermind were a bit of a giveaway–any stick was good enough to beat him with. The Democrats’ part of the “peace” movement was just their effort to drum up the two minutes’ hate.
March 25th, 2010 | 12:05 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by First Things, loie jean, loie jean, Andrew A Bair, Andrew A Bair and others. Andrew A Bair said: RT @rofters: The Day Democrats Dumped the Antiwar Movement http://bit.ly/aspaV4 [...]
March 25th, 2010 | 10:06 am
The only thing that the paper proves is the truth of the dictum that sociology is just slow journalism. When Obama was elected he had the war in place – it was our war so the only question is: how do we clean up the Bush mess in Iraq and prosecute the war against the terrorists in Afghanistan.
March 25th, 2010 | 10:18 am
This has always been a canard to defeat one’s political opponents–ever since the Soviets invented “Peace Activists” during the Cold War. Bone up on Soviet propaganda.
March 25th, 2010 | 12:01 pm
You’re wrong Jeanine. Bush was an idiot. The evil genius was Karl Rove. Or was it Dick Cheny? Maybe Paul Wolfowitz? In any case, the principle is simple: Democrat war good; Republican war bad.
March 25th, 2010 | 8:23 pm
Lawrence Cunningham wrote:
“When Obama was elected he had the war in place – it was our war so the only question is: how do we clean up the Bush mess in Iraq and prosecute the war against the terrorists in Afghanistan.”
And here is what Obama decided: Send more troops to Afghanistan and continue the war at a more intense pace. Continue to maintain a presence in Iraq where the government now holds elections to ensure that those running the country are elected by Iraquis; a policy begun while Bush was President.
March 27th, 2010 | 1:53 pm
Meh. That graph only shows percentage of attendance at anti-war protests, not total attendance. If you look at the actual PDF, the order of magnitude of the total number of protesters also dropped – in Sept 08 it was 10,000, in Jan 09 it was 100, in Mar and Apr 09 it was back at 1000 and since then it’s been at 100.
This indicates more that not just the Democrats but people overall are more satisfied with the way the wars are going, and thus there are fewer overall protesters.
So no, according to the data, it looks like Obama is (gasp!) doing a good job (or at least a job they agree with)
March 29th, 2010 | 5:09 pm
this doesnt prove obama is doing a good job with the war, this proves that democrats wont protest the war, when one of their own is in charge. bush made the mistake on iraq by not going in full force from the begining. the generals cleaned that mess up later with the surge (that happened durring bushs time in office). Afghanistan has been a mess since the begining because of the landscape. but thats where we needed to be from the begining, because of bin laden. obama is doing the right thing by finally focusing on it. this info is comming from an independent army soldier. trust me, i know and have seen thing the public has not.
April 5th, 2010 | 4:42 pm
Many have wondered why Obama “stayed the course” on health insurance reform while employment has really been the wolf howling at the door.
I’d call it a simple Chicago political tactic, much like Daley’s histrionics about guns — wag the dog. In this case, any objections by the left to Obama’s continuation of Bush era foreign policies were drowned in a sea of leftist advocacy for health policies. So much was at stake not only for the right, but also for the left, that the left did not argue with Obama on war issues because they perceived that he was caving on health issues (such as negotiating secretly with big pharma).
In short, Obama managed to make the left less fearful of his continuation of Bush policies because they discovered they had much to fear from Obama himself on health care.
It’s quite a ruse, but those of us living in Chicago have seen the con before. It’s a shame other Americans will have to learn of such things as marks.
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