Let me be clear: I want our troops out of Iraq as much as any of you, and I'm pleased that two-thirds of the country agree with us. The worry I have, though, is, what if all of that support is concentrated in, say, California and New England to the point that support for withdrawal in other parts of the country dips under 50 percent, and thus in those areas our elected representatives have an electorally-justified (though not morally-justified) reason for being waffley and indecisive: they may actually need war supporters to be reelected. Remember, our motto here is to elect a Democrat that fits the district, not to support Democrats exemplar that could never be elected in, say, Montana or Virginia.
The question is....has anyone actually polled all the districts in the country? Do we actually know if a given wavering Dem has actual worries about being reelected?
Some of you have seen this map produced by Chris Bowers, in which he extrapolates from the polling results how widespread the support for pulling out is, based on how Democratic the district is. Considering he uses the same blue for a majority and a plurality for withdrawal, I think it is possibly at best misleading, as I suspect that overly-worried politicians don't want to count on ticking off constituents if they don't have a majority locked up against staying in Iraq. Even if the methodology is solid, pluralities should be shown seperately so that we know which politicians might have reason for seeming wishy-washy.
The point of this diary is not to slow pedal activism for getting us out of Iraq. Instead, I simply want to make sure that we're not pedaling down the wrong street towards a dead end, when we really should be biking down to do some grassroots mindchanging of our spineless pols' constituents.
Crossposted at StreetProphets