We're constantly barraged by the media and our more conservative Democrats (hello, Al From!) that John McCain is the serious candidate when it comes to war and Iraq and dealing with International threats. By converse, those Democrats who oppose the idiotic war in Iraq (even if they support other wars like Obama with Afghanistan) are peaceniks, doves and dirty effing hippies who should be shunned and ignored.
We never get, of course, anything empirical to back this assertion up. Not one of the chattering morons or DLC leaders can point to anything other than their own desire to blow shit up and risk other people's lives to support their theory that more wars means more serious.
In fact, the evidence seems to go against that idea. Via The Hill, it turns out that a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of donations from soldiers says Barack Obama is the choice of the people actually put into harms way.
According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.
The emphasis is added above, but it's no small thing. The people who are actually fighting the war are putting their money on the candidates who want to deploy out of Iraq.
Yet all we hear is that Obama is courting failure, that his position will lose the election unless he toughens it up, that McCain the war hero has the support of all the military types.
It's just not true. The troops prefer Ron Paul -- who was a military physician who never saw combat and vigorously opposes the Iraq War -- to the well known military hero McCain.
Now, in fairness it appears that more military donors are giving to Republicans -- 59 percent of military donations go to the GOP -- but that's not McCain vs. Obama, and it includes state side personnel as well.
For the Presidential campaign Obama is still winning the military money vote, having taken in $335,536 from 859 donors ($390 average) as compared to McCain's $280,513 from 558 donors ($502 average).
This doesn't include the $25 and $50 donations Obama is so good at getting, either, since it is an analysis of FEC reports that only include people who donated $200 or more. Campaigns don't have to file personal information such as employer or career for small donors. My guess is that Obama's lead is dramatically higher when the small dollar contributions are figured in.
This could have a big impact on Florida, where many overseas and deployed soldiers keep their "official" address, and thus are registered to vote. Florida based military personnel in 2000 went overwhelmingly to Bush over Gore. With Florida looking really tight, at about three percent in recent polls, a decisive switch in military preference could throw the state to the blue column.
That's a lot to extrapolate from donations, but it's still something to give hope for.