Cindy Sheehan's impact

Joe Gandelman over at The Moderate Voice has a long post on the Cindy Sheehan bruhaha and its latest developments. I read Joe's piece and then perused the comments to the post. I think that this Sheehan business will impact the president a lot less than Joe does but I do agree that Bush and his people do not handle these situations well, at all. The Sheehan case is just the latest example. Another would have to be Social Security. Where are we on that? And stem cell research. Why is the president's `position on stem cell research, specifically adult stem cells, so firm? We really don't know because he hasn't told us. Why doesn't the president come out with guns blazing? Why is he not and why has he not criss-crossed this country explaining his position on these issues again and again? I don't know.

I said that I had perused the comment section of Joe's post and here is a comment that I really liked. I am going to reprint the entire comment here because I think that everyone should read it as a kind of stand-alone piece. I hope that this is not a breach of blogger etiquette. I don't think it is. Anyway, here is the comment from Joe Gandelman's post from a commenter named Mailanka.

Maybe I'm living with my head under a rock, but... most people don't care. I don't. My friends don't. Nobody I talk to cries about this. In fact, the only place I can find consistent references to it is on the drudge.

We had the grieving families of 9-11 berating Bush over the War. Didn't do much for political opinion. We've had soldiers oppose the war. Didn't do much. We've had other family members oppose the war. Did nothing.

This won't do anything either.

People are so inundated with anti-war messages from the media that we're pretty inured. The polls show Americans thinking the war is going badly because they flip on their television and its constant weeping mothers and car bombs and "mistake" after "mistake." How have we possibly survived this long? The media doesn't seem to have an answer for that.

So what's one more woman weeping over the war?

In the end, the real question isn't how popular the administration is right now, but whether it can push its agenda, and how this will affect future elections. I don't think it will. Most political analysts predict that candidates need to run on a hawkish stance, which runs contrary to your analysis that this will shift the americans to a more pacifistic stance.

It won't.

It's the political popcorn of the week. Pundits talk constantly about it, but it'll be forgotten next week.

I think Mailanka is probably hitting it pretty close to the truth here.

TAGS: Cindy Sheehan, Casey Sheehan, KIA, Iraq, GWoT, war on terror