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The Veteran Demographic

Mark Nickolas complains at Huffington Post that the media has generated a myth regarding John McCain having strong support from veterans.

Nickolas starts with anecdotes, and then tries to get deeper. Initially he fails. He claims that FactCheck.org “took McCain to task” for statements regarding support for him from veterans’ groups. In reality, FactCheck indicates that McCain’s statements were partly correct and partly overstatement, but at no point do I see McCain taken to task. It was hardly a refutation – they don’t say that he lied. And when you’re talking politics, that’s the standard.

But then Nickolas actually gets into some interesting points.

But much more egregious is that the media hasn't bothered assessing the exit polling from the primaries that they paid for to determine whether McCain was actually excelling with this group… Turns out that McCain was barely overperforming with veterans in the contested Republican primaries…

That’s very interesting. I’m initially a little surprised to see that McCain’s support among veterans is only negligibly higher than his support in the general population. And it would make an interesting narrative for the media or for Democrats to harp on.

However, when reading Nickolas’s post I had a thought that I really wanted to share. Veterans shouldn’t be expected to support McCain in particular, any more than they should be expected to support Kerry or Gore or any other veteran. After all, who are “veterans”? They are men and women of every race, every religion, and every age. Some were volunteers, some were drafted. Some joined when America was hot at war; others when the war was very Cold and impersonal; others yet during long periods of peace. Attitudes toward the military were not the same in the late 1990s as they were when John McCain attended the United States Naval Academy. Even for contemporaries, their jobs and duties were very, very different. There is no reason to expect that a female medic in the Army today would have the same political views as a white Navy attack pilot from Vietnam or a black electronics tech in the 1980s USAF or a Hispanic Marine who fought in the Pacific Theatre more than half a century ago. Why is there an expectation that there should be a general consensus in such a diverse group?

It’s not that it should be a story that McCain didn’t have notable support of the demographic group known as “veterans” during the Republican primaries. It’s not even that it should be a story if McCain doesn’t get notable support from veterans in the general election. It’s that it should be a story if any politician ever does.

And if there currently is a narrative that McCain has been overperforming with veterans, then Nickolas is correct in saying that it should be either proven or debunked.