As a participant in anti-Vietnam War protests, I felt some clear comparisons to today’s antiwar protests was in order, so I wrote an assessment at New York:
For many a baby-boomer, the sights and sounds of student protests against U.S. complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza brought back vivid memories of the anti–Vietnam War movement of their youth and of the conservative backlash that ultimately placed its legacy in question. Some of today’s protestors consciously promote an identification with their forebears of the 1960s and 1970s. And some events — notably the huge deployments of NYPD officers at Columbia University 56 years to the day after police crushed an anti–Vietnam War protest at the school — are eerily evocative of that bygone era.
As someone who was involved in a minor way in the earlier protests (mostly as a member of the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam), I’m both fascinated by the comparisons and alert to the very big differences between the vast and nearly decadelong demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the nascent movement we’re seeing today. Here’s how they compare from several key perspectives.
While early protests against Israeli military operations in Gaza were often centered in Arab American and Muslim American communities, the latest wave is principally college-campus-based, albeit widespread, as the Washington Post reported:
“The arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University on April 18 set off the latest wave of student activism across the country.
“The outbreak of nearly 400 demonstrations is the most widespread since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. From the Ivy League to small colleges, students have set up encampments and organized rallies and marches, with many demanding that their schools divest from Israeli corporations.”
The size of these protests has ranged from the hundreds into the thousands, but they can’t really be regarded as a mass phenomenon at this point.
There are, however, similarities to the earliest phase of the anti–Vietnam War movement: the campus-based “teach-ins” of 1965 (the year U.S. ground troops were first deployed in Vietnam). These began at the University of Michigan and then went viral, as a history compiled by students of the university recalled:
“The March 1965 teach-in at the University of Michigan inspired a wave of more than fifty similar teach-ins at universities around the nation and directly challenged the Johnson administration’s ability to shape public opinion about the War in Vietnam. At Columbia University, just two days after the UM event, professors held an all-night teach-in attended by 2,000 students …
“At UC-Berkeley, after an overflow crowd attended the initial UM-inspired teach-in, the Vietnam Day Committee organized a second outdoor event that drew 30,000 students.”
The anti–Vietnam War movement soon outgrew its campus origins as the war intensified and U.S. deployments soared. By 1967, monster rallies and marches were held in major cities — notably a New York march that attracted an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 protesters and a San Francisco rally that filled Kezar Stadium. At the New York event, the expansion of the antiwar movement to encompass elements of the civil-rights movement that had in part inspired the early protesters was exemplified by the participation of Martin Luther King Jr., who had just made his first overtly antiwar speech at Riverside Church.
By then the antiwar movement was beginning to attract support from a significant number of politicians, mostly Democrats but some Republicans.
The pro-Palestinian protest movement could eventually grow to this scale and breadth of support, but it hasn’t happened yet.
The fight to end American involvement in Vietnam lasted as long as the war itself; protests began in 1964, grew to include a mainstream congressional effort to cut off U.S. military aid, and continued as the South Vietnam regime collapsed in 1975. It had multiple moments of revived participation. Once such moment was Moratorium Day in October 1969, when an estimated 2 million Americans joined antiwar demonstrations once it became clear that Richard Nixon had no intention of ending the war begun by Lyndon Johnson. Another was the massive wave of protests in May 1970 when Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia; student walkouts and strikes occurred on around 900 college campuses and students were killed in Ohio and Mississippi.
It’s unclear whether the pro-Palestinian protests have anything like that kind of staying power. That’s a significant issue, since the goal shared by many protesters — a fundamental shift in the power relations between Israelis and Palestinians — could be harder to execute than an end to the Vietnam War.
Most pro-Palestinians protesters have embraced multiple demands and goals: an immediate permanent cease-fire in Gaza; termination of U.S. military assistance to Israel; and an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Campus-based protesters have also called for termination of university investments in companies operating in Israel and, in some cases, closure of academic partnerships with Israeli institutions.
If this is going to become a sustained movement rather than a scattershot series of loosely connected local protests, some clarification of tangible goals will be necessary. Some of these aims are more achievable than others. If, for example, the Biden administration and the Saudis succeed in negotiating a significant cease-fire that temporarily ends the carnage in Gaza, does that take the wind of out of the sails of protesters seeking a definitive withdrawal of support for Israel? That’s unclear at this point.
For the most part, the anti–Vietnam War protest movement had one principal goal: the removal of U.S. military forces from Vietnam. Yes, factions of that movement expanded their goals to include such war-adjacent issues as university divestment from firms manufacturing weapons, closure of ROTC programs, draft resistance, and non-war-related issues like Black empowerment and anti-poverty efforts. But there was never much doubt that bringing the troops home was paramount.
One of the reasons for a perception of unfocused goals in the current wave of protests stems from organizers with more radical positions and rhetoric than some of their followers. As my colleague Jonathan Chait has pointed out, two major groups helping organize pro-Palestinian protests subscribe to ideologies incompatible with mainstream support:
“The main national umbrella group for campus pro-Palestinian protests is Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP takes a violent eliminationist stance toward Israel. In the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks, it issued a celebratory statement instructing its affiliates that all Jewish Israelis are legitimate targets …
“A second group that has helped organize the demonstrations at Columbia is called Within Our Lifetime. Like SJP, WOL takes an uncompromising eliminationist stance toward Israel, even calling for ‘the abolition of zionism.’”
This was intermittently an issue in the anti–Vietnam War movement, particularly as such campus-based pioneers of protests as Students for a Democratic Society drifted into Marxist sectarianism. I vividly recall an antiwar march I attended in Atlanta in 1969 wherein the organizers (mostly from the Trotskyist Young Socialist Alliance) put Vietcong flags at either end of the march and controlled bullhorns bellowing slogans like “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh / The NLF is gonna win,” referring to the communist insurgency in South Vietnam. This effectively turned a peace rally into something very different.
But over time, the extremist wing of the anti–Vietnam War movement went its own way, falling prey to fragmentation (the collapse of SDS into at least three factions that included the ultraviolent and Maoist Weatherman group epitomized its self-marginalization) and irrelevance. If the pro-Palestinian protest movement is to last, it needs to shed its more extreme elements.
There was never any doubt that anti–Vietnam War protesters were talking about something that vitally affected Americans, even if it took them a while to get on board. 2.7 million American citizens served in the Vietnam War with 58,000 losing their lives. 1.9 million young Americans were conscripted into the military during that war. While what Americans did to the people of Indochina wasn’t often called “genocide,” millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians perished at the hands of the U.S. and its allies, and the humanitarian disaster did increasingly trouble the consciences of many people not directly affected by the conflict. As many military leaders and reactionary politicians bitterly argued for decades, U.S. public opinion eventually ended the Vietnam War.
While the rise in sympathy for Palestinians and support for some sort of cease-fire has been palpable as deaths soar in Gaza, it remains unclear how invested Americans are in any sort of policy change toward the conflict. Yes, unhappiness with Joe Biden’s leadership in this area is a real political problem for him, but much of the unhappiness stems from conservatives (particularly conservative Evangelicals) who want stronger support for Israel. And the effort to make this issue an existential threat to Biden’s renomination during the 2024 Democratic primaries failed in contrast to the major role played by anti–Vietnam War sentiment in sidelining LBJ in 1968.
Making Gaza a crucial issue in American politics grows more challenging to the extent protesters choose more radical goals, like a single secular (i.e., non-Zionist) Palestinian state. And at the same time, more modest goals could undermine the strength and unity of the protest movement if protesters reject half-measures (much as anti–Vietnam War protesters rejected “Vietnamization,” phony peace talks, and other steps that prolonged the war).
Arguably, the many sacrifices and eventual triumph of anti–Vietnam War protesters were more than offset by a conservative backlash that treated the “disorder” and alleged lack of patriotism associated with protests as a social malady to be remedied with heavy-handed repression. In the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon and George Wallace, the two candidates who engaged in law-and-order rhetoric and often espoused more violent steps to win the war, won 57 percent of the national popular vote. Other successful conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan made crackdowns on “coddled” student protesters a signature issue.
Today, Donald Trump and other Republicans are eagerly making pro-Palestinian protests part of a law-and-order message aimed at both student protesters and the “elite” faculty and administrators who are allegedly encouraging them. If protesters deliberately or inadvertently help Trump get back into the White House, they may soon encounter a U.S. administration that makes “Genocide Joe” Biden’s look like an oasis of pacific benevolence.
The “rally effect” helps Bush only today; tomorrow likely is different. Voters tend to support the president when a crisis hits. Jimmy Carter’s approval ratings went up in November 1979 when the hostage crisis began; they went up again when the rescue mission failed. In time, these failures destroyed his support.
Voters will rally around the president, but they will cotinue to support the president only if his policies succeed. They do not reward stalemates or failure. Carter could not resolve the hostage crisis in 1980 and went down to a landslide defeat. The polls remained close until five days before the election. More and more, the 2004 election is resembling the 1980 election.
I think these polls show that there is not and probably never will be a clear front runner in this election. It is going to come down to the wire.
I’m with you demtom. I mean seriously, people won’t really begin to look closely at the candidates till at least after the conventions. Polls at this stage are really not much more than a test of parth loyalty. If the narrow margin is any indication, I think all we can really say for sure is that Democrat and Republican partisans won’t be doing much defecting this year.
Thanks, guys. It’s nice to know I’m not just shouting into the void.
demtom, thanks for having the energy to say all that and calm the Net masses, many of whom are freaking out. I just always overreact when the same-old intra-party candidate-obsessed nonsense comes out.
I think you’re objectively correct about everything in your post.
Couldn’t agree with you more demtom. Especially on points 2 and 3. I think the main reason the Zogby poll doesn’t get the same play as the other two is that he’s not tied into a network. CNN and ABC will trumpet their polls all over the place. And the key number is Bush’s. As a challenger, Kerry can be expected to get 2/3 of the undecided vote.
It’s a very long way till November. Pacing is important and over exposure can be a bad thing.
Also events can change things dramatically and the right wing knows how to cause events. We need to pray and hang on tight. I wish there were no polls.
I generally think even looking at head to head match-ups in April is an irredeemable waste of time. Reagan and Clinton both trailed by wide margins at this point in their challenger years, which obviously meant nothing in the grand scheme.
Nonetheless, since everyone is so hepped up about these minor results, a few observations:
1) I can accept the idea that bad news overseas causes temporary rallying effects for incumbents, but I think recent develiopments in Iraq are clearly a negative for Bush in the long run. Carter got a huge boost in his numbers when the hostages were first taken — and even a sympathy bounce after the disaster of Desert One — but no one doubted on Election Day that the crisis had played a big role in his defeat. There’s no way a fiasco like this past month in Iraq has been could enhance any incumbent’s prospects.
2) And actually…I’m not convinced these numbers even represent a bump. As I recall, Gallup two weeks ago had Bush leading 51-47, so 51-46 doesn’t spell progress to me. Gallup and ABC — the two polls to which all are alluding — have been consistent Bush-favorers from Inauguration Day, for the precise reason cited here: over-representation of Republicans. It’s amazing how little attention Zogby’s poll of the same period has received, seemingly because it doesn’t reinforce the “amazing Bush rebound” theme the press likes.
3) The Investors Daily poll doesn’t strike me as remotely bad news, simply because Bush’s number is so low. Why don’t more people understand that Bush, as incumbent, needs to hit 50 in these polls? Any poll where I see Bush in the 40s (ABC’s included) I view as positive for Kerry.
4) In the long run, poll internals are far more important than match-ups. And here the news is very bad for Bush. He only hits 50% apporoval in Gallup (likely due to its skewed sample), and right track/wrong track continues to go heavily against him. The only possible hope I see for Bush in these areas is a noticeable (if ephemeral) improvement on the job front between now and September. That could bump both those negative numbers toward more neutral territory.
5) But, considering the general vibe of the election…I think Woodward’s book is just the latest piece of evidence that Official Washington has turned somewhat against the administration. This is very ominous news for a group that for the most part was treated with deference for 3 years. I also think reports that people in the military and CIA are actively opposed to Bush’s re-election should be viewed as huge harbingers. How in the world does a GOP administration get re-elected without those two groups solidly behind them?
6) As far as Kerry in all this…I was for Dean in the primaries, and I think the obvious voter decision to play “safe” this year may have been misguided (GOP voters in 1980 went the opposite way, and were richly rewarded). But I don’t think in the end the opposition candidate makes that much difference. The Bush administration will be re-elected or not based on facts on the ground. Right now, they don’t lean his way, and, given that, how often or well Kerry speaks is almost irrelevant.
Out of nowhere, across the blogosphere the DeanNuts have returned.
Without any understanding of the election calendar, the nature of continuous poll shifts in a race (it ALWAYS happens), they make the same statements over and over again:
Kerry stinks. He is a ______ .
His campaign stinks.
I can’t stand him.
I told you so.
My guess is that school is out.
Sadly, 50% of the country does love this guy, and the glass is half-empty.
The greater the violence in Iraq, the more the masses flock to Bush.
The CV had been that getting troops coming home in droves just in time for the election would clinch it for Bush, while a quagmire would put him in trouble. Actually, it is really the opposite — on going violence all the way through the election means a Bush win, and only US victory — soon — thus allowing domestic issues back into the campaign, gives Kerry a shot.
On another note, some of these state by state polls are horrible. The Emerging Democratic Majority thesis always rested on the hypothesis that the growth of young, Democratic knowledge workers and the like would offset the the ongoing loss of uneducated, socially conservative Democratic workers. But look at those PA, WV, OH numbers — we’ve completely lost Joe Sixpack — he’s a core Republican now — nothing short of a Depression would drive him back to the Dems — and there are still too many of him.
And another thing — we’re still underestimating the danger of Nader — if he turns just one of Oregon, Minnesota, or Michigan — and he most certainly can — it’s over.
I do agree with frankly0. But there is absolutely no reason for Bush’s poll numbers to be better than Kerry’s as Bush has all but dropped the ball in Iraq (remember, he is the War President). I beleive he’s handing things over to the UN because he can then blame them for all that will go wrong after June 30, no matter that our troops are there. While Kerry may have lost a little ground, it should not have been enough to give Bush any type of lead.
We have to remember one thing: Bush’s administration is riddled with scandal. A lot has been said about the Plame outing coming to a boil this summer. If so, Bush should be toast (to quote Cheney about Saddam). I can’t believe the polls showing Bush with a lead. There;s just too much wrong with this country domestically for me to believe that over 50% of the public loves this guy. It can’t be so.
The problem with Kerry lately is that he’s been flip flopping on unimportant issues but nevertheless playing into Republican hands by doing so. First, there was the refusal to release all of his war records–which he’s now doing. (This business about Purple Hearts is particularly infuriating given Bush’s “record” in the National Guard).
Then there’s Teresa Heinz Kerry’s tax returns. The on-going refusal to release them–however justified–still gives Republicans an issue. And my guess is Kerry will back track on this one too.
Why no reference to the Zogby poll, taken over the time period the ABC and Gallup polls were taken, which showed Kerry with a three point lead in the head-to-head and tied in the three-way?
The Republican overrepresentation in the Gallup is also critical, as Alan noted.
My take on it gibes with the Investors’ Daily poll. Kerry is losing support, mostly to undecided, while Bush is not gaining much. Could this be a replay of the 1980 race, albeit on a lesser scale?
“If the Kerry campaign can kick their game up a notch,” you say. I’ beginning to doubt they can. Kerry still speaks in that annoying “public meeting oration” style. He comes off to me as pompous, bureaucratic, confused and arrogant. And I’m a deep-blue Dem. Why the hell isn’t he working on his style?
On the one hand there’s a third poll (Investors Business Daily) taken last week with Bush ahead 46-42, and a 46-42 Bush lead in PA as well. On the other hand, maybe that’s all the rally effect. And on the third hand, Kerry’s about to do exactly what Ruy thinks he ought to do– two new ads called “Risk” and “Commitment.” (Note that these are not the fundraising ads running on Lifetime and Bravo, but new broadcast ads for swing states.) Nobody’s ever shown Kerry lazy– tactically misguided, perhaps, but not lazy. My fear is that the rally effect will never go away– that the worse the Iraq/ terror news gets, the bigger the Bush bump will be, no matter how clear it seems (to us) that Bush stands to blame for some of the bad news; consider the career of Ariel Sharon, who (at least until recently) profited politically from Israeli casualties, since he was the guy who got tough on Arabs.
Is the glass 1/2 empty or 1/2 full?
I am 1/2 empty guy.
To begin with Ruy’s analysis is a non-sequitur. After proclaiming he predicted a slight bump due to the press conference, nothing he says afterwards supports that contention.
In fact, he contradicts himself and basically admits that the bush ads plus a somnambulent Kerry campaign account for the recent poll findings.
For weeks Ruy and others have urged Kerry to strick hard on foreign policy and defense. I agree
I read the same advice now.
Is Kerry listening?
My fear is that Kerry is rather lazy, laid back and doesn’t get going until the gong gets tough.
Then it will be too late.
This race is over. Kerry is toast because Ralph Nader is going to do it again. He’s going to hand the victory to Bush because Dems are split on the Iraq war.
Kerry’s position is responsible but too many Dems want the US out of Iraq and they want it out now. Nader is going to get enough votes from disaffected Dems and anti-war independents to drag down Kerry’s numbers.
On the economy, we’re starting to see a turn around that will also blunt Kerry’s advantage there. The turn around may not result in much job growth but the voters will buy it.
Bush’s numbers are stabilized and growing because deep down the American people seem to be supportive of the idea of pre-emptive war. Bush’s stiff resolve is admired and the thought of dumping him in favor of someone as conflicted about the war as Kerry is not too appealing.
The future is grim.
The issue with the likely overrepresentation of Republicans brings up a more general question about polling. Namely, when, if ever, is it appropriate to adjust the sample AFTER the poll is taken, because it can be demonstrated to be skewed in relevant ways?
Suppose, for example that a highly disproportionate number of men turned up in a poll sample, say, 55%, when we know that, say, exactly 50% of voters are in fact male. And suppose that, as we know is true, males disproportionately favor Bush. Wouldn’t it be correct scientifically to adjust the poll results so that this overrepresentation of males is taken into account?
Now of course this would be a case in which we could know for hard fact what the underlying numbers of male and female voters are. The number of Republicans vs. the number of Democrats is a softer number, though over the course of many polls might be well enough established that we could detect obvious discrepancies in a given sample — and a 6% edge to Republicans has got to fall into this category.
In general are adjustments for such obvious discrepancies simply not allowed in polling? How about for harder facts such as male vs. female? What are the permitted kinds of adjustments, if any? Given that the polling technique itself obviously introduces its own skew (such as selecting only people who have phones, don’t filter out unknown callers via caller ID, are willing to answer a long series of questions, etc.), isn’t it artificial to treat weightings after the fact as somehow less scientific?
In recent polling showing Bush ahead, Gallup had 40% of its sample Republican voters as opposed to 34% Democrats. I would like to know what is the actual voter identification with a specific party because other earlier polls I’ve seen indicate that the party identification is either equal or a slight edge to the Democrats. If true that would mean that Gallup-CNN’s results are skewered by their sample.
The Kerry campaign have proven themselves to be complacent, ineffectual idiots unless they have their backs to the freaking wall.
I knew I supported Howard Dean for a reason, GOD I am going to go bitch-slap everyone in Iowa if Kerry loses.
Ruy, I hope you are emailing the Kerry campaign with your analysis. They need to hear from you (and anyone else they might listen to) that it is time to make themselves heard.
The peculiar recent bump in Bush’s numbers (as well as the strange stability before that, despite the bad national security news, could be explained not just by a rallying effect, but by another factor, as I argued in the thread below. When bad national security news arrives, national security as an issue simultaneously becomes more important to the voter, and Bush owns an edge on that issue, even if that edge is also diminishing.
Depending on the rate at which the edge declines and the importance of the issue increases, you may get the paradoxical effect of stability or even of an increase in the President’s popularity.
If this is indeed what’s going on, the point at which to expect the REAL decline in Bush’s numbers is, again somewhat paradoxically, when national security recedes more into the background, and the economy, and Kerry’s continued edge there, becomes once again the dominant issue in the public’s mind (and Bush’s edge on national security has been reduced to new lows).