> On Jun 15, 2011, at 1:17 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>> How do you separate out "mass salience" from the Obama effect. If Dem antiwar demonstrators thought of Obama as a peace candidate, then it makes just as much "perfect sense" that they would think the job was done when Obama was elected.
> Ditto the media, which really was totally in the tank for him.
You guys are blind. Still, I'll try to show the story in pictures.
In every graph, note carefully what happens to the trend line starting around Jan. 2007.
1. VIOLENCE IN IRAQ - http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/files/centers/saban/iraq%20index/index.pdf
Look at the following graphs:
* US troop fatalities, p. 10; * multiple fatality bombings, p. 6; * attacks against the coalition, p. 4
2. PUBLIC OPINION ON IRAQ - https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B182PdpFRGD2ZjQyNzMzZTAtYTQ4MS00NDZmLTkzNDEtOTNlNTljNDE2NWU1&hl=en_US&authkey=COiro9UI Gallup: "How would you say things are going for the US in Iraq?"
3. ANTIWAR DEMONSTRATION TURNOUT (according to Heaney) - http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mheaney/Partisan_Dynamics_of_Contention.pdf Chart on p. 8
Do you notice that all the trend lines fall together? Do you notice that according to Heaney's own data, by the time Obama was assured of the Dem nomination in Spring 2008, protest turnout had *already* fallen from the 100s-of-000's to the mere 000's?
My take: the whole "Obama-loving pwogs killed the antiwar movement" theme was already so widely held that when this study came along it was too delicious to be resisted.
SA