Only about 1 in 10 Democrats are aware of what Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Richardson's policies are on Iraq, the most critical issue with voters today. Most Democrats think that the candidates support ending the war much more than they actually are.
The result of this ignorance is likely to be an LBJ-style backlash against the Democrats if they are elected and enact their more hawkish Iraq policies, to the surprise of the people who voted for them.
From an excellent entry by Chris Bowers at
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1177Here are the results of a poll in July that asked the question:
"For each person or organization, please tell me which of the following four choices comes closest to what you think their view is on what the U.S. should do in Iraq?"
Here are the answers for the different choices:
Bowers goes on to say
Unless something changes in the next few months, voters will be in for a rude awakening when they
find out that virtually every candidate for President with a real chance of becoming the nominee of either major party, save possibly Edwards and definitely save Richardson, are way more hawkish on Iraq than they are believed to be.
Democratic voters might be in for a particularly rude awakening in the general election, or at least some point in 2009, when they find out the candidate they nominated is actually in favor of keeping a substantial number of troops in Iraq.
...
However, if Democrats end up nominating a candidate who supports a substantial residual forces plan while thinking that candidate will actually withdraw virtually all troops in a short period of time, then basically our party will have been hoodwinked in a manner not unlike the way the war was first sold to the American public back in 2002 and 2003.
While that will be incredibly depressing and infuriating, it also won’t be that much of a huge surprise.
After all, most of the Democratic foreign policy elite behind the substantial residual forces plan actually helped sell the Iraq war before it began.