Enough people have come of age in the intervening 35 years that this should stuff should not be the main reason for how most people vote.

If young voters turned out in the same numbers as older voters, that might be true. But people don’t really start voting reliably until at least 30.

If we can actually get young people to turn out, that would make a difference, but I remember that the youth vote was supposed to save us all from four more years of Bush in 2004, and that didn’t exactly pan out.

And if you’re surprised that old resentments are carried through the generations so that the son or grandson of someone who railed against Teh Hippiez in the 1960s votes Republican today, you might want to look up, say, the Hatfields and the McCoys. Or the War of Northern Aggression.

Yes, but anyone who was old enough to vote in ‘68 is 60+. Sure, that’s hardly the oldest fogeys EVAR, but seriously, considering that Vietnam has been over for something like 35 years now, I don’t think it’s a very good excuse for where the country is at politically right now (in terms of party affiliations, spite, and the like, not necessarily in terms of the march of history).

Enough people have come of age in the intervening 35 years that this should stuff should not be the main reason for how most people vote. For example, I was in grade school when the Cold War ended. Thus, my political outlook generally does not factor in Teh Redz. If I have deep-seated and irrational political stances, they probably can’t be traced to something that was pretty much finished by the time I took the training wheels off my bike.

Examples: Iran, Central America, Korea (with a majority Republican Congress), Cuba, all sorts of Soviet intrigue (Francis Gary Powers, etc.), and so forth (I’m forgetting many of them - apologies)

A lot of that stuff was not known to the general public (and the general public is still ignorant of a lot of it to this day — ask 5 random people in the street who Kermit Roosevelt was). To the people watching TV news every night, they were watching American soldiers being wounded and killed because of Johnson’s policies. They were watching rioting in the inner city because Johnson’s Great Society let them get uppity.

I’m not saying they were right — I’m saying that that’s how they interpreted it. Tristero over at Digby’s place says it much better than I can.

Yes, those of us with a little more historical knowledge know better, but we’re not going by what we know now. We’re going by what people saw at the time. And what they saw at the time was a Democratic president who escalated us into a futile war in Vietnam that he couldn’t even win. Why wouldn’t people vote for Nixon’s secret plan to end the war if the only thing the Democrats would promise was more war?

True, but he didn’t start the war. He did however definitely make it worse.

“Traditionally, Republicans were the party of isolationism — Republicans fought the entry of the US into WWII until the bitter end — and a lot of that was still lingering even into the 1950s and 1960s.”

Yes, except that the Red Menace had so frightened them that we were more interventionist than ever. Under Eisenhower a whole host of black-ops took place, the Bay of Pigs was planned, and there was support for helping the French in Indochina.

The Korean War started with full support, and it was only later that it was used against Truman and the Democrats for political advantage.

There were principled Republicans who were against escalation in Vietnam, but not a whole lot of them.

“Sure, they were freaked out about communist “third columnists” infiltrating America, but that didn’t mean they were eager to run overseas and start pushing people around.”

Examples: Iran, Central America, Korea (with a majority Republican Congress), Cuba, all sorts of Soviet intrigue (Francis Gary Powers, etc.), and so forth (I’m forgetting many of them - apologies)

Sure, Many Republican’s hearts were isolationist, but they (and the Dems) feared Global Communism - people tend to forget that we saw one unified Communist effort to overthrow us, and we did not learn to differentiate between the Soviets and China for a very long time - so much that we did a lot of abhorrent things between WWII and now…

LBJ inherited the mess and new the Republicans would eat him alive if he just pulled out. (Even though they were not the party in power, for the most part Republicans were eager supporters of the war, primarily because it was seen as stopping the Communist onslaught.)

I think you’re giving LBJ way too much credit here. He did escalate it, and he did pretend that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was much more significant than it actually was to drum up congressional support for the war.

Traditionally, Republicans were the party of isolationism — Republicans fought the entry of the US into WWII until the bitter end — and a lot of that was still lingering even into the 1950s and 1960s. Sure, they were freaked out about communist “third columnists” infiltrating America, but that didn’t mean they were eager to run overseas and start pushing people around.

Korea was Truman’s war; Vietnam was Kennedy and Johnson’s war.

Why are these constructions still lingering? Because the Baby Boomers whose formative years revolved around Vietnam only came into power in the past decade with Bill Clinton’s election. They’re still fighting Vietnam while the rest of us are trying to look to the future instead of the past.

Opo, the oldest official Baby Boomers were born in 1945, so they’re not even eligible for Social Security yet. We’ve got a long way to go before they drop out of the political landscape, and there are a lot more of them than there are of us. Their obsessions are going to continue to rule us for a long time to come, unfortunately.

Most people view liberals as those sorts of folks that feel morally superior ‘cause they eat organic food. Well, most people can’t afford that sort of thing.

including this Liberal. And all the Liberals in her family.
And most of the Liberals she knows.

So how do we get it out there that no, Liberals are NOT those sorts of folks? I mean, it’s basic logic, and I know the country as a whole has a problem with it. But is there seriously no way to say, “look! I’m poor as hell, and I’m a liberal”? How do we change the perception that “owning the pricey trappings of NPR dickheads” = “being a liberal” because i can’t afford any of that shit either, but it hasn’t made me into a MiniCheney.

I must’ve asked this three times. Is it just that there’s no fighting the idiot box? TV will always win and our image is graven in stone?

…and resisted…

…and resisted until they kicked France’s ass at Dien Bien Phu.

All the while we were lending France assistance of one kind or another, primarily military equipment and aircraft. Most of this came during the Eisenhower Administration. We also sent “military advisers”.

JFK inherited a clusterfuck that had already been going on for 15-years or so. Whether he would have stopped it or not was lost when he was assassinated.

LBJ inherited the mess and new the Republicans would eat him alive if he just pulled out. (Even though they were not the party in power, for the most part Republicans were eager supporters of the war, primarily because it was seen as stopping the Communist onslaught.)

When Barry Goldwater ran against LBJ in ‘64, he didn’t want to pull troops out and end the war, he wanted to send more troops and use nukes to “win” the war faster.

Nixon won in ‘68 in part by claiming he had “secret plan” for ending the war, which, as had been true with Johnson, really involved more escalation.

Vietnam might be primarily associated with Lyndon Johnson, and the biggest escalations took place under his leadership, but the truth is it was going on before he came to office, went on after he left, and if Nixon had been elected in ‘60 instead of Kennedy, it would most likely have proceeded on more or less the same trajectory…

Mainly because A) I was ignorant of the fact that the whole idea for Vietnam came from the Democrats [the only people I’ve ever heard speak proudly of it were Republicans], and B) as has been discussed in this thread, the political landscape has changed so much that specific party affiliations of 40 years ago don’t really mean a lot now. People who were old enough to be aware of which political party was the most wrong about Vietnam at the time it was being fought are over 60 today. Which implies that the problem is really that senior citizens make up an outrageously disproportionate chunk of the electorate, or that none of this has to do with direct experience at all, but with younger generations being made to drink Kool Aid marketed to their grandparents.

Aw, shucks (ducking head and blushing). Thanks, seeker. I fall on my face (a lot) but I do my best.

Only if you forget that the asshole rich politicians who sent all those kids overseas to die were Democrats. So not only were the Democrats sending you and your friends overseas to die in a stupid war, they were giving all kinds of rights to black and brown people that you assumed meant it would be harder for you to find a job when you came back from that war.

Why are you so shocked that they would turn to the party that was the not-Democrats, the party that promised “Peace with Honor” in Vietnam instead of continuing a futile war?

Highly ironic that the Republicans, in assuming the problem with Vietnam was the way the war was run rather than the war, managed to shoot themselves in the foot exactly the same way the Democrats did in the 1960s.