It’s Their Fault

Post-Boomer election? McCain doesn’t want that. Michael Scherer discusses the Boomer politics exemplified in McCain’s new ad in Swampland, and Andrew Sullivan has reactions.

Scherer:

In some ways, this is a predictable theme. Every presidential election since Vietnam has, in some ways, been a retread of the 1960s culture war.

[McCain's] new ad tries bravely to tie Obama to all the cultural division of that era. It’s a contrast spot, which compares McCain’s military service to the hippy culture of the 1960s. Though Obama’s name is never mentioned–he was not yet old enough to shave, let alone protest…

It’s true, Obama has nothing to do with Boomer politics… Sullivan finds his “post-culture war appeal to be central to his candidacy.” And as a Dish reader says,

If there’s one thing so many of us have noticed about the ad is how disconnected it feels from today’s world. The battles of the 60s, the summer-of-love, etc. means almost nothing to many of us today. If anything, it only reinforces McCain’s age and out-of-touchness, not the opposite.

But Sullivan also makes the point that he doubts that “the post-Vietnam gambit is totally played out yet” …and I agree — at least to a segment of resentful Boomers who could make up a crucial swing vote (as I wrote before here and here). And, as past elections have shown, this hippie-resentment group swings conservative, so it’s in McCain’s best interest to seduce those vulnerable back into the old Boomer-politics way of thinking. After all, It’s pretty obvious that Obama has the lock on the “new paradigm” thing.