draft

Update: HippieChick has more on this in her diary. I also wanted to point out that when Bush was making similar noises in 2004, Rock the Vote ran a great campaign focusing on the draft. It infuriated Ed Gillespie and the RNC. It would be great to see something like that again.
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I'm not looking to fearmonger or anything, but the dude said it himself:

Think Progress has the scoop.

Today, while at a town hall meeting, McCain made one of the stupidest mistakes he could have made. He agreed with a women who brought up the draft.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disabled veterans, especially in this state, have horrible conditions [...] My son is an officer in the Air Force, and I am a vet and I was raised in a military family. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can't even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don't reenact the draft I don't think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.

JOHN MCCAIN: Ma'am let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.

Now with Obama holding a steady lead among young voters this was probably the worst thing that McCain could say.

With president Bush's disapproval ratings, and most Americans wanting the United States to pull out of Iraq, this is not a good time for McCain to bring up the draft.

With young voters, one of the biggest issues in decided how to vote, is the Iraq war. If the youth catch on about what McCain said then this could be the issue that could send them to the polls. And that could be a McCain election disaster.

Update: Ezra is talking sense about the Draft - particularly w/r/t Rangel's perennial proposal.
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If you haven't noticed it already in the video queue, The Campaign to Defend America's Iraq Summer program just launched a new video ad campaign on YouTube. Here's one of the videos:

When it comes to the draft, I'm always a little leary of progressives putting out our own brand of fear-mongering, however when the War Czar puts it on the table, you've pretty much got to take him at his word, and if this can motivate folks to pressure their representatives to end the war earlier, so much the better.

The campaign is pretty smart. In the description of each YouTube video is the phone number of the targeted Senator. If I was the folks at Iraq Summer, my next move might be to produce some DIY videos on how to call and what to say as SSDP did for the Higher Education Act reauthorization. They're already doing something very similar, but there's a subtle difference between posting videos of people calling and posting videos showing people how to call and what to do when you get through. The latter is much more participatory and DIY.

I'm a little late as this has been making the rounds for most of the day, but check out the wisdom that Dick Cheney was dropping circa 1994:

On that tip, both Edwards and Hillary came out with statements this week about our War Czar's moment of tru -er- break with message discipline. I didn't see any statements on the web pages of other candidates.

I'm actually pretty surprised at Hillary. Issues affecting young people and clarity on the war are two of her weakest areas. The statement isn't particularly hard hitting, but for what it's worth, she was the first to issue any statement at all.

Unfortunately, this is also fodder for Rangel to pull out his perennial draft resolution. I understand where he's coming from - it is incredibly unfair that lower income kids shoulder the country's military burden. Especially if we're going to go jaunting off on elective adventures. Yet he's pulled this out so many times that it's more of a joke than an effective strategy for anything.

Our new "War Czar," (aka Bush's fall-guy along with Gen. Petraeus if things fall to shit), says that hey, maybe a draft is a good idea:

Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

"And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," Lute added.

The Iraq Campaign already has a video response posted. Check out their website for some action items on how you can help target members of Congress to help end the war. Perhaps it's also time to revive some of these projects from 2004:

• Enjoy the Draft
• Rock the Vote Draft

In 2004, Ken Mehlman, then Chair of the Republican National Committee, flipped his shit over the Rock the Vote campaign, and Enjoy the Draft was one of the better satires of the 2004 cycle.