“He’s a shifty-eyed, lying son-of-a-bitch”.

You write, “I checked my damn facts plus I double checked my math” Maybe you did, but in your first comment you provided no calculations, no links, no data. You just said, in effect, I think you’re wrong. I asked you for the numbers, and in your second comment you still didn’t provide them. So I took a stab at it, which took up more time than I had, and then finally you provided some numbers. If you had said IN YOUR FIRST COMMENT, I checked the numbers, and actually out of XX,XXX killed, about XX,XXX died on Nixon’s watch, so that’s less than half, I would have been OK with that.

But you didn’t do that. You just said, you’re wrong. That kind of comments drives me absolutely crazy. Don’t just say I’m wrong; show me where I’m wrong, and show me what the real numbers are. And don’t take up so much of my time. Well, I guess you won’t now, huh?

But if you are so math challenged, then don’t go all snarky on me by saying “I’d be so much happier if you’d actually check your facts first.” I checked my damn facts plus I double checked my math. You reply with more attitude which obviously shows you didn’t even bother to read my whole response. I at least take the time to read your entire posts, lengthy as they are. If I don’t grasp something something, I’ll re-read it. You can’t even extend that courtesy, choosing rather to incorrectly berate me on points I already made.

Oh, one has to love the irony of your follow up post of factuality and truth.

A review of the 1980 campaign, beginning with the 1978 mid-terms, would show that, prior to the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the centerpiece of the Reagan campaign with respect to foreign policy was the Panama Canal Treaty.

Another point.

Everything Barbara says is accurate, but one thing is left out that was a key component of the Republican revanche: the battle of the Equal Rights Amendment. The very first victory, and the organizational model, for what we now can see as the ascendancy of America’s right-wing was the defeat of the ERA.

I’m sorry you feel I was distorting numbers. I believed I was being accurate at the time. I am massively math impaired — I’m serious — and only do basic computation when somebody puts a gun to my head and gives me a calculator.

I disagree that I’m biased, however. I blame LBJ for getting us into the bleeping war and make no excuses for his mismanagement of it.

And when you wrote “Surely you couldn’t expect Nixon to step into office on day one and stop the war and pull out every man in the blink of an eye?” That’s just crap. I didn’t expect Nixon to pull out the troops in the blink of an eye. But Nixon didn’t finish pulling out all of the combat troops for

MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS
MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS
MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS
MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS
MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS
MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS

Is that clear now? And that’s only to the final withdrawal of combat troops, of course.

In 1969 I was a senior in high school and didn’t care who won the presidential election, but most people I knew liked Nixon, so I was OK with his election. And if he had done what he’d promised and had brought the war to a close with a couple of years of his first inauguration, I would have been OK with that. But it took him

MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS

during which time he had escalated and expanded the war, and during which time lots of nasty stuff happened. So by the time the

MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS

had rolled around since the last election campaign, and the war was still going on, lots of people were tense about it.

So, once again, nobody expected Nixon for not ending the war in “the blink of an eye.” But they did blame him for taking

MORE THAN FOUR BLEEPING YEARS

Is that clear now? And you can apologize to me for dishonestly distorting my opinion whenever you like.

You can say it’s anal, but in the context you used it in, your number tends to put a spin that one man was just as bad as two men, if not worse just because of the proximity of percentages. The fact that Nixon represents Republicans in your post, it deliberately casts a negative light to benefit your argument. Lest you forget, both Kennedy and Johnson did little to end the war at all. While Kennedy’s “domino theory” was a noble attempt to support his needs, it was at best misguided. But that’s easily said using hindsight. While I don’t like Nixon using the war to further his reelectability, I don’t feel it justifies distorting numbers to assist one’s bias.

And that’s my point.

The point, Ray, is not about who was most responsible for what deaths. The point is about the political mood of the country in the 1970s and how it impacted the Democratic Party. It is widely believed that there was something about the way the Vietnam War ended that caused voters to walk away from the Democratic Party, and I (and Atrios) are saying that just plain isn’t true.

First, I want people to understand that the war issues of 1972 were very different from what we’re looking at now. The primary issue was not about whether we should stay in Vietnam and complete “the mission,” or whether we should withdraw. A majority of both Republicans and Democrats were in favor of withdrawing. Nixon and McGovern both campaigned on a promise to withdraw. The question was not if, but how.

The point about how many troops died after Nixon became president is important only because it illustrates the difference between Nixon’s and McGovern’s position. Again, both of these guys were talking about peace. But McGovern’s candidacy gained traction because Nixon had promised to get us out of Vietnam before he was elected for his first term. Then the four years of his term dragged on, and the war was still going on. And any way you slice it, the number of U.S. troops who died because Nixon and Kissinger were flapping around about “honor” was not insignificant. Whether it was a third or a half is not critical to the point I’m trying to make here.

When the war finally ended, as I remember it, the enormous majority of Americans didn’t give a bleep about the terms of the peace agreement, other than bringing home the POWs. Nor were most of them distressed when Congress stopped funding the South Vietnamese military in 1974. Once there was a peace deal and the combat troops were pulled out, most Americans just wanted to shove Vietnam out of their minds. Yes the fall of Saigon was distressing, but I don’t recall that anyone blamed one party more than the other for it.

And, as Atrios documents in the posts I linked, there was no voting pattern that shows Democrats were punished at the polls for Vietnam.

So where did this myth come from, that Dems lost support of the public because of Vietnam?

I think this myth was the creation of rightie propaganda generated in the 1980s. All along there was a small but intense core of right wingers who were disturbed about “not winning” in Vietnam and blamed “liberals” for it, but in the 1970s most people weren’t listening to these loons. By the 1980s memories were fading, however, and the young folks who fell in love with Reagan but were a little too young to remember Vietnam (and who seem to be the most active members of movement conservatism now) were ripe for blaming “liberals” for “losing Vietnam.” That’s their story, and they’re sticking with it.

Remarkably, most of the older punditocracy has bought into this myth, also, including the ones who are old enough to know better. But that’s not what happened.

That’s my point.

When every minutia of data is available to literally connect every dead soldier to each president, regardless of specific time in office, then we can then give precise blame. So for matters of fairness, the years in office versus the years of the actual war were used.

“Now my notes also show an additional 1,000 deaths from 75-98.” So while some of those deaths can be accounted for a trickle left behind, many of those were given year of death so the actual death could have happened on anybody’s watch. Yet, if you want to use those against him, my percentage is still closer to a third and you should also subtract a few thousand from up front of his first term as those numbers were more than likely there when Johnson was in office. Surely you couldn’t expect Nixon to step into office on day one and stop the war and pull out every man in the blink of an eye? Although, I can see it’s more important for you to blame a party than to be fair or accurate. I’m disappointed in you, I thought you were above that.