Though I haven't done an exhaustive analysis of all available polls, those that I have seen can be generalized as: Democrats think the invasion of Iraq was the wrong thing to do and prefer immediate withdrawal; Republicans think it was right and they're willing to keep going for as long as necessary; Both of these groups cancel each other out for the purposes of the polls and it's the Independents, who decide the finding. Almost always, these voters favor a timetable by a very significant margin.

Of course this is an oversimplification because no group is 100%, but in the fall, it'll most likely be the Independents who will also decide the election.

Now, if you look at a report generated from the "March Tracking Poll" by the Gallup organization, without worrying about which Democrat does better with which subgroup because though that could be helpful when considering electability, it isn't my purpose here; But, if you look at the age brackets in general, you'll see that those 18-29 favor the Democrats by the same approximate margin as those over 65 prefer McCain.

Those in between are pretty much evenly split, so once again, it'll be them who'll probably decide the election.

The 1970s were some of the most tumultuous times in our nation's history. Racial and sexual barriers were being broken down on a regular basis. Young people, who had seized some degree of power during the Civil Rights Era and from the Anti-War movement were trying to reshape the country with radical new ideas and older Americans sometimes felt marginalized and would occasionally push back.

And, while there was a general state of unrest here at home, we also developed something Republicans from Henry Kissinger to George H.W. Bush called "Vietnam Syndrome".

To a V.F.W Hall during the campaign of 1980, Ronald Reagan famously said;

"For too long, we have lived with the 'Vietnam Syndrome'.  Much of that syndrome has been created by the North Vietnamese aggressors who now threaten the peaceful people of Thailand.  Over and over they told us for nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests.  They had a plan.  It was to win in the field of propaganda here in America what they could not win on the field of battle in Vietnam.  As the years dragged on, we were told that peace would come if we would simply stop interfering and go home."

"It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause.  A small country newly free from colonial rule sought our help in establishing self-rule and the means of self-defense against a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest.  We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt as if we were doing something shameful, and we have been shabby in our treatment of those who returned.  They fought as well and as bravely as any Americans have ever fought in any war.  They deserve our gratitude, our respect, and our continuing concern."

And though I haven't bought access to the whole article, a quick Google produced the following opening paragraph from a piece in Winter 91/92 edition of Foreign Affairs;

By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!" So said President George Bush in a euphoric victory statement at the end of the Gulf War, suggesting the extent to which Vietnam continued to prey on the American psyche more than fifteen years after the fall of Saigon. Indeed the Vietnam War was by far the most convulsive and traumatic of America's three wars in Asia in the 50 years since Pearl Harbor. It set the U.S. economy on a downward spiral. It left America's foreign policy at least temporarily in disarray, discrediting the postwar policy of containment and undermining the consensus that supported it. It divided the American people as no other event since their own Civil War a century earlier. It battered their collective soul.

Though those born in '78 were still toddlers when Reagan took office and they were only thirteen at the end of the first Gulf War, as you go up the age spectrum, people only get older and they're more apt to remember the times that Jimmy Carter addressed in his famous "Malaise Speech";

"The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation."

"The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America."

"The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own."

In addition to the older Americans, it is those who remember the post-Vietnam era that Sen. McCain appears to be targeting with his "Never Surrender" theme. The commercials that he's been testing in New Mexico, both show him as a POW, lying on his cot, one highlights him struggling to speak and they both declare that America will never give up.

It is that sense of pride, Reagan is often credited for restoring that McCain will be trying to harness and not only will he be speaking to those who thought that if we had just kept fighting, we could've eventually "won" Vietnam, but he's also going to be going after those in the middle, who just remember the general funk which hovered over the nation like a dark cloud, as we recovered from some of our most trying times and one of our greatest military defeats.

The other day, LisB offered a post which distinguished between "occupation" and "war". During his time for questions at the Senate hearings, Barack Obama inquired about what would make us happy or what is the minimum that we'd be willing to accept, before we can get out of Iraq. I've long held and actually posted to my now-dormant blog years ago, we should've declared victory and pulled back to the Murtha line.

George Bush has continually moved the goalposts; In the beginning, the stated goal was regime change, then we decided to get them a government and elections, now we're looking for stability: At every station along the path, we could've said that our job was done, but Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn" became the rule and there's no doubt that unless something dramatically changes or unless we find another solution, some degree of genocide could easily follow.

If the Democrats are going to want to successfully defeat McCain on the battlefield of Iraq, we aren't going to be able to keep pointing toward a speech from '02, repeat the phrase "100 years" and say that we were wrong. We're going to have to frame withdrawal, not as a defeat, but that our soldiers did what they were asked and now it's time to bring them home with honor. But, perhaps most of all, if the country implodes after we're gone, it's going to take a lot more than a throwing up of hands to assuage our nation's guilt. It's memories of that emotion which McCain is likely to also raise, therefore we're going to need an easily understood and clearly articulated answer before our political victory can be assured.