Those who refused the draft. Their’s counted. Those who marched with signs and stood up, their’s counted. Those who left for overseas or Canada, their’s counted.

Why? Because it was one less soldier available, and one additional powerful voice working to change peoples minds day by day.

Ministers, priests and rabbis, who stood bravely in front of congregations who didn’t wish to entertain anti-war rhetoric in their public religious lives, their’s counted. Each individual who took an ethics class in college (millions did) and realized the war was completely immoral, their opposition counted.

The people who turned against the war because we were losing, their’s DID NOT COUNT. That sort of opposition to war is bereft of meaning, and comes too late to affect the course of the war. It was a gutless response to an earlier failure to stand up for what would have been right.

The problem with the assumptions made in the mainstream is that they often are wrong. People repeat something enough that it starts seeming like a unquestionable given, an obvious commonsense truth. Besides it being repeated, why do people jump to the conclusion that the working class turned against the Democrats?

As ralphiesmom pointed out above (and do check out the data at the link):

“Decades ago, I read something that said the largest segment against the war were people with a grade school education. Ah, here it is in this book preview:”

http://books.google.com/books?id=KEEWWcuKQ34C&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=but+the+figure+rose+to+75%25+among+the+grade-school-educated.+In+general&source=bl&ots=6tnsEThuUM&sig=QpQIN9G16_6VJx12SgpwcJDtxhc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AaWVUZ_HAcqEiwL9sYCIDA&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=but%20the%20figure%20rose%20to%2075%25%20among%20the%20grade-school-educated.%20In%20general&f=false

Larry M. Bartels, in Unequal Democracy, explored this issue. He discovered that the bottom third income bracket has remained solidly Democratic since the Progressive Era. He also observed that Democrats haven’t even lost the white vote across the country. He did note, however, that Democrats lost the white vote in the South.

There is interesting data that I don’t think Bartels discussed. Democrats haven’t lost the white vote across the board even in the South. The Southern white youth vote has gone to Democrats. Even more interesting and also contrary to mainstream assumptions, Democrats never lost the South. The majority of eligible voters in the South support the Democrats. However, because of disenfranchisement (long voting lines in poor areas, voter purges, etc), the Democratic majority in the South rarely wins elections.

Democrats don’t lose elections because they’ve lost the American people. Most Americans, including the white working class, are fairly liberal and increasingly so on many major political issues:

http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/us-demographics-increasing-progressivism/

Democrats and liberals do need to rethink their assumptions, but maybe not the assumptions they think they need to rethink.

Likewise, everyone who worked as a coal miner in Harlan County knew they had terrible working conditions and were being economically exploited too. But it still took union organizers to present unions as the solution in terms they could relate to, while also pressuring the owners to sign a contract. If some New Left types had shown up in Harlan County and burned the flag, it would have made the mine owners happy.

When Alinsky started organizing communities in Chicago, he worked with the Church. He was trying to do something effective to make their lives better. The community was mostly religious Catholics, so that is what he worker with. If he started criticizing the Church, it would have ended his organizing for that community. The New Left never figured that out.

You seem to be missing the point. The problem Alinsky was pointing out, is the New Left’s failure to present their opposition to the Vietnam War in terms that many blue-collar workers could relate to. There is actually some reason to think they were not even interested it trying. The result of that was that a lot of union workers who had voted Democrat all their lives, voted for Nixon in 1968. It could have been different. That is not “government propaganda,” New Left arrogance and political stupidity was (and is) the real thing.

We should not fall into the rhetorical trap that just because something is not fully true, it must be a myth and ultimately false. The world is simply too complicated to jump to that conclusion. It is the mistake of bad (as opposed to good) engineers who think something is off if it is not on.