I didn’t word it exactly that way, but I did say that veterans and military members don’t just automatically find someone sympathetic or relatable just because that person served in the military, whether it’s a random person or someone running for political office. It’s a lot more nuanced than “that person is a veteran” or “that person was wounded in combat” and “therefore I should like them.”
For every Democratic or liberal veteran who tries to play the veteran card, 10 more veterans will come out of the woodwork to call them out. I’ve seen it time and again, for instance, with gun control, to name just one issue. Someone on Facebook will say, “I carried weapons of war in Iraq, and I can tell you as a veteran that assault weapons have no place on our streets.” Then 10 other people will say, “well I, too, carried weapons of war [wherever], and in fact have more deployments than you did/was in a “real” combat arms MOS/generally saw more shit than you think you have, and I say you’re wrong!”
There’s also an enlisted/officer divide. In my experience, former enlisted are more likely to lean more conservative, former officers are more likely to be moderates or liberal. Any time a liberal former officer tries to play the veteran card on some hot button issue, a bunch of former enlisted will say, “oh, they’re just an elitist officer”. Oh, and former officers will say, “oh, they’re one of the shitty officers, like that one asshole officer I once had.”
There’s no amount of combat experience that a Democratic veteran could have, that would outweigh their political position to conservative veterans, because there is NO shortage of equally-combat-experienced conservative veterans to be mouthpieces for the other side.
I used to think otherwise, but at this point after following politics for as long as I have, military service in a political candidate seems to be a wash in terms of their electability and popularity.
