Jeffrey Feldman writes on the "grieving mom..."

So what is the bottom line of the Sheehan protest? What did the Sheehan week achieve?

In broad terms, the success of the "grieving mom" phrase indicates that Americans are now thinking about the War in Iraq through the frame of the family, rather than thinking about Iraq through the frame of "terrorism" or "ideology."

The implications of this shift from "terrorism" to "family" in the country's thinking about Iraq are profound. Not only does this shift forewarn a political tidal wave soon to break on the President's foreign policy, but also of a much deeper, tectonic shift in the strategy beneath all the recent gains in the Republican party.

The great success of Cindy Sheehan's protest, therefore, is no less than the moral authority for the Democratic Party to speak for the American family.

i get all queasy when i read things like this... while i completely agree that cindy sheehan may well be a tipping point for bush and iraq (and maybe for the entire maggot-ridden bush administration), framing it as a talking point advantage for democrats strikes me as particularly cynical... i know that feldman's schtick is framing and i know he believes that dems need to do a much better job of framing than they have but, in many ways, framing can be just as nauseating and ugly as spin... my feelings are mixed, obviously...

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