If Tomas is the hero of this movie, Congress (and George W. Bush) are the villains, rushing into a war on false pretenses. The scenes with Tomas are interspersed effectively with the 2002 comments of George W. Bush and members of Congress who blithely repeat the absurd lies used to justify war. Donahue and Spiro try to present the 23 Senators who voted against the resolution for war as heroes, especially Robert Byrd. Sometimes they go war over the top, as the movie stirs with annoying uplifting music during the listing of their names. But it’s a powerful reminder of how important elections are. The people in Congress really do matter.

Perhaps Donahue’s wisest decision was to leave himself out of the movie. He could have done a solid Michael Moore-type approach, and even included the story of how he was fired by MSNBC in 2002, partly because (as a memo later revealed) the corporate heads feared having an anti-war voice anywhere on their network. Instead, Donahue lets Tomas be the voice of this story. (Tomas also worked on creating an album titled "Body of War"featuring music by Eddie Vedder created for the movie and other songs donated by the artists.)

At an advance screening of the movie in Chicago on May 14, Phil Donahue spoke about the movie and answered questions from the audience. According to Donahue, "America is not seeing the sacrifices that are being made." He notes: "This is the most sanitized war in my lifetime." And so he urges: "Don’t sanitize the war. Show the pain." Donahue and Spiro show the pain, but this isn’t a painful movie to watch. It’s sad and outrageous and often even funny, but never boring.

One questioner lectured Donahue: "Your film should have had much more about the Iraqi people." But as Donahue put it in his introductory comments, "We knew we couldn't lecture, we couldn't rant, we couldn't be tedious." Americans don’t relate to dead Iraqis. They don’t even relate to lists of 4,000+ dead Americans, as the war in Iraq drops on the list of public concerns as economic troubles rise. But a living casualty of this war, Tomas, provides a literal "body of war" on the screen that people can relate to.

Donahue notes that "mainstream media lost interest in this war." He says he made the movie to "fill this black hole that is left by the corporate media." His own movie doesn’t fit with the corporate model. He doesn’t have a distributor, and depends on Landmark Theaters and some independent theaters to show the movie. He doesn’t have the money to promote the movie in the corporate press, so he’s forced to do some innovative marketing (including singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at today’s Cubs game).

Phil Donahue obviously doesn’t need this movie to be successful in order to improve his bank account or his reputation. But America needs this movie to be successful in order to make sure that the war in Iraq is not ignored by the press and the politicians in this election, and to make sure that the next war is prevented before it ever starts, so that we never need to see the broken bodies of people like Tomas Young.

Crossposted at DailyKos and JusticeMovies.

The exit poll asked whether Obama shares the views of Jeremiah Wright. Half of the West Virginia voters polled said that he did (20% a lot, 30% somewhat). Of those who thought Obama shares the views of Wright "a lot", they voted 88-3 for Clinton. That's an astonishing number, and it overlaps greatly with the voters admitting racism. It reflects one vision of racists, that all black people think alike. But the influence of the Rev. Wright  case suggests that "iceberg racism" (the racism beneath the surface) is also strongly affecting voting.

What may be most remarkable about these figures is that they show how little history matters in racism. Remember, West Virginia was created as a state during the Civil War when it broke away from Virginia and rejected the Confederacy to remain part of the Union. However, it's not clear if this separation really indicated the people's views, but West Virginia was admitted to the Union in 1862 with the requirement that it gradually eliminate slavery.

So why is West Virginia more racist than the former Confederate states? One reason might be lack of contact with blacks. The exit polls indicated that voters were 95% white, and only 3% black. Whites may hold on to bigotry when they rarely encounter blacks and do not have their stereotypes challenged. However, Obama has done very well in other all-white states, including Iowa and Vermont.

Perhaps it reflects economics. West Virginia (like the second most racist state, Arkansas) tends to be a poor white-dominated state. In the face of poverty, many people don't cling to guns or religion. They cling to racism.

The Republican Party's rise to power in recent decades has largely depended upon the fact that impoverished whites blame blacks rather than corporations for their problems. Without these racist whites, Republicans such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush could never have won. The biggest hope for the future of the Democratic Party is the dying off of the old racists who helped bring the Republicans to power. But West Virginia skews very old, and poorly educated, which is the worst possible demographic for Obama.

By contrast with race, gender was a key factor helping Hillary Clinton. Overall 18% of the voters said gender was a factor, and they supported Clinton 73-22. Incredibly, among the men who said gender was a factor in their voting, they also supported Clinton 59-34. This indicates that bigotry can be a divided concept. White people, and even white men, can support a female candidate enthusiastically while simultaneously revealing their dislike of black people.

But it's also possible that Hillary Clinton's success at overcoming the sexism that I believe is out there can be attributed to "sponsorship." Hillary Clinton can get the vote of men, and even sexist men, because she has a well-liked white man, Bill Clinton, vouching for her and giving her strong support. If so, the question becomes whether the support of Obama by prominent white men (including Bill Clinton) might help offset the bigotry that's so apparent.

As for the Limbaugh Effect, only 4% of the voters in West Virginia called themselves Republicans, too small for reporting details of their voting. From my calculations, though, Clinton won only about 60% of the Republican vote, better than she did among Independents but less than her margin among Democrats. So the Limbaugh Effect was less than 1% in West Virginia. However, Limbaugh did not aggressively push for Republican voting in West Virginia, which has a closed primary.

As the West Virginia primary shows us, in many parts of the country racism is alive and well and controlling our political process. Many commentators assume that Obama's success with the young and well-educated is due to some "elitist" support he has among the latte-sipping crowd. The real reason is racism. Younger people are less likely to embrace racist views. Well-educated people are less likely to embrace racist views. And that makes all the difference in America, where the continuing significance of race can be measured with alarming detail in West Virginia's primary.

Crossposted at DailyKos and Huffington Post.

There are other ways to try to measure this. Overall, 16% of Indiana voters called themselves conservatives, and 65% supported Clinton (among the 4% who were very conservative, Clinton won approximately 70%). Also, in an Obama-McCain match-up, 19% of the Indiana voters would vote for McCain, and of these 87% had voted for Clinton. By contrast, in a projected Clinton-McCain match-up, 17% would vote for McCain, and only 58% of them had voted for Obama. What does this mean? Basically, about 7% of the overall voters said they voted for Clinton but support McCain no matter what. About 2% of the voters voted for Obama but support McCain against either case. Taking these numbers into account, I would guess that approximately 5% of the Indiana electorate in the Democratic primary consisted of Republicans seeking to vote against Obama to create chaos in the Democratic Party.

Openly racist voters were a bigger factor. Fully 10% of the Indiana voters in the exit polls were whites who said that race influenced their voting, and 79% of these voters supported Clinton. So approximately 8% of the voters in Indiana were whites voting against Obama because of race (of course, many of these racists may be Limbaugh listeners).

As in previous primaries, gender helped Clinton in Indiana while race hurt Obama. Among the voters who said that gender was not a factor in their vote, Clinton and Obama split the vote equally. It was women voting for Clinton because of her gender that created her likely margin of victory in Indiana.

In North Carolina exit polls, the Limbaugh effect was equally powerful, and perhaps even more so. There were more self-described conservatives (22%), and they voted 51-42% for Clinton, but among the 8% who were "very conservative," Obama actually won by a small margin. About 6% of the voters were self-described Republicans (and they supported Clinton 56-35%). However, it’s odd that self-described Independents split evenly between Obama and Clinton, while Obama won Democrats easily, which is the reverse of the case in Indiana and many other states. This suggests that some of the dittoheads in North Carolina were calling themselves independent.

The Limbaugh effect becomes clear in this stat: 19% of the voters said they would support McCain in a match-up against Obama, and 82% had voted for Clinton; that means they were disgruntled voters who say they may not support the other Democrat. But of the 15% who would support McCain in a match-up against Clinton, only 45% had voted for Obama. This means that a large proportion of the anti-Clinton voters voted for her, and that’s the Limbaugh effect. I would estimate that around 5% of the voters in North Carolina were Republicans who voted for Clinton despite hating her.

In North Carolina, racism was less of a factor than in other states, while sexism was a bigger factor. 9% of the voters were whites who said race impacted their vote, and 59% supported Clinton. That’s a net of only 5-6% racist voters, less than in Indiana. By contrast, 21% of voters said gender was a factor and Obama was supported by them 52-43 (however, Obama’s margin was even larger among those who said gender was not a factor). Interestingly, as a total number, more women said that gender was a factor and voted against Clinton than men who did so.

Overall, the North Carolina and Indiana exit polls show that the Limbaugh effect is real and does affect the final margins. But the exit polls also show that racism and sexism are alive and well in American voting, even within the Democratic Party. Obama will be the Democratic nominee, and we will need to find a way to defeat racism along with John McCain in the November elections.

Crossposted at DailyKos.