Military Mike
 | |
| Era | The Modern Era |
|---|---|
| Age | 35-50 |
| Home | Virginia Beach, VA |
| Demographic | veteran, suburban, lean conservative |
| Lean | Lean Republican |
| Race | white |
| Predecessor | Fort Hood Cody |
Mike is an Army veteran of the Afghanistan war who now works as a defence contractor in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He is Republican by habit and hawkish by conviction, but moderate on issues unrelated to national security, and he represents the veteran and military-family vote.
Who they stand for
Mike represents the post-9/11 generation of military veterans. This is the generation that deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, came home to the Phoenix VA hospital waiting-list scandal of 2014, watched Kabul fall in August 2021, and has settled around the bases and defence contractors of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and the Carolinas. Veterans as a group lean Republican and voted for Trump, but Mike's Republicanism is the older, institutional kind. He wants the alliance system, the Pentagon budget, and the military chain of command respected. He heard Trump's attacks on Senator John McCain, the reported remarks calling war dead 'suckers and losers', and the threats to leave NATO, as attacks on his own service.
Lejeune Dustin represented the generation that won the Cold War, and Fort Hood Cody wanted revenge after the September 11 attacks. Mike has watched the occupation he fought in end in a chaotic withdrawal, and he is the first veteran in this line to value restraint, alliances, and competence over force. He remains a patriot, but the war has left him no longer believing that wars are easily won.
Playing to them
Mike supports a president who funds the military, honours the VA's obligations to veterans, stands by Israel and NATO, confronts China, Russia, and Iran, and speaks about the armed forces in plain, unsentimental terms. He judges a crisis partly by whether the president sounds like a credible commander-in-chief. He will not forgive a defence cut, a president who mocks a veteran, an abandoned alliance, or a deal with Iran. Unlike Fort Hood Cody, he will also not forgive a war entered into by choice, and a deployment with no plan for ending it loses his support faster than it wins it.
His hawkish views cost the support of Woodstock Allen, College Chloe, and Brooklyn Jamal, who oppose the wars and the size of the defence budget, and they cost Montana Matt, who sees the surveillance that comes with Mike's idea of security as too high a price. A president who wins Mike on law and order loses Brooklyn Jamal and Atlanta Andre on policing. Beltway Barbara agrees with him on NATO and on defending American institutions and disagrees on almost everything else, and that overlap is what a centrist president can build support on.
Where they live
The five states where Military Mike makes up the largest share of the electorate in the modern era:
- South Carolina
- Alabama
- Virginia
- Alaska
- North Carolina
Lineage
Lejeune Dustin → Fort Hood Cody → Military Mike
Three patriotic men who served, Republican by habit. What changes is their mood. Dustin is a patriot of the post-Cold War era: America has won, it is the best country in the world and it polices the world, and he is proud and optimistic. Cody is a patriot of the post-9/11 era, and he wants revenge. Mike is a patriot of the post-war-on-terror era: he served in the Afghan occupation, saw how it went, and is sceptical, more lucid and less emotional than Cody. He has come to value NATO and the alliances. Optimistic, then vengeful, then sober.