McCain spent a lot of political capital on the idea that waving the bloody shirt of old Vietnam-era cultural divisions would pay off a lot more than they possibly could...
A lot of people got elected years and years and years after the Civil War, bringing out the old tropes to call people heroes and villains from it but...
Frankly, when it turns out that opposing the war in Iraq and opposing the war in Vietnam would've BOTH been good ideas, there we are.
History repeating itself backfires on a guy living so far in the past that it cycled back around.
In a lot of people's minds, at this point, an organized movement to stop the war against the Iraqi people sounds like a damned good idea. Granted, they don't wanna say it out loud and they wouldn't want to use the violent tactics of the Weather Underground but... yeah.
The people who were doing what Ayers did basically eight hundred thousand years ago... they were fighting the wrong way but for the right goal and that means a lot in the American subconscious.
Only a completely mindfucked shit like MacBeth would roll the farm on the belief that people REALLY would want to go back and stick it out in Vietnam if they had a time machine, if they could.