How the Iran war helped Democrats win the midterms |
This week, Iran’s response to the US-Israeli attacks led to one of the most dramatic political turnarounds in modern American history. Trump’s failed war on its own, however, is not why the Democrats pounded the Republicans and now control the Senate and House of Representatives for the next two years. Rather, it reflected and amplified many dynamics in American society that caused discontented, angry and fearful citizens to repudiate Trump’s Republicans and support Democrats.
The US president wrongly believed that his war on Iran would pummel the country into submission and turn it into a vassal state of the US and Israel. Iran survived, attacked the US, Israel and Arab lands, and brought the painful economic costs of war into every American home. It also humiliated Washington by revealing that America’s military prowess, like Trump’s behaviour and electoral promises, is erratic at best, and ineffective at worst.
The Iran war also sparked a cascade of consequences that hurt every American and, in some areas, exposed how national values such as democracy, equality and the rule of law, along with claims of global dominance, could prove illusory. Iran’s move with the greatest impact on ordinary Americans was restricting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, driving up the prices Americans paid for groceries, gasoline, diesel, travel, most imports and other everyday necessities. Some 90 percent of voters said the cost........