Can Democrats Seize the Anti-Interventionist Vote? |
This spring, in the weeks after U.S. bombs hit Iran, Maryland Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen found his party’s stance on the war “confused.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded the Trump administration “be straight” about the objective of the attack. Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer’s counterpart in the House, said Congress needed to hear a “compelling rationale” for the conflict. But looking through his colleagues’ statements — trying to “suss out how they stand” — Van Hollen was frustrated. What really was the party’s stance on the U.S. starting a war? Was it all just a problem of process? “The Democratic Party could have a much clearer voice, and clearer position, on questions of war and peace,” he told me. “We will obviously defend ourselves if we are attacked. But that’s different than starting a war. There are some pretty basic principles that should guide us.”
Instead of those clear principles, after the conflict began many Democrats focused on procedural missteps or pivoted to economic arguments, like higher gas prices. A few even hoped to find an upside to bombs, noting the ousting of an oppressive Iranian regime — which especially angered Van Hollen, who has long argued that only truly defensive actions make moral sense in war. “There is no win here,” he told me. The statements came off like evasion and only further entrenched an idea many voters already believe, he said: When it comes to talking about foreign intervention, the Democrat Party is “unclear” and “inconsistent.”
As the myth of “Donald the Dove” falls apart in Iran — and Tucker Carlson implies the president is the “Anti-Christ” — it should be an opportunity for Democrats to capture some of the anti-interventionist vote. Sixty-four percent of Americans disapprove of the decision to go to war with Iran. The war has forced an ongoing crack-up in the Republican Party. And there is not strong internal opposition among the base to speaking out. Ninety percent of Democrat-leaning voters oppose Trump’s handling of the war. Yet while the world “suggests a policy and political imperative for Democrats to be the antiwar party,” as Ben Rhodes, one of President Barack Obama’s deputy national security advisers, recently wrote in the New York Times, “such a movement has not fully materialized.”
Instead, the party is in a “messy” antiwar realignment, said Tré Easton, a longtime Democratic Hill staffer now working for a think tank. Democrats snapped into a clearer opposition to the Iran war, after Trump seemed to threaten nuclear annihilation, with some initially calling for his ouster through the 25th Amendment. But they are still trying to figure out exactly what the party stands for on foreign policy beyond opposition to Trump. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago Democrats were attacking the president for the opposite: being too timid on Iran. (The 2024 Democratic Party platform critiques the president’s “fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression.”) “This is the first time, basically in 25 years, where Democrats are being forced to actually have a proactive vision” on foreign policy, Easton said.
After 9/11, Democrats tried to match the sentiments of the country. The party largely endorsed the Iraq War and broader conflicts even as some members quietly........