The Domestic Politics of the Iran Strike
Democrats are mostly condemning it and Republicans are divided.
AP (“Democrats are at odds over response as Trump announces the US has entered Israel-Iran war“):
After nearly two years of stark divisions over the war in Gaza and support for Israel, Democrats seemed to remain at odds over policy toward Iran. Progressives demanded unified opposition before President Donald Trump announced U.S. strikes against Tehran’s nuclear program but party leaders were treading more cautiously.
U.S. leaders of all stripes have found common ground for two decades on the position that Iran could not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The longtime U.S. foe has supported groups that have killed Americans across the Mideast and threatened to destroy Israel. But Trump’s announcement Saturday that the U.S. had struck three nuclear sites could become the Democratic Party’s latest schism, just as it was sharply dividing Trump’s isolationist “Make America Great Again” base from more hawkish conservatives.
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, noted that in January, Trump suggested the U.S. could “measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
“Today, against his own words, the president sent bombers into Iran,” Martin said in a statement. “Americans overwhelmingly do not want to go to war. Americans do not want to risk the safety of our troops abroad.”
Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, said the U.S. entering the war in Iran “does not make America more secure.”
“This bombing was an act of war that risks retaliation by the Iranian regime,” Welch said in a statement.
While progressives in the lead-up to the military action had staked out clear opposition to Trump’s potential intervention, the party leadership played the safer ground of insisting on a role for Congress before any use of force.
Martin’s statement took a similar tact, stating, “Americans do not want a president who bypasses our constitution and pulls us towards war without Congressional approval. Donald Trump needs to bring his case to Congress immediately.”
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine called Trump’s actions, “Horrible judgement” and said he’d “push for all senators to vote on whether they are for this third idiotic Middle East war.”
Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations had been silent on the Israel-Iran war, even before Trump’s announcement — underscoring how politically tricky the issue can be for the party.
“They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who served under Democratic President Barack Obama and is now a strategist on foreign policy. “The beasts of the Democratic Party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., had called Trump’s consideration of an attack “a defining moment for our party.” Khanna had introduced legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., that called on the Republican president to “terminate” the use of U.S. armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.
Khanna used Trump’s own campaign arguments of putting American interests first when the congressman spoke to Theo Von, a comedian who has been supportive of the president and is popular in the so-called “manosphere” of male Trump supporters.
“That’s going to cost this country a lot of money that should be being spent here at home,” said Khanna, who is said to be among the many Democrats eyeing the party’s 2028 primary.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, had pointed to Trump’s stated goal during his inaugural speech of being known as “a peacemaker and a unifier.”
“Supporting Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake,” Sanders said about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sanders reintroduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran, insisted that U.S. military intervention would be unwise and illegal and accused Israel of striking unprovoked. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York signed on to a similar bill from Sanders in 2020, but so far was holding off this time.
Some believed the party should stake out a clear anti-war stance.
“The leaders of the Democratic Party need to step up and loudly oppose war with Iran and demand a vote in Congress,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide, on X.
I tend to agree with @Michael Reynolds that Democrats should “not to rush to condemn this action – it may look good six months from now, but it won’t play well today.” Regardless of the legality or wisdom of the action, if the attacks indeed destroyed Iran’s nuclear sites and are met with token retaliation, the American people will likely see them as worthwhile.
We shall also see how this plays with the MAGA base. Republicans have, at least in the last 60 years or so, tended to be more enthusiastic about military action than Democrats. But Trump has radically reshaped the coalition, bringing in a considerable number of neo-isolationists. Even the Proud Boys said they would stop standing by Trump if he bombed Iran.
Ultimately, the attack will be judged by its consequences, not whether it was wise based on the available evidence.
MAGA will fall in line. So will the Proud Boys. We may hear some noise but I doubt it will amount to much. They have nowhere else to go.
@Michael Reynolds:
The MAGAs seemed thrilled. President Trump! So bold! So decisive!
The politics will depend on what happens next. If this is one and done and successful, then the politics will play out for the felonious TACO, but if it becomes protracted…
@Sleeping Dog: I anticipate the thinking – if this is a one off with no serious blowback, are we really at war? If Israel does the only follow up, have we really entered?
I think it was a bad idea to bomb them but if we were going to do it this was a good time as the Iran air defenses are down and their proxy groups are weak now. My view, based upon the actions of Iran and not their words is that they have never been interested in actually having nukes, but they did want to project breakout ability hoping to deter attack on that basis. That has failed pretty badly so at this point I would expect them to go ahead and really try to build them. I guess there is the remote possibility they have massive regime change and suddenly decide they like the US and Israel and let bygones be bygones, but it doesnt seem very likely.
Agree with others that MAGA will fall in line.
Steve
I suspect that this is a no-lose proposition for Trump. Bush invaded Iraq, found no WMDs, and the occupied country then blew up. And yet he managed to be reelected in a proto-Trumpian campaign of standing up to those gay elites who claimed that no WMDs were found.
Caveat being: that was great for Bush and the GOP in 2004 but it destroyed Red America. Fox, Iraq-centered trauma narratives, opiates, and the crash gutted those imbeciles. The same is happening now because of Trump and Israel, and it’s not only Red America. If any mainstream Democrat talking about Iran being an existential treat and how Israel needs to defend itself said what they really thought about Palestinians and the rest of the Middle East you would get a school shooter’s manifesto. They weren’t like that four years ago. Violence and the inability to say no does that to a person. The real blowback on what we’re doing in the Middle East is going to be catastrophic.
A pure Cheeto Benito move, just like 1940. Mussolini bravely declared war on France because he thought the real war was already over. Clearly, so does Trump. I wonder what his BFF Putin thinks?
@Fog:
Putin will be overjoyed.
* Iran might try to close the Strait of Hormuz, which means that oil prices will be up. If so, big win for Russia.
* This week’s NATO summit was supposed to be about Ukraine/Russia. I would be surprised if Trump even shows up.
* Without Europe condemning the US strikes, any moral high ground in the Ukraine War is lost. Plus, international law is dead. Again, good for Russia.
* Production of Iranian weapons for the Ukraine War has been moved to Russia a long time ago. So, no negative impact there.
What’s not to like?
@Fog:
He’s appalled. Shocked!
Chutzpah. Irony is well and truly dead.
@DK:
No man, they’re creating propaganda in real time. The Russian FM may be populated by evil assholes, but they’re not stupid.
Imagine a side-by-side: One US official condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and another one defending the (clearly illegal) attack on Iran.
Voice over: “All talk by the West about diplomacy, international law and self-determination is pure hypocrisy. In reality, the West’s opposition to the reclamation of traditional Russian lands is about power, not justice.”
We just handed that to them. For free.
@Modulo Myself:
Bush’s record-breaking popularity after 9/11 wasn’t just a rally-around-the-flag effect, it depended on his ability to appear to most Americans as a caring, empathetic person following the tragedy. He had over 80% approval among Democrats. Imagine Trump trying to pull that off. By the time of Bush’s reelection three years later, his approval had sunk massively so that he was just barely break-even. And that was against a Democrat who tried to keep his campaign positive, whose convention speech didn’t even mention Bush, and who had difficulty explaining his vote to authorize the invasion he now claimed was a bad idea without ever admitting the vote was a mistake.
Still, if the election had been held a year later, maybe even six months, Bush would probably have lost. While I agree 9/11 helped him win reelection, he was on borrowed time. You can call his campaign proto-Trumpian if you like, but it involved his maintaining a respectable image that generally didn’t go beyond insinuation in its attacks on Kerry, while others did the dirty work. It’s simply a different political universe than the one we’re in now.
@ James Joyner
Consequences can have a long time in playing out as we have been continually reminded throughout history. We keep failing to appreciate the human will to persist.
Trump welched on the JCPOA which was successful. He then failed to negotiate anything else. And now he’s being Netanyahoo’s bitch. This does nothing at all for the US. There is zero upside for us.
Consequences? What a joke. What are the consequences of Trump sucking Israeli dick?
@Daryl:
The image of TACO being a Chinese finger trap for Bibi and Putin is now running through my head.
@Sleeping Dog:
You’re welcome!!!
@Sleeping Dog: Taco! Trump always chickens out! He won’t actually bomb Iran! “Two weeks” means he’s already forgotten about it!
I mean this will the utmost respect to both of you, but fuck that. I’m tired of Democrats playing everything cautious with their finger to the wind, and focus grouping everything and worrying about polling before each and every action.
Leader who stand up and lead can move polls. Not always, but far more often than Democratic leaders seem to think.
If this is all there is to it, Americans will forget about it within two weeks. They won’t see the attacks as worthwhile, they simply won’t see the attacks. In two weeks, the Trump administration will have created 14 new daily outrages.
Flooding The Zone washes away both the administration’s terrible policy last week, but also any accomplishments.
And if gas prices rise, because this starts a long, protracted war, they won’t connect it with Trump strolling into a war, they’ll just be upset about gas prices.
@Fortune: America First! Trump didn’t chicken out at all on his promises of lowering prices on day one, no Medicaid cuts, ending the Ukraine war in 24 hours, or keeping the US out of Middle Eastern wars! Trump is the antiwar peace candidate! Bombing Iran isn’t war! And Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been totally obliterated! Mexico is paying for the wall and other countries are paying the tariffs!
@DK: Did you just not understand the point I was making?
@Fortune:
This isn’t over yet
@Fortune: Does anyone ever? You think your reliably juvenile drive-by trolling qualifies as making points? Ha.
@DK: Sleeping Dog understood my point and addressed it.
As a non-American, might I observe that making US international policy dependant on US domestic party politics entails serious problems for both the US and its “partners”.
This is not entirely new.
The catastrophe of the Republican repudiation of Wilson’s League in 1919, for instance.
Truman had to spend a lot of effort in getting a bipartisan policy after WW2; which some Republicans nonetheless attacked on rather irrational grounds.
“Who lost China?” and all that.
But, until recently, post-1945 there has been a basic international calculation that US comittments will be upheld.
This is changing:
A European politician recently said (something like; lost the excact ref)
“How can can we base an alliance on the outcomes of a dozen districts in Indiana?”
If the US is not a reliable and predictable partner, other countries will be compelled to make their own arrangemants accordingly.
Those arrangements may not end up being to the taste of Americans who seem to think their allies are obliged to be so by some law of nature.
@drj:
That may appeal to the “campists” in the “global South” and on the fringes of US and European politics.
But the general lesson of global politics is that the opinions of the “righteous” and a penny will buy you a pennyworth of chips.