There’s a clear hunger among the Democratic base for a dramatic change in foreign policy. Four in five Democratic voters disapprove of Israel, while more than 90 percent oppose the Iran war. So it’s no surprise that candidates who firmly denounce war and refuse money from AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization, are attracting support partly on that basis. Graham Platner, an antiwar and anti-genocide oyster farmer, is the presumptive Democratic nominee in Maine’s Senate race. In Michigan’s Democratic primary for Senate, Abdul Al-Sayed, a staunch Israel critic, is running neck and neck with Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel congresswoman, and state Senator Mallory McMorrow, who eventually came around to rejecting AIPAC and accusing Israel of genocide.
But the party leadership has not been meeting the moment. In late February, as Trump made daily threats to bomb Iran, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee reportedly tried to delay a vote on a war powers resolution. “The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms,” reported Capital & Empire’s Aída Chávez, who cites sources saying that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was not whipping votes for the resolution. Four days after that article, Trump launched his war.
Schumer and Jeffries have since criticized it, of course, and backed efforts to pass a war powers resolution. They might call this “leading from behind,” but it looks more like belatedly jumping on the bandwagon. After all, both of them were supportive of Trump’s bombing of Iran last summer. Several weeks prior, Schumer even taunted Trump for not bombing Iran hastily enough.