There was no anti-war party on the presidential ballot in 2024.
There is a version of the Democratic Party that exists only in the imagination: the peace party, the anti-war party, the party that marched against the Iraq War and howled at its neocon designers. As Donald Trump (reportedly) accepted Iran’s ceasefire terms this week, some of the most pointed attacks coming his way from Democrats are not about the thousands of civilians killed, the weeks of brutal bombardments against medical centers and universities, or the global economic damage the war has caused. They are about the war ending before the U.S. and Israel finished the job.
And this is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a pattern coming from Democratic senators, the Democratic House Foreign Affairs Committee, ranking members of the Armed Services Committee, and some of the party’s most prominent voices. The liberal opposition party wants more war.
This pattern predates the war. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris called Iran America’s “greatest adversary,” vowed that Iran would never obtain a nuclear weapon under her watch, and argued that Iran’s attacks on Israel would not have happened under her presidency. The Democratic nominee for president was running on a promise to be harder on Iran than Donald Trump.
