TRUMP, THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS, CONGRESS, AND THE WAR. In 2002, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush went through a long and elaborate process to secure the approval of Congress for going to war. On Oct. 10, 2002, the House passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force by a vote of 296 to 133; the total in favor of going to war included 81 Democrats. The next day, Oct. 11, the Senate voted to authorize the war by a vote of 77 to 23. Support for the authorization included 29 Democrats.
When the war went badly — Bush later wrote that “The reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false” — Bush was for a while protected from congressional backlash because he had taken the time to enlist lawmakers’ support for going to war in the first place.
Later, when the war went very, very badly, the authorizing votes no longer offered Bush any political protection. (They also bedeviled prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton for years.) But it was not until 2005 that Congress passed a measure that even asked the Bush administration to finish up the war, and it was not until 2007 that both the House and Senate passed a war funding bill that included a mandatory timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Bush vetoed it, and later got war funding without the withdrawal provisions.
Meanwhile, public support for the war plunged. According to Gallup, 72% of Americans supported the war when it began in March 2003. By October of that year, support was down to 54%. By November 2004, it stood at 48%. By June 2005, it was 39%, and by January 2007, it was 36%.
You know where this is going. But before comparing some of the politics of the Iraq war with the current war in Iran, it’s important to point out some enormous differences. Bush sent about 150,000 U.S. troops to Iraq, and another 100,000 were in the region during the war. A total of 4,492 U.S. service members died in the war, and 32,292 were wounded.
The numbers in Iran are thankfully nothing like that. President Donald Trump has not sent U.S. ground troops to Iraq, choosing to conduct the war by air power. Although there is some controversy about the exact figures, 19 U.S. service members have died, while more than 800 have been wounded.
Still, because of the way Trump chose to begin the war, the political and public opposition have risen much more quickly than in the case of Iraq. Trump did almost nothing to clearly explain to the American public why the war was necessary and what its goals would be, instead announcing the beginning of hostilities in an overnight video. Now, nearly seven months into the war, about 33% of Americans support the war, while about 59% oppose it. (The numbers come from polling aggregator Nate Silver.) On the related question of Trump’s handling of the war, the RealClearPolitics average of polls shows 32.6% approve while 62.5% disapprove.
Trump also did not seek to enlist the support of Congress before starting the war. As a consequence, both the House and Senate have already passed resolutions opposing the war. They’re just resolutions, and they don’t force Trump to do anything, but they do show majorities in both chambers willing to go on the record opposing the war.
The House passed an anti-war resolution in June, another one in July, and one last week. No House Democrats voted in favor of the war; between four and seven Republicans voted with Democrats against the war.
The Senate passed an anti-war resolution in June. Four Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the war; one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), joined Republicans in supporting the war.
Of course, elections are coming up in less than six weeks. Early voting is already underway in some states. It’s unclear how much of a factor the war will be. We know that voters of all stripes cite the cost of living and other economic issues as their most important issue by far. But we also know that Democrats are intensely against the war, and a majority of independents oppose it, too.
Plus, we know that while many Republicans support the war, they are, like Democrats and independents, very unhappy with the higher prices of gas, diesel, and shipping, as well as related products, like fertilizer, that the war has brought.
Democrats are furiously framing higher prices as the result of Trump’s war. “We’re getting hit at the gas pump to go buy our groceries and then we’re getting hit at the grocery store for the groceries that got there — all because of an insane war that we had no business fighting in the first place,” Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed said at a gas station news conference in Detroit this week.
The administration knows full well what a mess it is in. On Fox News’s Special Report Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted that “core inflation,” that is, the inflation rate not counting the volatile factors of food and energy, is down to what the Federal Reserve deems an acceptable level. “Once we’re on the other side of this energy supply shock,” Bessent said, “I actually believe, along with [President Trump], that oil prices will be much lower, because we’ve seen a tremendous amount of supply come on, just in this year.”
Trump has said several times that higher gas costs are “a very inexpensive price to pay” for achieving the war’s goal of keeping Iran from building a nuclear weapon. At the same time, the president did not prepare the nation for what might come, nor did he work to persuade majorities in Congress to sign on the war, which would have made it more difficult for lawmakers to abandon him when things went wrong. Now, an election, with the voters’ verdict, is coming soon.