Antiwar Dems Should Court Republicans, Not Alienate Them

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote today on a War Powers Resolution to stop the Iran War.

The conflict, now in its 74th day, does not appear close to a political settlement, with the U.S. recently targeting Iranian ports and oil tankers with airstrikes and sending warships through Iranian waters as part of “Operation Project Freedom,” President Donald Trump’s short-lived campaign to guide vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire declared on April 8 is, by Trump’s own description this week, on “massive life support,” after the president called Iran’s latest peace proposal “a piece of garbage.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu—whose country, the U.S. State Department says, this war is being fought on behalf of—told CBS this weekend that the war is “not over.” With the Strait of Hormuz under a U.S. naval blockade and tensions rising, congressional action may be necessary to prevent the resumption of large-scale warfare, or at least to further clarify its illegality if a War Powers Resolution passes and Trump vetoes or ignores it. Passing such a bill would require the kind of trans-ideological coalition that a majority of voters in both parties would support, but it’s not clear that enough Democrats are willing to build such a coalition.

Polls show that there is a “new center,” as former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said on Tuesday, forming in the United States, made up of “Americans who no longer want to fund foreign wars, want the hard-earned dollars they work for to comfortably afford a good life, and want corrupt elites like the Epstein class held accountable.” 

As the journalist Glenn Greenwald noted Sunday, a non-partisan movement is precisely the kind of coalition that serious advocates build when they actually want to win. Greenwald pointed to the recent success of animal rights activists who last month secured the release of over 1,500 beagles from a Wisconsin research facility by recruiting allies from across the political spectrum. War powers enforcement too has only ever succeeded when efforts to reign in U.S. wars have transcended party lines. The 2019 Yemen resolution, the only one to ever pass both chambers, required Republicans Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to vote with Democrats.

Ahead of today’s tentative War Powers vote, however, Democrats spent the past several weeks seemingly doing everything to make such a coalition impossible, squandering an opportunity to build the sort of populist unity voters desire and raising questions about the seriousness of the Democrats’ supposed opposition to the war.

The War Powers Resolution in question comes from Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), one of the most pro-Israel Democrats in the House, who introduced the bill on March 4, 2026 as a softer alternative to a more forceful resolution pushed by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), which would have required a faster withdrawal but failed to pass. Democratic leaders spent three weeks sitting on Gottheimer’s bill, finally scheduling a vote only after Trump publicly threatened to eradicate Iranian civilization last month.

Yet since talks of a new vote emerged, rather than using the House floor and the press to appeal to the Republicans they need to win, Democratic leaders have instead risked alienating them with attacks. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) posted on X that “gas prices are rising” due to what he called the “Republican war of choice,” while House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and Senate Democratic leaders issued floor statements framing the war as a “MAGA Republican” project. Meeks had previously complained to Drop Site News that not enough Republican members would support a War Powers Resolution for him to bring the bill to the floor, despite reports that enough GOP votes for the bill were in fact there. When confronted with that reporting by Drop Site News journalist Lily Franks, Meeks testily told her to “go and talk to some Republicans, and come back and tell me where they are,” apparently abdicating his responsibility to whip votes and washing his hands of the matter. An email put out on Wednesday by the office of the Democratic whip promoting the vote blamed House Republicans for the war, saying they “continue to make excuses for the president and keep Congress on the sidelines.” Rep. Josh Gottheimer did not respond to a request for comment on his bill.

The absence of any apparent effort to actually pass Gottheimer’s resolution appears even more cynical in light of the growing number of Republicans available to be persuaded. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) voted yes on an earlier Iran War Powers Resolution and present on a second, while Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has said she will not support any more funding for the conflict. “I am so tired of spending money elsewhere. I am tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard-earned tax dollars. I have folks in Colorado who can’t afford to live,” she told CNN in March. 

The potential for trans-ideological unity to pass a War Powers Resolution is so great that the most pro-Israel hawks in Congress have begun to worry. Moments after a failed war powers vote in April, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) said that there could be “a different vote count after 60 days,” referring to the 60-day deadline under the War Powers Resolution, after which the president is legally required to withdraw forces from any unauthorized conflict, a deadline which has already expired.

There are reasons to question whether the Democratic leadership’s opposition to the Iran War is sincere. After Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last June rebuked Trump for possibly mulling concessions to Iran and mocked him as “TACO Trump”—using the acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out”— a coalition of more than two dozen antiwar organizations sent a letter urging him to adjust his rhetoric and give Trump room to pursue diplomacy.

In a conversation relayed to both The American Conservative and Drop Site News, a top foreign policy aide to Schumer told an antiwar organizer that, despite broad opposition to the war among Democratic Party voters, a substantial number of Senate Democrats believed Iran ultimately needed to be dealt with militarily— but saw a Middle East war as a political catastrophe, and for that reason preferred Trump to be the one waging it instead. The war, the aide indicated, is seen as a win-win for many Democrats heading into the midterms.

The broader refusal of Democratic leaders to pursue the sort of trans-ideological coalition necessary to accomplish their stated policy goals found its clearest expression over the weekend, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) appeared at the University of Chicago for an event with David Axelrod. Asked whether she would be open to working with Republicans on shared goals, specifically whether she would partner with Greene against the Iran war and U.S. financing of Israel, AOC said no. Greene, she claimed, is “a proven bigot and an antisemite.”

The statements reflect a deeply flawed calculus that places ideological purity over political results, one that dominates liberal discourse but is notably entirely absent among the uniparty, bipartisan establishment coalition that votes as a bloc—regardless of personal differences—to ensure American wars continue. Indeed, AOC has put aside her own political differences with Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to join the hawkish uniparty bloc, for example by voting for sanctions on China.

The Republicans who could be persuaded to vote to end this war and form a “new center” exist, and Democrats should try to find them. That they have chosen not to may indicate what that party’s leadership actually wants.