Impotence

by digby

According to Ari Berman writing here in The Nation the anti-war Democrats in Iowa are unhappy, and for good reason, as the coverage of the “surge” seems to be taking the war off the agenda and the candidates are giving unsatisfactory answers about their plans to end the war.

It’s not that antiwar sentiment has disappeared. Iowa is less hawkish and more internationalist than most swing states. There are vigils, yard signs, meetings, sit-ins. Iraq comes up in some form at every town-hall stop. Every Democrat mentions the need to get out of Iraq in his or her stump speech. In 2006 Iowans elected two new Democratic Congressmen and flipped both the state House and Senate blue, the only state besides New Hampshire with such a Democratic tidal wave. And yet the war goes on.

Perhaps that’s why, after four and a half years of occupation and no end in sight, Iowa, like the rest of the country, is suffering from war fatigue. “They marched, wrote letters, elected a Democratic Congress and now Congress is funding the war–and Hillary is giving the President the authority to go into Iran!” says Nicholas Johnson, a University of Iowa law professor and former FCC commissioner who leans toward Richardson. “What’s a voter to do?”

There’s always a “pox on both their houses” potential third party strain running through the American electorate, but I don’t think I’ve seen one in my lifetime on the left that’s so attached to a single issue as this one. Not that the article indicates any of those Iowa anti-war activists are thinking of voting third party or staying home, but it’s that kind of frustration that lends itself to such things. (There isn’t anyone running they could pour their disaffection into anyway.) I don’t know exactly what will happen — nothing, perhaps — but I can’t help but think this feeling of impotence might be a dangerous thing for Democratic candidates to ignore.

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