Are The Democrats Angling To Become The Pro-War Party?

The party’s hawkish response to Trump’s Congress speech this week yearned for an unpopular bygone era.

By Blaise Malley, Responsible Statecraft

In 2024, the Democratic Party ran a campaign that explicitly embraced Washington’s tired national security orthodoxy. Presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigned alongside hawkish former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney and welcomed the endorsement of her father, Dick.

Meanwhile, the campaign refused to distance itself from the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s war on Gaza or its failed Ukraine policy. The party’s platform attacked Donald Trump, who, during his first term, brought the country to the brink of war with Iran, as being too soft on the Islamic Republic. The strategy ultimately proved ineffective.

Less than two months into Trump’s second presidency, the Democrats have apparently not learned any lessons.

There was certainly no discernible shift in party messaging to be found in Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Mich.) response to the president’s address to Congress on Tuesday. The recently-elected senator — herself a CIA veteran and an alum of the Bush and Obama administrations — delivered a speech full of nostalgia for past Republican presidents and doubled down on criticism of Trump’s supposed abandonment of American exceptionalism and global leadership.

“President Trump loves to promise ‘peace through strength.’ That’s actually a line he stole from Ronald Reagan. But let me tell you, after the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling over in his grave,” she said, referring to Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance’s explosive meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky. “As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.”

The president’s own speech was relatively light on foreign policy. Certainly there was space to criticize his continued push for aggressive unilateral actions in Greenland, Mexico, and the Panama Canal. But the Democratic respondent instead focused on his worldview, which she made a point of noting was a break with the two presidents under whom she served. “Donald Trump’s actions suggest that, in his heart, he doesn’t believe we are an exceptional nation,” said Slotkin. “He clearly doesn’t think we should lead the world.”