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The Democratic Party is working hard to give MAGA the mid-terms despite everything.
Apparently, the resolution failed by two votes. However, my understanding is that this would have been largely symbolic, as a bill would require both the House and the Senate to vote in its favor, and actually require 2/3 majorities to override the presidential veto which can be taken as granted.
Strategically speaking, preventing Trump from continuing his war seems like a classic case of interrupting your opponent while he is making a mistake. It seems clear that MAGA is searching for an off-ramp whose taking they can sell as a win. But the next best thing to a win is a scapegoat. If Congress stops Trump from bombing Iran, Trump will surely claim that his strategy was going great and Iran was just about to surrender unconditionally when he was stabbed in the back by the radical leftists. Half the country will end up believing that sure, Trump's war raised the gas prices for a while but it was the Democrats who made sure it was all for nothing.
From the perspective of the Democrats, MAGA should obviously be a much larger threat to the US than even a nuclear armed Iran. Who knows how many lives a pandemic managed by RFK Jr would claim, or what blunders Trump might commit while conducting (or failing to conduct) a war over vital interests of the US through social media? By contrast, the damage Iran is likely to do seems limited, even if they take tolls for passage that would not a much of a threat to the US, plenty of countries with questionable regimes have nukes.
Obviously the Democrats would not want Trump to earn a triumph for his war, but I doubt that there is much chance of that. The most powerful person in Iran had his father and his wife killed by US strikes and also adheres to the same religion as Hamas does. I seriously doubt that he will be willing to make large concessions to the US.
Alternative idea, forcing this vote makes Republican representatives have to tie themselves to the war at a time where gas prices are over 4 dollars, there's an upcoming 8% surcharge on shipping, and airlines are increasing their prices with some even slowly shutting down routes. One of the major reasons why Trump won is because of the COVID era inflation crisis. You could see tons of those "Trump low prices, Kamala high prices" signs around and voters consistently put economics as one of their biggest concerns. Now Republican representatives are having to say "yes, this war is worth fucking up your wallets". There's not much room for them to win even if things resolve tomorrow cause foreign policy is not a major focus of most voters and a lot to lose.
The funny thing is that the economy was generally doing well pre-war. Dow was over 50k as someone pointed out, employment was good. Tariffs were paid for by Americans but weren't as big a drag as expected either, although core goods inflation would have been negative without them? He really could have done nothing, toned down ICE's retardation, and coasted.
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The dominant strategy for almost any politician, or really any social movement, is to criticize a lot but do nothing so as to avoid accountability. Even if the US gets its strategic goals, which is not a given, all the average American feels is the immediate economic disruption so it'll feel like a loss. Especially if that hypothetical American consumes news hostile to Trump. Actually stopping or hindering Trump gives the republicans a dolchstosslegende they can use to marginally gain back some voters. In terms of pure politics, and even if your goal is maximum blue tribe policies, not interfering with the Iran war is dominant strategy for now.
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I'm getting tired of this whole concept. I understand that a lot of people think the Trump administration, and apparently the US military at large, are all fools who can't think more than a few days ahead. But Trump had an offramp if that's all he wanted, it was called accepting Iran's demands during the negotiations. Instead, the US held firm to their nuclear disarmament requirements. This is a clear signal to me that the administration does in fact have goals in this conflict beyond improving their poll numbers. In other words, it's pretty clear to me that MAGA is not searching for an off-ramp, and I would love hear what evidence you have for holding the opposite position.
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