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All the numbers I've seen indicate that support for the war climbed slightly after it started compared to pre-war polling around questions like "Should the US launch strikes against Iran?" or "Should the US invade Iran?" but we can't get an apples-to-apples comparison because nobody polled the question "Should we launch a surprise decapitation strike against Iran in cooperation with Israel?" because that policy was never put on the table as something we might do. It was done completely as a choice by the executive branch, without any attempt to inform or sell the war or what it meant to the American public. Clearly the element of surprise had advantages in terms of the military's ability to launch decapitation strikes against Iranian leadership, but it also has costs.
So I'm not speaking about some hypothetical ideal here, just what Democrats were like in 2008. Barack Hussein Obama publicly opposed gay marriage, saying publicly that while he supported civil unions he thought that marriage was between a man and a woman because then "God is in the mix." Dan Savage told his readers at the time, vote for Obama, because he's lying about his support for the gays, and even if he isn't he's better than the alternative. Democrat freaks used to comfortable with accepting that their leaders would sometimes need to swerve in public, but trust them to take care of them when they came into power. Trump's super power is his supporter's belief that he's lying about all the things they don't like.
Coincidentally, the latest Pew Polls show Favorable/Unfavorable for Israel (the state) at 37% favorable and 60% unfavorable. Slightly higher for "the Israeli people" and much lower for "the Israeli Government." So Israel is slightly less popular than "transing kids." I would assume, though it's hard to find numbers on this as it's not exactly ethical polling practice, that transgender people are more popular than "transing kids."
I agree that it's tough to get an exact 1:1 between policies across different fields, and for the most part the median voter is foolish and incapable of thinking about tradeoffs so you're going to get overlapping impossible policies if you just go off public polling.
I think a more appropriate apples-to-apples question would be something along the lines of "Are you categorically opposed to war against Iran?" Certainly there are a lot of Americans who are categorically opposed to transing of children under any circumstances.
Similarly, just asking people if they have an unfavorable opinion about Israel is not apples-to-apples either. A more appropriate question would be something along the lines of: "Do you believe Israel has a right to exist"?
Anyway, the proof is in the pudding. It would be easy enough for supporters of Democratic candidates to start using support of Israel as an issue against Republicans. Kamala Harris could have made attack ads against Trump on the Israel issue just as he attacked her on the trans issue. He did move the US embassy to Jerusalem in his first term, after all.
She really couldn't do that. Because ((assuming Trump had a sufficiently coherent view of his own foreign policy beliefs that he more-or-less knew that he'd be bombing Iran within a year or so of returning to office)) Trump simply lied about that intention, saying repeatedly that there would be no new wars, that Kamala in fact was the one that would start a war with Iran and get us into World War Three.
The alternative thesis, that Trump is so inconsistent in his foreign policy beliefs that he sort of stumbled into the war with Iran so he wasn't lying about his intention he was simply unable to carry it out, is too insulting to Trump to be taken seriously outside of MSNBC, and cashes out to the same thing as lying anyway.
There exists no subset of Republican voters that will be so offended by Trump refusing to commit to bombing Iran or supporting Israel during the election that it would harm his chances, while there is a subset of Democratic voters that will be so offended by a heel-face turn against trans rights that it would harm a Democrat's chances. That's the difference.
A stronger argument might be this poll showing just 42% support and 56% opposition to using US troops to defend Israel from an Iranian attack. That gets pretty close to categorical opposition.
Polling only ever gives you broad stroke ideas, specificity is impossible. I don't think we need to ask the categorical question here because this particular war with Iran is pretty general in its execution: Iran wasn't really doing anything in particular to trigger this war that Iran hasn't been doing for twenty years, Netanyahu and Trump just happened to pick this particular time to do it. None of the justifications offered publicly for this war are any more or less persuasive today or in March than they were in 2024, 2018 or 2012. Probably moderately less persuasive to the public than they would have been in 2006.
Umm, I said "Israel." Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem. He also recognized Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights. Certainly that's at least as pro-Israel as Kamala Harris' interview remarks were pro-trans.
Based on the numbers you quoted*, and assuming it's an apples-to-apples comparison, Democrats should be aggressively attacking Trump (and other Republicans who voted in favor of aid) on the Israel issue. But they don't do it. Because, even assuming your poll numbers are accurate, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
*"37% favorable and 60% unfavorable. Slightly higher for "the Israeli people" and much lower for 'the Israeli Government.' So Israel is slightly less popular than 'transing kids.'"
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That seems off, because there are certain provocations (see 9-11 and Afghanistan) which would make all patriotic Americans support a war against Iran. The relevant comparison is "Are you categorically opposed to wars against far-off countries which are no more obnoxious than early-2020s Iran?" A lot of Americans are categorically opposed to what they consider wars of choice, not all of them leftie pacifists.
That's kind of the point. By contrast, there are a lot of people who would oppose "transitioning" of minors no matter what.
Perhaps, I would need to think about that one. But either way, a poll showing that X percent of Americans believe the war is being mishandled is very different (in my opinion) from a poll showing that X percent of Americans are against "transitioning" of minors.
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