Democrat for Peace: What’s That?

Of all the various groupings of Democrats raising campaign “contributions” under various banners, the only one that says anything useful about foreign policy is the Justice Democrats, whose platform says they want to close foreign bases, cut military spending, and end wars. It’s very short and vague, but it’s something.

The Justice Democrats’ website endorses 54 candidates and links to their websites. One is a candidate for governor, so let’s call it 53 candidates for Congress. They all supposedly support the platform of the Justice Democrats.

I went to their websites. They almost all have a section on their website called either Issues or Priorities. They almost all expound on how much they care about military veterans. So, they are aware that the military exists. Some even turn their “issue” into their caring about active duty members of the military or just “the military” thereby fully accepting the propaganda of troopism. Some of them say words along the lines of “If we’re going to send our brave troops to war then we should take care of them. . . .” But who’s we? The same candidates for Congress have not one word on whether or not they would vote to send anyone to war or bring anyone home.

Of the 53 candidates for Congress 36 of them have no position on war or peace or foreign policy or international law or treaties or cooperation or hostility or military spending. The over 60% of the budget they want to oversee that goes to militarism is just absent from their websites, some of which are very in-depth on a great variety of domestic issues. That includes incumbent Representative Ro Khanna who actually has taken some steps for peace while in office. So there is a snowball’s chance that someone else among those 36 might do something. But I recommend trying to get them on record saying they will.

Of the 17 who acknowledge that the world exists, three have statements that are entirely pro-militarism or advancing greater military spending and hawkishness. One has statements so vague that there is literally no way to tell whether they prefer war or peace. Five others have such extremely weak statements against war as to be hard to take seriously. These include incumbent Congressman Raul Grijalva, whose actions bear out that skepticism.

But there are 8 on the list who actually make serious statements for peace. They range from a single sentence to a paragraph or two. They are plenty vague. None list wars they would end. Few list bases they would close. One copies the language of the Justice Democrats platform. But they all say things that virtually nobody on Capitol Hill right now would say. Or so I thought until I noticed that one of them is an incumbent: Pramila Jayapal. What’s she doing for peace?

The others are:

Linsey Fagan
Dorothy Gasque
Alison Hartson
Kaniela Ing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Sarah Smith
Amy Vilela

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