A few weeks ago, I noted that we had about a dozen Iraq war veterans running for congress. That number is now up to 50. All but one of those is running as a Democrat. The Democrats are generally quite explicitly against the Iraq war. This is the largest number of war vets to run for election to congress since the end of WWII. I can’t imagine that the bulk of these guys are bad candidates, but they are not getting the support or encouragement of the Democratic money machine at all. Fifty some recent vets running for congress together could be an amazing PR opportunity. They’d give the Democrats the opportunity to steadfastly oppose the war and have candidates who already have instant credibility with a lot of voters, many of whom may been featured in positive local media profiles as they shipped out or had their tours of duty extended. In certain Republican districts, they may actually make the Democrats competitive for the first time in ages. Better yet, these candidates would appear to fit in well with the presumed Democratic strategy on Iraq for the fall: seek to redeploy our troops elsewhere in the middle east and shift the burden of in country operations to the Iraqi army. But, no. Why wait for the Republicans to shoot you in the knee when you’ve already got a loaded gun at home.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 at 11:07 am and is filed under electoral politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.