Schumer May Save the Democratic PartyBy PATRICK H. CADDELL and DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN
August 23, 2015
The Iran deal has potential, both because of public opinion and the way the administration is positioning itself, to hurt Democrats in much the same way that the Iranian hostage crisis did in 1980 and 1981. Should New York Senator Chuck Schumer succeed in killing the deal, he will be saving the Democrats from what appears to be a grave political mistake.
President Obama has branded opponents of the deal as either ideological extremists or ignorant. In his speech at American University, he compared the agreement’s opponents with Iranian extremists chanting “death to America.” He pointed out that most of those opposed to the Iran deal supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, thus implying that they were warmongers—conveniently overlooking that his vice president and both of his secretaries of state voted for the war in Iraq.
Listening to the president you would never know that a plurality of Americans, including key parts of the Democratic party’s coalition, are opposed to the nuclear agreement. The Secure America Now (SAN) poll found 45 percent of Americans opposed the deal in July—up eight points from June—and that figure rises to 65 percent after respondents hear more details about the agreement. A more recent Fox poll shows that initial opposition has grown to 58 percent.
In both polls, barely 50 percent of Democrats support the agreement and well over one-third oppose. A critical group of Democratic voters—African Americans—is split on the issue, while Hispanics are overwhelmingly opposed. Making matters worse, a solid majority of women and younger voters oppose the agreement too.
Rubbing salt in these public opinion wounds, President Obama’s popularity is upside down with 52 percent of Americans rating him unfavorably. By contrast, the public views Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposes the nuclear deal, as favorable by a two-to-one margin.
Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and other members of the administration have been berating the nuclear deal’s opponents. Kerry has been almost disdainful to members of Congress who have the temerity to suggest that the deal should be voted down and renegotiated. He claims that it’s too late to revise the agreement—the UN has already approved the deal, he says, the P5+1 partners won’t be willing to reopen negotiations and the Iranians have no interest in making revisions. Kerry seems to have become a defender of Iran’s rights rather than an advocate of the United States’ best interests.
Obama once said that a bad deal was worse than no deal. Now he and Secretary Kerry want us to believe that the choice is between a bad deal or war. At a news conference on July 15, the president made this false choice explicit: “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war. Those are—those are the options.”
According to an op-ed by former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, “the administration has used these same arguments before to try to stop Congress from imposing economic sanctions on Iran...but...when the sanctions were adopted, the doomsday forecasts were proven wrong.” Apocalyptic warnings are always the starting position of the Obama administration, and time after time they have been disproved.
For all his rhetoric, though, Obama has a problem: The SAN poll reveals that 62 percent believe that the deal doesn’t make America safer and more secure. Over 60 percent feel that the deal doesn’t prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—the stated goal of the negotiations. And over 80 percent of respondents don’t believe that Iran should be given up to $100 billion in economic sanctions relief without Congressional approval, including 74 percent of Democrats.
Indeed, the administration’s problems are certain to become even more complicated by the revelation that the Iranians will be submitting their own data to the UN monitoring agency and doing their own inspections. This flies in the face of public opinion: the SAN poll finds that more than 60 percent believe the agreement should be voted down if the inspections are completed by an independent agency and the details of any and all side deals are made public to Congress.
Not only is there growing skepticism from the public, but Obama’s worst political nightmare has been realized: two prominent Democratic senators have decided to oppose the Iran agreement on principle—Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez.
It had been widely assumed that Obama would hold enough Democrats in Congress to ensure that, if Congress rejects the Iran deal, the president’s veto will prevail, and the deal will go forward. But that was before Senator Schumer announced his opposition to the current deal, urging that a better agreement be negotiated.
Schumer, who has until now been a faithful Obama supporter, has been the target of attacks that rival what the Obama administration hurls at Republicans. Administration supporters have warned that Schumer may be endangering his future leadership position, while rabid left-wing groups like Moveon.org allege that he is “voting for war.” Clearly, the administration and its allies believe that there is no such thing as legitimate opposition to the Iran agreement.
Schumer’s decision and his thoughtful and articulate statement explaining it reflect a man putting conscience before politics. Had Schumer—who is normally known as a hyper-partisan actor—been acting politically, he would have delayed his announcement as long as possible.
For all the abuse he’s taking, Schumer may actually be protecting the Democratic Party from the real political danger inherent in Obama’s actions. The contempt that the president and John Kerry showed by taking this agreement to the UN before submitting it to Congress and the American people was reckless. They are not only thumbing their noses at the American people and Congress, but they are showing contempt for the primacy of our system of checks and balances and they could be setting up the Democratic party for years of attacks of “you caused this!” every time Iran behaves in a threatening manner.
Should Obama veto a bill blocking the Iran deal and defy the will of Congress, he would once again find himself on the wrong side of public opinion: 61 percent of voters would want a veto overridden. If a veto is sustained solely by Democrats two-thirds of respondents, including a plurality of Democrats say they would blame the Democratic party if Iran got a nuclear weapon or used the money from sanction relief to support terrorist attacks on Israel.
By contrast, Schumer’s principled stand enjoys broad support: In another part of the SAN poll, Democratic voters were asked what their senators and representatives should do when faced with difficult choices—support the president or follow their conscience if they oppose him—35 percent said that they should “trust the President and his negotiators and support their party’s leader,” while 59 percent wanted their representatives and senators to set aside party loyalties and follow their conscience on the issue at hand.
As President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”
Congress is in recess, but the coming weeks will tell whether Democrats have the courage to stand up for what they believe and what the American people want, or whether they will be cowered by their president and risk damaging the party for years to come.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/chuck-schumer-iran-deal-121605.html#ixzz3jqmybnvH
