[Peace] Rolling Stone: Bernie leading in donations from active duty troops

[Robert Naiman]

Gosh, I never saw this coming. Anybody have a plausible causation story? I
can't think of anything.

It seems that the author of this piece has a causation story. Maybe he's on
to something. Who knows?

[...]

The simplest explanation for the flow of military donations to Sanders
would be his unstinting opposition to disastrous foreign wars that have
killed nearly 7,000 troops and left tens of thousands more maimed, burned,
or psychologically scarred — to speak only of the domestic costs.
Two-thirds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans now say that the wars were not
worth fighting, according to the Pew Research Center
<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/10/majorities-of-u-s-veterans-public-say-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-were-not-worth-fighting/>.
Yet there are still thousands of soldiers and marines deployed to both
countries. American casualties in Afghanistan are at their highest level in
five years
<https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/12/30/new-in-2020-army-combat-casualties-trend-upwards-into-2020/>.
The U.S.-backed government is now killing more civilians than the Taliban
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/world/asia/afghanistan-civilian-casualties-united-nations.html>
.

Trump’s initial appeal to the troops was likely down to the isolationist
platform he ran on in 2016, but over the past three years, the president
has shown that he lacks the leadership ability to overcome the inertia of
the bipartisan war machine. Trump has only succeeded in reducing the
American headcount in northern Syria — the one place where the U.S.
military was actually achieving its stated mission, the defeat of the
Islamic State. The rank betrayal
<https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-syria-kurds-turkey-isis-898524/>
of
our Kurdish allies was as poorly timed as it was faithless, and must have
sent waves of disgruntlement through the Army and Marine Corps. By now,
military voters have probably figured out that Trump’s anti-war streak is
fickle and phony. He has not ended the war in Afghanistan. He has made
things worse in Iraq, stirring up the militias and provoking conflict with
Iran. Nobody in the military wants war with that country; it would be a
bloodbath. After dishonoring the United States in Syria, Trump sent more
troops to protect his cronies in Saudi Arabia. He’s in some kind of weird
cahoots with the ruler of Turkey, no friend of the USA. He continues to
back Mohammed bin Salman’s shameful war in Yemen, over the objections of
Congress.

Sanders has consistently excoriated Trump for all of this — and tried to
thwart him in the Senate, especially on Yemen. When other Democratic
candidates criticize Trump’s violent overseas directives, they tend to do
so in a way that is hedged or equivocal. After Trump had Iranian Gen.
Qassem Soleimani killed — a reckless international crime that proximately
caused the downing of a civilian airliner — several Democratic contenders
chided the president for his poor timing and failing to consult with
Congress, but they mostly talked about
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNHrIa3K2Ik> what an evil guy Suleimani
was and how much American blood he allegedly had on his hands. Sanders, by
contrast, was unequivocal in describing the drone strike as an
assassination — an illegal practice under United States and international
law. “I was right about Vietnam,” he tweeted on January 3rd. “I was right
about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran. I
apologize to no one.”
[...]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-leads-trump-all-2020-candidates-in-donations-from-active-duty-troops-946188/
Bernie Sanders Leads Trump, All 2020 Candidates in Donations From
Active-Duty Troops

The Vermont senator outpaces Trump in military fundraising and has doubled
his nearest Democratic rival

By SETH HARP  <https://www.rollingstone.com/author/seth-harp/>


No other 2020 candidate for president, including Donald Trump
<https://www.rollingstone.com/t/donald-trump/>, can come close to
matching Bernie
Sanders <https://www.rollingstone.com/t/bernie-sanders/>’ level of support
among members of the U.S. military, to go by the most recent campaign
finance data from the Federal Election Commission.

Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have donated a total of $185,625 to
Sen. Sanders’ 2020 campaign. By comparison, they have given $113,012 to
Trump, $80,250 to Pete Buttigieg, $64,604 to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and a
relatively paltry $33,045 to former Vice President Joe Biden, according to
Doug Weber, a senior researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics.

For every candidate in the 2020 race, the CRP maintains a list of the 20
companies or institutions whose employees have given the most money to his
or her campaign. Remarkably, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air
Force, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs
all separately appear on Sanders’ list
<https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/contributors?id=N00000528>,
comprising 5 of his top 20. The largest service branch, the U.S. Army,
comes in at number 11, with $65,395 in total donations. That’s just behind
Walmart, whose employees gave $69,523.

Sanders’ support from employees of Walmart
<https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-employees-donations-to-bernie-sanders-campaign-2019-7>
, Amazon
<https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-employees-among-most-common-donors-bernie-sanders-campaign-1480133>
, Microsoft,
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/04/20/tech-company-workers-are-among-bernie-sanderss-biggest-fans/>
and
the U.S. Postal Service
<https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/american-postal-workers-union-bernie-sanders-215784>
has
been reported, but the strength of his appeal to the armed forces has gone
largely unnoticed.

If Sanders wins the nomination and his financial support from service
members translates into votes, it would represent a significant shift from
2016, when active-duty personnel were twice as likely to choose Trump over
Hillary Clinton. In 2016, the Military Times sent a confidential survey to
its 59,000 subscribers in the armed forces. The respondents preferred Trump
to Hillary Clinton by a “huge margin
<https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2016/05/09/military-times-survey-troops-prefer-trump-to-clinton-by-a-huge-margin/>,”
and were nearly three times more likely to identify as Republican than
Democrat.

But Trump’s support appears to have waned, leaving an opening for a
Democrat this time around. In October 2018, a follow-up poll
<https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/10/15/support-for-trump-is-fading-among-active-duty-troops-new-poll-shows/>
found
that Trump’s popularity among active-duty personnel had faded noticeably,
with half of respondents saying they were “unhappy” with the president. The
FEC data suggest that Trump’s standing has deteriorated even further in the
past two years, given that the troops are now donating much more to the
peacenik senator from Vermont.

Though only a proxy measure, it could be a significant bellwether. The
military employs 1.4 million people, which is not an immense bloc of voters
in a nation of 330 million, but they represent a vast cross-section of
America, from Alaska to Hawaii to Maine. The military is hugely diverse and
officially apolitical. The officer corps leans conservative, but enlisted
personnel are four or five times more numerous and harder to classify
<https://www.cfr.org/article/demographics-us-military>. Most enlisted
recruits come from Sunbelt states like Florida and South Carolina, or
deindustrialized Midwestern states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, to name a
few feeder states that are important to the election. That not one or two
but all three major branches of the armed forces, plus the Pentagon and
V.A., all appear on Sanders’ top-20 list is probative, to say the least, of
his ability to convert former Trump supporters in geographic regions that
Democratic Party elites are fixated on turning blue in 2020.

The same can’t be said for the other Democratic contenders. Most of the
people who have donated to former Vice President Biden’s campaign work at a
law firm or a bank
<https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00001669>.
Ten of the 20 employers on Sen. Warren’s list are elite universities
<https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/contributors?id=N00033492>.
Buttigieg, a former naval intelligence officer, has received more from
State Department employees than any other contender, and is the preferred
candidate of those employed by agencies classified only as “U.S. Government
<https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/contributors?id=N00044183>
.”

The simplest explanation for the flow of military donations to Sanders
would be his unstinting opposition to disastrous foreign wars that have
killed nearly 7,000 troops and left tens of thousands more maimed, burned,
or psychologically scarred — to speak only of the domestic costs.
Two-thirds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans now say that the wars were not
worth fighting, according to the Pew Research Center
<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/10/majorities-of-u-s-veterans-public-say-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-were-not-worth-fighting/>.
Yet there are still thousands of soldiers and marines deployed to both
countries. American casualties in Afghanistan are at their highest level in
five years
<https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/12/30/new-in-2020-army-combat-casualties-trend-upwards-into-2020/>.
The U.S.-backed government is now killing more civilians than the Taliban
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/world/asia/afghanistan-civilian-casualties-united-nations.html>
.

Trump’s initial appeal to the troops was likely down to the isolationist
platform he ran on in 2016, but over the past three years, the president
has shown that he lacks the leadership ability to overcome the inertia of
the bipartisan war machine. Trump has only succeeded in reducing the
American headcount in northern Syria — the one place where the U.S.
military was actually achieving its stated mission, the defeat of the
Islamic State. The rank betrayal
<https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-syria-kurds-turkey-isis-898524/>
of
our Kurdish allies was as poorly timed as it was faithless, and must have
sent waves of disgruntlement through the Army and Marine Corps. By now,
military voters have probably figured out that Trump’s anti-war streak is
fickle and phony. He has not ended the war in Afghanistan. He has made
things worse in Iraq, stirring up the militias and provoking conflict with
Iran. Nobody in the military wants war with that country; it would be a
bloodbath. After dishonoring the United States in Syria, Trump sent more
troops to protect his cronies in Saudi Arabia. He’s in some kind of weird
cahoots with the ruler of Turkey, no friend of the USA. He continues to
back Mohammed bin Salman’s shameful war in Yemen, over the objections of
Congress.

Sanders has consistently excoriated Trump for all of this — and tried to
thwart him in the Senate, especially on Yemen. When other Democratic
candidates criticize Trump’s violent overseas directives, they tend to do
so in a way that is hedged or equivocal. After Trump had Iranian Gen.
Qassem Soleimani killed — a reckless international crime that proximately
caused the downing of a civilian airliner — several Democratic contenders
chided the president for his poor timing and failing to consult with
Congress, but they mostly talked about
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNHrIa3K2Ik> what an evil guy Suleimani
was and how much American blood he allegedly had on his hands. Sanders, by
contrast, was unequivocal in describing the drone strike as an
assassination — an illegal practice under United States and international
law. “I was right about Vietnam,” he tweeted on January 3rd. “I was right
about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran. I
apologize to no one.”

Another way to explain Sanders’s popularity is that service members who
already receive the sort of health and educational benefits that he wants
to make universal are less repelled by the democratic-socialism label than
other Republican-leaning voters. They understand that being able to go to
the doctor or attend college for free is not quite the same thing as living
under a dictatorship of the proletariat. Personally, I don’t know what I
would do without the V.A. The facility that I go to in Texas is convenient
and free, and the recently constructed building is beautiful. Making the
same benefits available to all Americans would have been a much better use
of the generational fortune we squandered in Iraq. That attitude is not
uncommon among the rank-and-file.

It’s possible that once the general election begins, more troops will open
their wallets for Trump, but Sanders’ current advantage must be an ominous
sign for the president’s campaign advisers. Trump’s greatest strength,
aside from the purity of his narcissism, is his ability to smell weakness.
As yet, he doesn’t seem to have an edge on “Crazy Bernie
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/miriamelder/donald-trump-bernie-sanders-2020>,”
the inadvertently flattering nickname Trump gave to a rival he clearly sees
as a rising threat
<https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/trump-sanders-2020-election/>. The
Trump campaign has only recently begun to field-test anti-Sanders talking
points, and so far they mostly have to do with national security. “Bernie
Sanders can’t be trusted to defend American lives,” said a recent statement
distributed by the Trump campaign. The president hit the same note at a
Ohio rally in early January, telling his fans that Sanders was weak on
terrorism, weak on Iran, dangerously naive, and so on.

It’s a stale and uninspired line of attack, not sharp or transgressive in
the way that Trump has gone after rivals in the past. If the number of
uniformed personnel currently giving money to Sanders is any indication,
simply calling him soft on terrorism or Iran will fall flat, in the
military and at large. That’s played-out neoconservative talk, the very
thing that Trump once rebelled against.

The CRP will have the latest FEC data the first of February, and the Trump
team ought to be worried. It’s not only his claim to being the “trade guy
<https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/trump-sanders-2020-election/>” that
Trump stands to lose should Sanders become the nominee — it’s his claim to
being the real anti-war candidate in the race.
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