Democrats Need to Learn to Talk to Veterans Again
The gulf between service members and Democrats isn’t good for the military, the party, or the country.
IF YOU SPEND AS MUCH TIME AS I DO around current and former members of the military, you can’t avoid knowing a lot of MAGAs. That’s just the way it is. But most service members and veterans aren’t rabid Trump supporters. Most of them are basically like anyone else—they only pay attention to politics when they have to.
There is one exception, of course: Issues concerning the military and veterans matter a lot more to them than to the average American. That’s why I’m one of the relatively few vets I know who pulled the lever for Kamala Harris last year—and I wasn’t thrilled about it. I pretty much despised Joe Biden, but Donald Trump disparaged John McCain and tried to conduct a coup. No way I was going to vote for him.
It shouldn’t be so unusual for the military community to vote for Democrats. It didn’t used to be. Democrats relatively recently lost the ability to connect with veterans, troops, and their families. But they have plenty of incentives to solve this problem—and, if they can get their act together, they have the capacity to reconnect with the military community, too.
ACCORDING TO EXIT POLLS, veterans supported Trump over Harris by a whopping 31 percent. Just four years earlier, Trump’s margin with veterans was just 21 percent. While Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin all have lower-than-average proportions of veterans in their populations, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada—the other states that swung from Trump to Biden back to Trump—all have larger-than-average proportions of veterans. Nationwide, veterans are about 6 percent of the population, so in a race where the popular vote was decided by 1.5 points, their votes matter a lot.
If anything, though, the raw number of veterans actually understates the number of votes that might be winnable by Democrats. Most of those veterans have family and friends who, if they haven’t navigated life in the military and the bureaucracy of the Veterans Administration themselves, have seen or heard about it. By appealing to veterans, Democrats can appeal to anyone who cares about military and veterans issues, whether they personally wore the cloth of the country or not.
Democrats have given plenty of reasons for servicemembers and veterans not to vote for them. The shameful abandonment of Iraq under Barack Obama and the even more humiliating betrayal of Afghanistan under Joe Biden did nothing to communicate to those who served that Democrats understand that their sacrifices were for something—for a mission they were ordered to believe in—and that the only thing that can make those sacrifices worth it is victory. I revile Trump, but when he criticized Biden for not having held anyone accountable for the Afghanistan debacle, I agreed—Biden bore ultimate responsibility, but so did the commanders below him, yet none of them paid any price for their incompetence.
It doesn’t help that Democrats have a real problem communicating with men, who still make up a disproportionate part of the military community—and many of those men take their masculinity very seriously. Case in point: In her closing-argument speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., Harris mentioned “women” six times but “men” just once—and that once was praise for supporting women. That’s just not going to cut it among a bunch of guys who like to consider themselves macho manly men. When Democrats limit themselves, as Harris did, to hollow repetitions of the word “lethality” to describe their military policies, they cede ground to Pete Hegseth.
THERE COULD BE ANCILLARY BENEFITS to Democrats making a hard sell to veterans. It’s not just about doing the right thing, it’s about being seen to be doing the right thing. A recent Quinnipiac survey found that 57 percent of registered voters have an unfavorable view of the Democratic party, while just 31 percent had a favorable view. By comparison, Americans’ trust in the military stands at 60 percent, which despite being a two-decade low is still greater than any institution except for small businesses as a group. Two-thirds of Americans believe that veterans are more reliable and hardworking than non-veterans, and 69 percent said they were more loyal. Fifty-nine percent agree that veterans are more patriotic. It shouldn’t take a marketing genius to see that Democrats could stand to benefit from more closely associating themselves with the military and veterans.
Of course, it’s not healthy for one party to be associated with the military—especially for the military, which must remain strictly non-partisan and loyal only to the Constitution. But the most proximate danger isn’t that Democrats will become the military party, but the opposite. Despite his artful and assiduous avoidance of the draft and his many insults to those who served, Donald Trump has fashioned himself an avatar of the military. His recent habit of saluting the flag during the national anthem, rather than holding his hand over his heart as civilians are supposed to, is just the most recent example.
Far from politicizing the military, Democrats would be helping to depoliticize the military by making military policy and proper care for veterans areas of legitimate partisan competition, rather than dominance by one party at the expense of the other.
That’s not to say that the Democrats’ pitch to service members and veterans has to begin at election season. If, as many fear, Trump may ask the military to carry out unlawful orders, perhaps even against American citizens, the opposition party should have as much good will within the ranks as it can. Democrats should work overtime to ensure that those in the military, who right now don’t favor them at the ballot box, don’t come to see them as the enemy. It’s a dark necessity, but a real one.
THERE ARE SIGNS OF HOPE. The 2024 Democratic National Convention was as patriotic an event as I’ve seen in my life, and showcased some of the party’s most impressive veterans—but not enough. The decision to give a prime speaking slot to Adam Kinzinger—who isn’t even a Democrat—was inspired. But the decision to showcase Sen. Mark Kelly at the expense of Sen. Tammy Duckworth—not as much.
The broader anti-Trump coalition may loathe JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and Michael Waltz, but all deployed during the Global War on Terror. Tim Walz and Mark Kelly did not. While much of the controversy over Walz’s service history was manufactured and phony, veterans know the difference between someone who’s been over there and someone who hasn’t.
“I don’t know what you see in these people,” my brothers-in-arms often said to me about Harris and Walz. “JD Vance went from corporal to vice presidential candidate. And he deployed to Iraq. I don’t think Tim Walz ever deployed.”
The Democrats could have made a better run at veterans in 2024, but where were they? Where were Wes Moore and Seth Moulton and Jason Crow and Elaine Luria?
These politicians—and Duckworth and Abigail Spanberger and Elissa Slotkin (the CIA counts) and Mikie Sherill—should lead the charge into 2026 and beyond. The Democrats have a deep reservoir of talented veteran leadership. They know how to talk with MAGA because most of their comrades probably supported Trump. They should be the ones who try to mend the fences between the Democratic party and the troops.
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