Tulsi Gabbard is a courageous woman. Her decorated bravery as a combat veteran is something even her opponents can’t deny. But she also has political courage, which doesn’t involve facing physical danger but does demand a great deal of psychological strength. In Washington, DC, the way to succeed is to stay loyal to the group. But the two parties are only secondary groups. The primary group loyalty in the nation’s capital is to one’s fellow officeholders and officials as a class. That group is a timid herd, but it survives because its members stick together.
Gabbard is a danger to the herd. If she had simply defied the Democratic Party, of which she was a member during her four terms in Congress, she would still be a shoo-in for confirmation by the GOP Senate majority. But her appointment to serve as director of national intelligence faces an unusual degree of resistance because her independence has offended Republican enforcers of the herd consensus as well as Democratic ones.
Officeholders who supported the Iraq War and the open-ended occupation of Afghanistan, and who wished to commit the United States to another conflict of the same kind in Syria, are not punished within the Washington community. On the contrary, it’s the critics of these wars who risk rejection by the herd. The consensus that officialdom has made mandatory since the end of the Cold War is dead as far as voters are concerned, as they proved by electing and reelecting Donald Trump. Every American has seen how the foreign-policy groupthink of the last 35 years has produced unwinnable wars and a deterioration of the very liberal international order that officialdom prides itself on preserving. But if Gabbard’s nomination makes it to a floor vote, she can count on being opposed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former majority leader and embodiment of the undead consensus.
How many Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee are determined to enforce it as well? Just one would be enough to deny Gabbard the committee’s approval, which could prevent her nomination from reaching the Senate floor. Maine’s Susan Collins and Indiana’s Todd Young are the GOP committee members considered most likely to vote against Gabbard.
But the Democrats are now even more beholden to the old orthodoxy than their Republican counterparts. What the vote on Gabbard will reveal is whether the Senate’s operative majority consists of the Democrats along with a handful of Republicans like McConnell, or if a break is now possible with an era of disastrous foreign policy.
Gabbard is the perfect test case. She became an independent and then a Trump-aligned Republican after challenging the Democratic Party from within, first by supporting Bernie Sanders over the party establishment and then by entering the 2020 Democratic presidential contest herself—and humiliating Kamala Harris during the primary debates. Gabbard’s party label changed because her critique of DC foreign-policy groupthink remained consistent. Trump transformed the GOP, the nation’s electoral politics, and now government, while Bernie Sanders receded into the background of a Democratic Party that stuck with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, all loyal exponents of the elite consensus.
“Does Sanders have her courage?”
If Gabbard does receive a floor vote, it will put Sanders’s willingness to buck orthodoxy to the test. Gabbard is under fire for criticizing NATO, expressing qualms about domestic surveillance laws, and meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and other unsavory characters in an effort to keep America out of more wars in the Middle East. Sanders is closer to Gabbard on all these points than he is to Washington officialdom’s line—but does Sanders have her courage? Will he defy Democratic Party discipline to vote for her confirmation? He can easily find excuses not to do so, but the Vermont senator is no fool. He understands full well that Gabbard’s confirmation is about nothing else but whether DC’s old foreign-policy line can still be held against dissenters. When this is the issue at stake, does Sanders reveal himself aligned with Mitch McConnell rather than Tulsi Gabbard?
Even if Gabbard does not get the intelligence committee’s approval, there is a chance she could make it to the floor. Semafor’s Burgess Everett notes the committee “has the power to send Gabbard’s nomination to the full Senate with no recommendation—or an unfavorable recommendation.” Beyond that, “The full Senate can also vote to discharge nominees from committee if the panel is unable to cobble a majority together for anything, but that can be subject to a 60-vote threshold.”
Gabbard is the Trump nominee who has the hardest path to confirmation. That’s a sign of just how powerful the herd mentality of the last three decades remains, despite voters’ demands for change. Gabbard symbolizes Trump’s potential to reorient not just his own party but the whole political spectrum—she’s a representation of how hoary partisan divides can be overcome. If she can make it past the zombies.