Supporting The Iran Deal

For a candidate to get a Blue America endorsement, we try to get to know them down to the core of their being. What we're not looking for is some phony politician willing to tell us what they think we want to hear on any set of issues. We learned our lesson long ago after helping reactionary Blue Dog Chris Carney win a Pennsylvania congressional seat. 

We don't send out questionnaires and we don't depend on any one issue before making an endorsement. Maybe that's why we endorse so few candidates each cycle. When we ask perspective endorsees about women's Choice, punishment for corrupt Wall Street banksters and LGBT equality, it has more to do with learning about their core beliefs and how they make decisions and about their courageousness than how they stand on any particular issue. This year we started asking candidates to explain their thinking on BlackLivesMatter so we can get a better understanding of their thought process on such a complicated-- if not morally ambiguous-- issue. Similarly we're asking candidates to tell us their thoughts on the Iran nuclear deal.

Although we think the deal is definitely worth supporting, we don't consider it a make it or break it issue. There's more than one way of looking at the deal, and again, what we're looking for is a thought process. Interestingly, even Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, says he is leaning towards supporting the deal. "I'm leaning very strongly towards that because of the options that I have," Manchin said on CBS' Face the Nation. "The only other option is go to war, and I'm not ready to send our people into harm's way again until people in that part of the world want to clean up their own mess." Manchin agrees with our position on Iran-- and, despite Huckabee's insane screed, that of most American Jews-- but his overall record isn't one that would ever move us to consider endorsing him. Grayson is against the deal, but overall, we find him to be as close to an ideal candidate as possible.

It's worth mentioning that, according to the latest polling, the American people also favor the deal with Iran.

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that there’s strong support nationally for the Iran deal, that voters want their members of Congress to let it move forward, and that there’s no potential political backlash for members who do support the deal.

Key findings from the survey include:

• Only 38% of voters are opposed to the Iran deal, compared to 54% who are supportive of it. Democratic voters (75/17) are far more united in their favor for the agreement than Republicans (36/54) are in their opposition to it. Voters within every gender, race, and age group are in support of it, reflecting the broad based mandate for the deal.

• Similarly 54% of voters want their members of Congress to vote to allow the agreement to move forward, compared to just 39% who would like to see it blocked. There is very little public sentiment to let the deal fail and then see how things play out from there- voters want to see their elected officials move this along.

• There are basically no potential repercussions politically for members of Congress who do vote in support of the agreement. 60% of Americans say that if their members vote for it, they will be either more likely to vote for them in the future or it won’t make a difference either way in their future voting. Fully 79% of Democrats said they’d be more likely to support their members in the future or it wouldn’t make a difference. Just 36% of overall voters say they’ll be less likely down the line to vote for a member who supports the Iran agreement.

The message is clear: voters think the Iran deal is a good one for the country, they want Congress to move it along, and if anything they’ll reward elected officials in the future who throw their support behind the agreement. It’s a winner politically.