As Biden improves with vets, Afghanistan plan a plus to some

ELM GROVE, Wis. — Patrick Proctor Brown says the war in Afghanistan was lost within a year of its start. The suburban Milwaukee lawyer, who was an infantry captain in Iraq, said the trillions of dollars spent and the thousands of lives lost, including a lieutenant he trained with, make it “a tragedy.”

“And the Taliban will be back in power in a year,” said Brown, 35, who also studied diplomacy at Norwich, a military university in Vermont. “It’s insane.”

Brown supports President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, and by voting for the Democrat, he represents a subtle but potent shift in the voting behavior of some in the military.

Voters who served in the military have long leaned toward Republicans. But there are signs that Biden may have cut into that advantage last year. Biden carried several counties with large military communities — as well as the most concentrated military congressional district last year — that former President Donald Trump and previous Republican presidential nominees counted on for decades.

Veteran groups and pollsters attribute Biden’s gains to a handful of factors, including an increase in female, Black, Latino and college-educated service members, all keys to the Democratic coalition.

But strategists also point to the stark contrast in Biden’s and Trump’s approaches to the military. Biden, the father of an Iraq War veteran, often closes his speeches with a short prayer for U.S. troops. Trump, meanwhile, was quick to praise veterans in public, but also made Islamophobic attacks on the parents of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq — a Gold Star family — and made comments mocking American war dead.

The contrast raises the question of whether Democrats’ fledgling momentum with military voters is more than a momentary anti-Trump blip. It also heaps pressure on Biden to fulfill policy promises and perfect the political outreach to veterans getting underway.

“This president has got to end these wars,” said Jon Soltz, a former Army tank captain who formed the Democratic-leaning VoteVets.org in 2006. “He’s got to fulfill some of these promises. There’s a war-weariness in the military.”

Results from around the country last year suggest Biden has an edge with some military voters unlike his recent predecessors.

Among several military leaning spots on the national map, Biden carried Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, which contains the most active duty and veteran service members in the country. It includes the world’s largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk, and is home to more than 110,000 active and retired service members. Trump won the district in 2016, as did Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.

Biden also flipped New Hampshire’s Rockingham County, home of Portsmouth and the U.S. Navy’s oldest continuously operating shipyard. He was also the first Democrat ever to carry Riley County, Kansas. It’s the home of Kansas State University, but also Fort Riley Army base, where the National Bio Defense research has drawn an educated and racially and ethnically diverse military workforce.

“In all of the data we saw, Biden was doing better with veterans and active duty,” than previous Democratic nominees going back decades, said Celinda Lake, one of the Biden campaign’s two main pollsters. “And the campaign was very active in targeting veterans, including talking about his son being a veteran of the current engagements, and that resonated with active military and veterans.”

“This president has got to end these wars. He’s got to fulfill some of these promises. There’s a war-weariness in the military.” – JON SOLTZ, A FORMER ARMY TANK CAPTAIN