THE IRAN WAR IS A MONEY SUCK AND DEMOCRATS SHOULD NEVER STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT

Greg Sargent has a strong opinion about what Democrats should be doing right now:

While some Democrats have gotten this right, more of them need to say forthrightly that this war is patently illegal and that Trump’s chief stated rationale for it—that Iran posed “imminent threats” to the United States—is utter nonsense.

“Democrats need to strongly make the point that there was no imminent threat and that this war is a violation of the Constitution—and illegal,” Representative Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told me. “Absent congressional approval, this is an illegal war.”

I think it's worth saying that the war is illegal, but I don't think it changes very many minds. It's a message that reinforces the anger of educated liberals who understand how our government works and what a president can or can't lawfully do, but the vast majority of Americans don't understand the legal constraints on a president and don't care. When asked, they'll tell pollsters that, yes, Congress should be consulted on war, but a refusal to consult Congress won't become a top issue for most of them.

I think this is a stronger Democratic argument:

That's from iran-cost-ticker.com. I don't know who's behind it. I don't know if it's accurate. But it's an effort to provide a running total of the cost of the war, in the manner of the National Debt Clock. The dollar cost escalates rapidly.

Paul Krugman has more data:

On Sunday, according to the U.S. military, Kuwaiti forces shot down three U.S. F-15s in a “friendly fire” incident.

... A new F-15 costs U.S. taxpayers $97 million. So that’s almost $300 million lost in seconds. And we should think about what could have been done with that money other than launch a war without a clear plan or an exit strategy....

One of the reasons to be disturbed by this war is the extraordinary amount of money the U.S. government is either laying out now or will have to lay out in the future to replace the spent munitions....

Linda Bilmes of Harvard’s Kennedy School estimates that Trump’s largely unsuccessful bombing campaign last year against the Iran-backed Islamist Houthis in Yemen — a far softer target than Iran itself — cost between $2.76 billion and $4.95 billion. Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump’s one-day strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities, cost between $2.04 billion and $2.26 billion....

The current war is being waged not only with massive bombing but also with the use of large numbers of expensive interceptors to defend U.S. bases and U.S. allies against Iranian drones and missiles. So in just a few days we have surely incurred billions of dollars in cost. And if this war continues for an extended period, the costs could easily rise to the twenty to thirty billion dollar range.

... if we compare the cost of this war to what we spend to help needy Americans, then it’s clear that this war is extremely expensive compared with other ways we could have spent the funds. Put it this way: SNAP — the Supplemental Nutritional Food Assistance Program, formerly food stamps — spends an average of about $2,400 a year per recipient. CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program administered under Medicaid, provides comprehensive health care for about $3,000 per child.

So just replacing those three jets shot down over Kuwait — each of them, remember, with a price tag of $97 million — will cost about as much as providing 125,000 Americans with crucial food aid or providing healthcare to 100,000 American children. And the war might very well end up costing 100 times as much as the price of those jets.

I'm not sure Democrats should get into the weeds the way Krugman does. Reciting a string of numbers and per-capita costs isn't compelling rhetoric. If I were a Democratic officeholder or candidate, I'd just start with the topline number -- trhe cost of the war so far -- and say, "What are we getting for this? How does this help you in your day-to-day lives? What else could be done with this tax money taken from your pocket?"

Democrats have a rare opportunity. Ordinarily, it's easy to score political points by complaining about the high cost of whatever the government does, except in matters of defense and policing. As a rule, normies don't even bother comparing those huge costs to the often much lower costs of programs that serve other human needs, because they accept the premise that we need to spend whatever it takes to keep ourselves safe.

But this is an exception to the rule. It's a war that, unlike most U.S. wars, is unpopular at the outset. Apart from Republicans, no one wants this war. No one knows why it's being fought. Most Americans think it will make America less safe.

So Democrats should bring up the cost of this pointless war at every possible opportunity. Bring up the total cost. Bring up the daily cost. Ask how all that expense is making America safer. Ask how much we're all going to shell out before it's all over, if that day ever comes.