Donald Trump has, unintentionally, done an incredible job of uniting the Democratic Party. Despite clichés about Democratic “disarray,” nearly all Democrats oppose his chaotic and aimless Iran war. Within a week of the first attack on Iran, Democrats offered resolutions aimed at forcing the president to seek congressional approval for the war. On March 4, every Senate Democrat but Pennsylvania’s eccentric John Fetterman voted to block Trump’s war. The next day in the House, only four of the 214 Democrats present voted against an antiwar resolution.

Now as the war drags into its seventh week, Democratic congressional leaders are promising to keep fighting it:

Schumer on war powers vote this week:

“If Republicans block it, we will vote again. And again. And again. Every single week until Operation Epic Failure ends—or Congress does its job and authorizes it, which I know it won’t, given how bad this war is.”

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) April 14, 2026

For those old enough to remember past Democratic divisions over controversial American wars, this is pretty remarkable. The Vietnam War, the product of Kennedy-Johnson anti-communist “containment” policies, deeply divided their party, at first marginally but then greatly. Eugene McCarthy’s antiwar primary challenge led to LBJ dropping his 1968 reelection bid. Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, both of whom vocally opposed LBJ’s prosecution of the war, the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was riven by antiwar protests and police violence inside and outside the hall. It was the great symbol of how Vietnam helped destroy the huge popular majority Democrats won four years earlier. Democratic divisions over what then became Nixon’s war continued in 1972, with George McGovern’s categorical support for ending the war immediately alienating strongly anti-communist southern and labor elements of the party.

The next major American war, George H.W. Bush’s 1991 Operation Desert Storm to reverse Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait, was a quick and relatively popular conflict. But it divided congressional Democrats, with 71 House and ten Senate Democrats voting with most Republicans to give Poppy Bush a green light. Close Democratic Senate allies Al Gore and Sam Nunn parted ways on this vote (Gore for the invasion, Nunn against), among others.

Democrats mostly supported Bill Clinton’s (and NATO’s) air war against Serbia over its control of Kosovo in 1999. But 26 House Democrats and a handful of Senate Democrats never went along with an intervention that many observers considered something less than outright war.

The post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan garnered near-unanimous bipartisan support (California Democrat Barbara Lee was the only dissenting vote against an authorization of force to topple the Taliban). But then George W. Bush’s Iraq War split Democrats all over again. A majority of Senate Democrats (including future presidential candidates John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden) supported the 2002 war authorization by Congress, and a majority of House Democrats opposed it.

Most recently, though it was not a war in which the U.S. was directly involved, Israel’s war in Gaza very definitely split Democrats, though in somewhat nuanced ways. Some Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, expressed concerns about Israel’s conduct in the war while defending continued U.S. military and diplomatic aid. But a growing number of other Democrats (including most self-identified progressives) opposed any U.S. aid that materially helped Israel wage the war, which some described as genocidal. After Donald Trump inherited the war and supported Israel’s virtual liquidation of Gaza, Democratic opposition to complicity unsurprisingly increased but didn’t reach the levels of near-unanimity we see right now.

Trump’s erratic and genocide-threatening rhetoric surrounding the Iran war has helped keep elected Democrats united in opposition. These politicians are also reflecting the opinions of rank-and-file Democrats. The latest poll on the subject, an April 13 survey from Economist/You Gov, showed self-identified Democrats opposing the Iran War by an unambiguous 87 percent to 7 percent margin. There really is no “pro-war” Democratic Party at present, and opposition is having a potentially profound effect on underlying issues like the long-standing U.S.-Israel alliance, which more and more Democrats would like to sever or at least suspend. Antiwar advocates in the party are no a minority faction, at least so long as it’s Trump wielding U.S. military power in unjust and irrational causes. This could help heal long-standing wounds afflicting Democratic unity going into high-stakes elections in 2026 and 2028.