Conor Friedersdorf wonders why there isn’t more Democratic opposition to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. He notes that her foreign policy record is hawkish and riddled with bad decisions:

Most Democrats regard the Iraq War as a historic disaster. Clinton voted for that conflict. That hawkishness wasn’t a fluke. She pushed for U.S. intervention in Libya without Congressional approval and without anticipating all that has gone wrong in that country. She favored U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war as well. Why haven’t Democrats concluded that she has dangerously bad judgment on foreign policy? She certainly hasn’t done anything to distinguish herself in that realm.

I agree that most Democrats should find Clinton’s foreign policy record to be unacceptable and disqualifying, but that isn’t how they have reacted. One reason for this is that foreign policy is not a priority for most Democratic voters. Another is that Clinton’s biggest errors are either considered old news (e.g., her Iraq war vote) or they are part of Obama’s record as well and therefore not something that most Democrats want to criticize. Clinton did vote for the 2002 Iraq war authorization, and she shouldn’t be able to get away from that simply by saying that she made a mistake, but that vote was almost thirteen years ago and the Iraq war is no longer a major issue in Democratic Party politics in the way that it was in 2007-08. Clinton’s vote arguably did cost her enough support to deprive her of the nomination last time, and except for committed antiwar progressives most primary voters now aren’t going to reject her candidacy on that issue alone.

Clinton owns the Libyan war and its aftermath as much as anyone in the administration except Obama, but the Libyan war was essentially a non-issue for Democratic voters in 2012 and is even less important to them today. Because it was a relatively short and low-cost intervention for the U.S., it has never become politically toxic for its supporters despite the enormous harm it did to Libya and the surrounding region. In order to condemn Clinton over Libya, one also has to fault Obama for extremely bad judgment, and that is not something that most partisan voters are going to do when they still approve of a president from their own party. On Syria, Obama has received more criticism from Democratic hawks for being too cautious, so the fact that Clinton advocated for a more aggressive policy there appeals to the more hawkish wing of the party without alarming many others.

Beyond that, many Democratic foreign policy professionals don’t view Clinton’s record in a negative light, so there are relatively few people inside the party that think Clinton’s record should be held against her. There are even fewer that are willing to take the risk of attacking a prohibitive frontrunner. Clinton has also shielded herself to some extent from being attacked on foreign policy by endorsing Obama’s opening to Cuba and the nuclear deal, and that allows partisans that want to vote for Clinton for other reasons to ignore her otherwise terrible judgment on these issues.