Are Democrats Losing Ground on National Security?

The last few weeks have been slow on political news, first with Washington DC shut down due to snowstorms on the east coast and now with intense media focus on the Vancouver Olympic Games. President Obama is using today to unveil his unsexy plan for a bipartisan committee focused on reducing the deficit while at the same time seeming to allow America’s wave of recent progress in capturing Taliban leaders go relatively unnoticed.

Greg Sergeant over at The Plum Line argued today that downplaying the Obama Administration’s successes in fighting the “war on terror” could prove to be a major mistake come mid-term election time. Republicans are already pushing talking points to attack Democrats on national security issues, which plays nicely into the narrative that former Vice President Dick Cheney has more or less been pushing since Obama’s inauguration.

Vice President Joe Biden in particular has been the Democrats’ first line of defense in responding to Cheney’s criticisms, although it’s possible that the White House is losing ground on the narrative concerning national security as they continue to focus on tackling the economy, health care, and the deficit. If Democrats continue to downplay their successes with national security, they are likely to lose out come election time.