Funeral Services for the Anti-War Movement Will Be Held Next Week

Big, busy Morning Jolt to close out the week — an appalling failure of immigration law enforcement, an indictment in that long-forgotten GSA conference scandal, another trip down memory lane for a beloved prematurely-canceled television show, and then this glaring change in our national politics:

Funeral Services for the Anti-War Movement Will Be Held Next Week

Howard Kurtz writes the obituary of the anti-war movement. Born in 2003, the movement experienced sudden difficulties in January 2009, struggled and limped along for the past few years, and finally collapsed in the street in front of the White House least week:

Medea Benjamin of Code Pink was asked why so few on the left oppose Obama. “‘He’s totally defanged us,’ she said, citing his party, his affability — and his race. ‘The black community is traditionally the most antiwar community in this country. He’s defanged that sentiment within the black community, or certainly voicing that sentiment.’”

Defanged. Wow, those are damning words.

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative who largely became an Obama booster, is equally incredulous:

“The way in which Obama supporters have lamely acquiesced to this reckless war fomented by a dangerous executive power-grab is more than a little depressing. It strikes me as uncomfortably close to pure partisanship. I can’t imagine them downplaying the folly of this if a Republican president were in charge.”

As Joe Weisenthal noted, Democrats largely abandoned the antiwar movement the moment Obama took office:

Commander Salamander, back in 2011: “There never was an anti-war movement. Deep down, I think – most of us knew that anyway. It was an anti-Bush movement. War had nothing to do with it – it was all about the Left finding a way to regain power.”