I teach and write about both the Middle East and American foreign policy; my assessment of Gabbard comes from a lot more than just reading a few mainstream media articles.

As I understand it, the support Gabbard has — which isn’t nothing, but is quite small as far as national politicians go — largely stems from opposition to U.S. military intervention, and related criticisms of U.S. foreign policy (if you had something else in mind, please let me know). That’s the audience I had in mind when I wrote this:

“Some voters like that Gabbard opposes U.S. military intervention in Syria and elsewhere. But it’s very easy to do that without defending Russia or Assad.”

For example, she could say “What’s happening in Syria is awful. The Assad government and its Russian backers have massacred civilians. But trying to stop the Syrian civil war with a military intervention would be a mistake. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible for American troops to make the situation better, and they could easily make it worse. America cannot fix everyone else’s problems, as tragic as those problems may be, and as president I will not risk American lives and spend American taxpayer dollars getting bogged down in another Middle East quagmire.”

Instead, Gabbard falsely claims the U.S. is pursuing a regime change war in Syria. But if that’s what was actually happening, you’d see a lot of direct attacks on regime targets (ask Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi).

I’m aware that a contingent of progressives, including some indie journalists, share Gabbard’s inaccurate assessment of the Syrian civil war. But those who do undermine the anti-interventionist position.

As for understanding the political landscape, I don’t see why it makes sense to focus more on a candidate who’s barely getting any support than on the candidates who are getting a lot.