I think your instincts on Gabbard are correct. That’s the sense I get as well. She holds up her military service, which I do not hold against her, but then speaks like Barbara Boxer back in the nineties about how all the military budget would be better spend on social programs, “the peace dividend” they called it then, after the fall of the USSR.
I am grateful to those who served, and they generally have my respect, but it really gets my goat when their philosophy is 90% antithetical to what a military person would generally support (or at least used to support) then I can’t give them the credit for destroying what they are walking all over the top of to justify and fool people into voting them in.
I guarantee there are a lot of people who see her picture in her uniform with all the fruit salad on her chest, and think she is A-OK.
And that is her goal. Not to have principles as a guiding star, but to give the impression of having them to get votes.