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2020 Elections:Can Foreign Policy Matter?
Those of us who opposed the Vietnam War quickly banged our heads against a political science truism: issues have direction and salience, and it’s much easier to change the former than the latter. So the voters turned against the war — maybe because of our efforts and maybe not — -but supporters of the war kept getting elected because the issue was not significant enough to cause voters to cast their ballots according to an incumbent’s position on Vietnam.
There is no reason to think foreign policy has acquired more salience since that war ended, but the first Democratic Party debate on June 26–27 in Miami may unavoidably spend precious minutes on foreign policy because of a fresh military adventure in the Middle East if not the slow bleed of the “forever wars” since 9–11–2001. The minutes will be precious because each night will feature ten candidates, leaving little time per candidate per question even without the tendency of pols to filibuster.
It doesn’t quite feel right, but I could have written “only” ten each night. Four were left in the starting gate because they did not poll at least one percent in three major national or early voting state polls or engage at least 65,000 unique contributors including 200 donors each from 20 different states.
