Foreign policy does not usually swing national elections, but this time could be different.
THE ATLANTIC
“I think Gaza could matter for a number of reasons,” Michael Tesler, a political scientist at UC Irvine, told me. The war, he explained, had produced a powerful brew of political forces—all of which bode ill for Democrats.
It is a divisive issue within the party, which is home to both dedicated pro-Palestine constituencies and committed pro-Israel ones. It is prominent enough, across news platforms and social media, that people are thinking about the conflict when they focus on current affairs and politics. For many younger progressives, protesting against Israel has become part of a fight for social justice: To them, the Palestinian cause is tied up with such domestic issues as racial discrimination.
The war in Gaza has also helped create a perception that Biden is hapless.
ED MORRISSEY
Oh, we’re well past “hapless” and into full-on incompetence. Biden crossed that threshold in August 2021 by abandoning 14,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies to the Taliban in his disgraceful rout from Kabul. As I noted earlier, that was the true inflection point of his presidency, the moment where Biden lost the majority. He’s been plumbing the depths of both job disapproval and unfavorability ever since.
The real problem here isn’t Biden as much as it is the Democrats’ marriage to radical-progressive Marxism. That’s the nature of this split, and Hamas’ brutal war and atrocities have forced it into the open. The progressive Marxists base their entire worldview on racial/ethnic determinism and a stupidly simplistic occupier/occupied worldview that is just a replacement for bourgeoisie/proletariat.
