What’s the Left’s Vision for Foreign Policy After Trump?
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What foreign policy challenges does the Democratic Party face after Trump?
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I think we may be in a moment of foreign policy rupture in the Democratic Party. It reminds me of years ago when the Iraq War remade the Democratic Party. The Iraq War, which is why Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary, changing the course of American politics. Because I will offer a clear contrast. As somebody who never supported this war, thought it was a bad idea, I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place. That's the kind of leadership I intend to provide. Right now, Israel and Gaza feel to me like they are becoming the center of a similar rupture. The thing that started here for me was a few weeks ago, Brian Schatz, who is a Democratic senator from Hawaii.
He's often talked of as maybe the next Senate Democratic leader after Chuck Schumer. So a guy with an incredible sense of the pulse of the party. He tweeted, I'm not into blacklisting anyone from future work in their area of expertise, but I do think it's fair to want a whole new crop, a whole new crop of foreign policy staffers in the next Democratic administration. It's not like the same 120 people are the only people who know anything. Then Senator Chris Van Hollen, again, very well respected in the party, very much someone in its mainstream. He wrote an opinion piece for The Times laying out how different he thinks the Democratic Party's policy on Israel needs to be, how badly he thinks the Biden administration's policy failed.
And then he went on to say... Primary voters won't trust any Democratic presidential candidate who does not have a record of moral and strategic clarity on these issues, especially if, as a legislator, he or she voted to send Mr. Netanyahu bombs even as his government imposed a total blockade on Gaza. Nor will they support a candidate who plans to re-enlist the senior Democratic decision makers who whitewashed the truth during the Biden administration and refuse to acknowledge their complicity." Complicity is a strong word in an internecine Democratic fight here. Then we've seen a number of Democratic primaries beginning to split over Gaza. It has become an essential issue in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, where Abdul El-Sayed leads in many of the new polls.
You're watching Democrats bend over backwards in the most pretzel-like way to justify the war. They're like, this is an illegal war, but if they asked me, I'd fund it. If you don't have the courage to call out the moral abomination of a genocide, then what do you have the courage to call out in the first place? This is a moral Rorschach test for our party.
It was very present in the New Jersey House primary that Adam Hamawi, a doctor who had treated the injured in Gaza, just won. I was running on something very simple, is that we should be spending on healthcare, not bombs. We should be spending on our communities here, you know, in New Jersey, in America, and not funding bombs overseas for, you know, atrocities and genocide. We should not be funding the endless wars that we're seeing. It's been at the center of the House primary in my district in New York, where Brad Lander is running against the incumbent, Dan Goldman. And much of Lander's attack is centered on Goldman's support for Israel.
Representative Goldman does not view what's happening there as a genocide. I've been fighting against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1990. I've never heard him say the word occupation in that context.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What foreign policy challenges does the Democratic Party face after Trump?
0:00–5:37
2
How have Israel and Gaza become central issues in Democratic primaries?
5:37–23:37
3
What does a left foreign policy look like according to Matt Duss?
23:37–30:33
4
What reckoning does the Democratic Party need regarding Gaza?
30:33–34:50
5
How does the Biden administration's approach to foreign policy differ from previous administrations?
34:50–41:32
6
What role does corruption play in shaping foreign policy?
41:32–48:19
7
How can the U.S. balance its foreign policy with domestic concerns?
48:19–53:05
8
What is the future vision for American foreign policy?
53:05–1:35:06