Me, Dan Drezner, and the Fate of the World
I think foreign policy will tip the presidential election. Drezner thinks not. Everything hangs in the balance.
Dan Drezner and I are both IR scholars, but we’re very different people. Not just very different life experiences; we see the world differently and have very different politics.1 Somewhat unsurprising, then, that we have registered completely opposing claims about foreign policy and the election.
I’ve gone on record saying foreign policy will be decisive because it plays in crucial swing states and affects Gen Z and minority turnout. This is not as I would wish it to be; it simply is.
I get that someone could think Gaza is not a voting issue, because for some people it’s not. But with numbers like these it’s crazy—or at least tempting fate—to embrace the current policy of arming Israel amid a genocide and expanding regional war:
I also think liberals and Washingtonian types vastly underestimate how unpopular America’s primacist foreign policy is. We’re not in the War on Terror anymore; militarism isn’t popular except with parts of the right.
But as vocal as I’ve been about the Uncommitted Movement and how it’s going to affect the margins in states where that will matter, Drezner has expressed the opposite belief, and in a recent post, he doubles down on that.
Although the presidential election is a clear test of which of us is correct, it’s not clear we’ll ever know for sure why the outcome that happens happens.
But it seems significant that MAGA thinks foreign policy will be decisive. In his recent post, even Drezner acknowledges that Trump is wagering on foreign policy being an important factor…he just thinks Trump will end up being wrong about that.
This is possibly where it matters that Drezner and I are different people.
I spend a lot of time in bro-culture spaces (specifically combat sports). I spend a lot of time in left- and anti-war media spaces. And I spend a lot of time in Black/hip-hop cultural spaces. All of this exposure gives me a very strong sense of folks’ alienation with the status quo, and the status quo is the Albatross around the neck of Kamala and the Democratic Party.
Maybe I’m wrong—this is an occasion where I don’t want to be right. But one question I keep posing to Drezner-ian types without ever receiving a satisfying answer: If Kamala loses, how will they explain the loss while exempting America’s disastrous, wildly unpopular foreign policy?
I like Dan well enough, and we’re not polar opposites or anything. Just saying this shouldn’t be construed as a hit piece.
"If Kamala loses, how will they explain the loss while exempting America’s disastrous, wildly unpopular foreign policy?"
Its pretty simple. You say that the administration she was part of took an unpopular position on immigration for two years before belatedly changing tack, and that this plus inflation concerns caused her to face headwinds that she couldn't ultimately overcome. Not to say that this is the only possible narrative or reason, but its a perfectly coherent narrative that fits the facts, including voter priorities per polls, in which inflation and immigration dwarf FP/natsec as concerns.
I think a broader problem in terms of learning lessons from American elections is that the electoral college coupled with consistently close races make it hard to derive any meaning from the results. 2012 is a good example - everyone "knew" for sure that the GOP needed to moderate on immigration to tap the surge of young diverse voters Obama had brought to the polls. In response, the GOP nominated the exact opposite of that and won anyways, including in states like Florida where it was thought such an approach couldn't work.
It’s too hard for the think tanker policy types in DC (drezner is actually pretty good) to acknowledge primacy gains support if you can hide its costs and its effects on other countries. Gaza can’t be hidden