A place to post and discuss news related to the recent events in Israel, including the Hamas/Islamic Jihad incursion and repercussions.
Lads, you are going to have to provide a counter example of when foreign policy impacted elections. I can give you countless of examples where it didn't. Ford was Vice President under Nixon and ever after the fall of Siagon and even Watergate it didnn't impact his re-election. Ditto George H. W. Bush and Iran-Contra. Clinton bombed a pharmacutical plant in Africa to distract from the Lewinsky scandal. Obama's questionably legal drone bombing killed countless civilians and was handed over to Trump to escalate. None of them mattered. Don't even believe they were raised during the campaigns by their opponents.
Seth, you are aware that Tara Reade was completely discredited after changing her story for the worse over time, lying about her educational credentials and other things, and eventually fled to Russia with the aid of Maria Butina (the spy who romped through Republican circles in the Trump years)? Just checking. There are so many fake allegations flying around, this one has a stake through it's heart.
Lads, you are going to have to provide a counter example of when foreign policy impacted elections. I can give you countless of examples where it didn't. Ford was Vice President under Nixon and ever after the fall of Siagon and even Watergate it didnn't impact his re-election. Ditto George H. W. Bush and Iran-Contra. Clinton bombed a pharmacutical plant in Africa to distract from the Lewinsky scandal. Obama's questionably legal drone bombing killed countless civilians and was handed over to Trump to escalate. None of them mattered. Don't even believe they were raised during the campaigns by their opponents.
Ford failed in his election bid. George H.W. Bush was not re-elected. If Clinton's affair, and impeachment for lying about it, occurred in his first term, it likely would have affected his re-election (I know I was disgusted by him at the time). Hard to say none of them mattered.
Ford failed purely on economic grounds as did Carter after him. Bush was elected after he was implicated in Iran-Contra and failed his re-election again on economic grounds (read my lips, no more taxes). Fair point about Clinton.
Obama's drone bombing? I don't think I heard a peep about that during his re-election. People tried to make a deal about it passing to Trump but did not gain much traction either.
Even if I grant you all of those, where is the example of foreign policy effecting a western government so substancially?
Edit: The only one I can think of is Thatcher and the Falklands War. I can see winning a war helping you get re-elected but it's very contextual. Didn't help Bush Snr. Beyond that, I just can't see scenarios where it will make enough of an impact.
Edit 2: typos.
"I hate Trump/MAGA with every fiber of my being, but I just can't bring myself to vote for Biden, after how he handled the Israeli/Hamas conflict." And thus, voting independent or abstaining or what have you, which results in Reds winning the election and ending human life soon after.
Help me understand a bit more. Thanks to anyone who provides insight.
Then a significant amount of voters are so lacking in memory they can't recall trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem - basically making it clear he is just as on board with Israel policy as dems.
He would not have acted any differently in this situation than Biden has
Biden's approval rating was already pretty dismal, and over the last few weeks he's lost something like ten points with *Democrats*, 80% of whom support a ceasefire in Gaza. It seems true that foreign policy doesn't shift elections in the US, but it's remarkable how strongly opposed the Dem base is to the policies currently being pushed by the Dem establishment. Biden is polling wayyyy below his 2020 numbers, and far below other Democrats included in the same polls. It doesn't seem outlandish to me at all that the Israel/Gaza crisis might tip him over the edge.
The chain leading to the collapse of the US and WW3.
Biden's approval rating was already pretty dismal, and over the last few weeks he's lost something like ten points with *Democrats*, 80% of whom support a ceasefire in Gaza. It seems true that foreign policy doesn't shift elections in the US, but it's remarkable how strongly opposed the Dem base is to the policies currently being pushed by the Dem establishment. Biden is polling wayyyy below his 2020 numbers, and far below other Democrats included in the same polls. It doesn't seem outlandish to me at all that the Israel/Gaza crisis might tip him over the edge.
I have my doubts. You might have some voters that don't approve but given the choice will hold their nose and vote for the candidate that at the very least keeps democracy intact.
If the Republican party was a classic centre-right party then maybe I could see the arguement but the jump from them to Democrat is so vast now that I can't see it.
I have gotten banned for suggesting Netanyahu was attempting a solution to the Palestinian problem in the “final” category, but it is getting harder and harder to deny.
Well, it's not final, and it's not a solution, but the current Israeli finance minister, who has apparently been given significant control over West Bank settlement policy, proposed a "Decisive Plan" for the ending the conflict a few years ago. Here's a noteworthy portion that I think illustrates the current Israeli government's thinking:
The statement that "terrorism derives from despair" is a lie. Terrorism derives from hope—a hope to weaken us. Terrorism relies on the hope to achieve something—to undermine Israeli society and force it to accede to the establishment of an Arab state within the boundaries of the Land of Israel. Suicide terrorists operate in a vacuum of sorts, yet do so for what they consider a "noble cause." Absent the cause, or make it seem pointless, and the motivations which drive terror will wane; and with them, God willing, will terror itself.
So... crush all hope is the answer.
So... crush all hope is the answer.
And the only way to crush all hope is crush the entire group.
Jimmy Carter's re-election was in large part ruined by the Iran Hostage situation (which whistle-blowers have reasonably argued was extended by the Reagan campaign to keep the damage going during the election run-up). Nixon gained a lot of approval in 1970 and later by handing much of the control of the Vietnam war to the South Vietnamese government ("Vietnamization") and his approval rating went way up after his meeting with Premier Mao in China, both of which affected his election positively. Likewise, President Johnson, who won in a landslide in 1964, was dragged down as much by the Vietnam War as by his Progressive policy costs (and Nixon, like Reagan later on, was credibly accused of using back-channel influence to slow peace negotiations). Eisenhower won both his terms based on the assessment that he was best able to confront the Soviet Union in the newly minted Cold War (even with his bad health situation later in life).
Foreign affairs are always important. GHW Bush tried and failed to gain re-election with Desert Storm success as a centerpoint to his campaign. The 2004 reelection of his son was amidst a campaign that was almost entirely about Bush's performance in the Global War on Terror (and involved smearing John Kerry's honorable and successful military career, so foreign affairs affected both candidates strongly).
And this is just modern presidents. There are many more examples earlier, as the country was still growing. Foreign affairs have often begun or ended presidential careers.
Maybe this thread should be renamed to Palestine in Crisis. 
Seriously though, while I of course empathize with Israel's residents and absolutely loathe the evil actions of Hamas, the disproportionate level of suffering on the part of the Gazan Palestinians in particular yet again is just absolutely heartrending.
Maybe this thread should be renamed to Palestine in Crisis.
Seriously though, while I of course empathize with Israel's residents and absolutely loathe the evil actions of Hamas, the disproportionate level of suffering on the part of the Gazan Palestinians in particular yet again is just absolutely heartrending.
As I've said years ago in relation to my own experiences the hatred I have is not for the young men and women who are ginned up to commit these acts as young people are dumb and easily lead. My hatred is for the old men and women who sit in comfortable surroundings and send these young people out to kill and be killed. If you are looking for "sides" that's how you should view these conflicts.
Jimmy Carter's re-election was in large part ruined by the Iran Hostage situation (which whistle-blowers have reasonably argued was extended by the Reagan campaign to keep the damage going during the election run-up). Nixon gained a lot of approval in 1970 and later by handing much of the control of the Vietnam war to the South Vietnamese government ("Vietnamization") and his approval rating went way up after his meeting with Premier Mao in China, both of which affected his election positively. Likewise, President Johnson, who won in a landslide in 1964, was dragged down as much by the Vietnam War as by his Progressive policy costs (and Nixon, like Reagan later on, was credibly accused of using back-channel influence to slow peace negotiations). Eisenhower won both his terms based on the assessment that he was best able to confront the Soviet Union in the newly minted Cold War (even with his bad health situation later in life).
Foreign affairs are always important. GHW Bush tried and failed to gain re-election with Desert Storm success as a centerpoint to his campaign. The 2004 reelection of his son was amidst a campaign that was almost entirely about Bush's performance in the Global War on Terror (and involved smearing John Kerry's honorable and successful military career, so foreign affairs affected both candidates strongly).
And this is just modern presidents. There are many more examples earlier, as the country was still growing. Foreign affairs have often begun or ended presidential careers.
Maybe this is another thread. And just to point out, I'm not saying foreign policy isn't important. It just that domestic policy will always trump it.
And nor am I saying that the US is unique in this. This applies to just about any country.
Come on Ro, are you seriously arguing that Carter's campaign was that impacted by the Iran-hostage situation while he was dealing with stagflation as the same time. I suspect I'd know which he want to not have on his plate given the choice. On top of that, Reagan tried Operation Eagle Claw and that disaster didn't make a dint in his re-election.
Vietnamization was a straight up populist move from Nixon to remove US service men from the fighting. Lets not get into the ins and out of Vietnam but Nixon lied to the South Vietnamese and abandoned them. He did open relations with China but again if he didn't would have it really mattered to his re-election? I seriously doubt it.
Johnson only proves my point further. He escalates Vietnam to curry favour with certain individuals precisely because he want to pass the Civil Rights Act. His actions only serve to prove the importance of domestic over foreign policy.
Esienhower I'm not well briefed on so I'll park him for now.
The Bushes from my vantage only seem to reinforce my point. H. W's Desert Storm does not help him get re-elected and the 2004 re-election by W was decided on by Gay marriage as a wedge issue. At that point the search for WMD was stopped admitting the lie, Abu Ghraib had broken, Journalist are being beheaded, rendition and black sites were known about, the Battle of Fallujah left many appalled and probably a full scale civil war starting in Iraq. Never mind Guantanamo Bay. And W. Still got elected.
And Obama's drone bombing program remains something a lot of people won't even address as a problem.
Edit: I'd even forgotten that W. left the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and signed into law the American Service-Members' Protection Act which essentially gave US servicemen immunuty from the ICC. I seem to remember both of those being massively popular domestically.
That seems like a goal shift. Domestic policy absolutely beats foreign policy in terms of impact on elections, but foreign policy still has some impact. Whether it's ever enough to cost someone an entire election depends on how thin the margin is. Biden's poor handling of Israel/Palestine will absolutely cost him voters, but I think it's unlikely that it'll have enough of an impact to cost him electoral votes.
To be fair I did say in my first post that there was "zero evidence" of it effecting election but did say that it could possibly have an impact but not enough to alter the outcome. I'm a man who doesn't tend to stake out absolutes :). And also to be fair I did provide the example of Thatcher and the Falklands War as the exception proving the rule.
Biden's poor handling of Israel/Palestine will absolutely cost him voters, but I think it's unlikely that it'll have enough of an impact to cost him electoral votes.
This is pretty much where I land.
I can't comment on the US situation very much but here we have a problem in Australia where the Labor Government fully supports the US-Israel position (in spite of the Prime Minister's former stance of having protested together with Palestinians before taking that office in 2006); and the Opposition Leader is a white nationalist. So no matter what we vote here it's quite similar to the Biden - Trump dilemma that your government won't support your stance.
I've heard a lot from my Muslim friends that the PM's popularity has plummeted yet if they vote the Opposition in, he'll undoubtedly support the US too. He was quoted abandoning the traditional bipartisan foreign policy position and saying we should have voted against the UN resolution instead of abstaining.
It really is a political quagmire.
As a lawyer I've long come to realise international law is weak and meaningless in the face of real dispute. This is in commercial law aspects, let alone war and conflict. Our UN is set up to fail.
Netanyahu has clearly won the information war by equating criticism of his policies with genocidal antisemitism
Maybe this is another thread. And just to point out, I'm not saying foreign policy isn't important. It just that domestic policy will always trump it.
And nor am I saying that the US is unique in this. This applies to just about any country.
Come on Ro, are you seriously arguing that Carter's campaign was that impacted by the Iran-hostage situation while he was dealing with stagflation as the same time. I suspect I'd know which he want to not have on his plate given the choice. On top of that, Reagan tried Operation Eagle Claw and that disaster didn't make a dint in his re-election.
Yes. I was there, I voted in that election, and as I recall, stagflation was not an exciting issue. It had been going on for since '73 and it was not what killed Carter's campaign, in large part because people thought it was pretty much unfixable by a change in leadership. However, Carter's inability to fix the hostage crisis was front and center, headlines every day. And Operation Eagle Claw? That was Carter, not Reagan. That *really* hurt him. It took away his military cred as a former naval officer.
Vietnamization was a straight up populist move from Nixon to remove US service men from the fighting. Lets not get into the ins and out of Vietnam but Nixon lied to the South Vietnamese and abandoned them. He did open relations with China but again if he didn't would have it really mattered to his re-election? I seriously doubt it.
Again, Nixon's choices here were *massively* popular (Vietnamization, Paris peace talks resumption) and exciting and optimistic (China). They really helped him overcome liberal doubts and energized Republicans in a way that he, personally, could not. His domestic stances were generally not popular in his own party (the EPA, for example), as a contrast. He went down on a domestic scandal, as did his vice president.
Johnson only proves my point further. He escalates Vietnam to curry favour with certain individuals precisely because he want to pass the Civil Rights Act. His actions only serve to prove the importance of domestic over foreign policy.
This is an odd take. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed on July 2nd of that year. It had been in negotiation since 1963, and Johnson got it into Congress of February 1964. He rode through the election on that and his "Great Society plan, in a landslide. (Note that I cited the 1968 election, not the '64, anyway.)
I can't find any indication that either Rolling Thunder or the 3500 Marines sent before the 1965 Civil Rights Act was signed were related to this. Both chambers had a Democratic supermajority, so there was no way that train was going to be derailed, and planning had begun in October or November of 1964, well before the legislative push for a second Civil Rights Bill (well, the Voting Rights Act) had begun (everyone was in election mode). Rolling Thunder was in February '65, and the Marines showed up in March, I think.
The push for the Voting Rights Act was delayed into 1965, but the change in the political and social climate brought on by the Segregationist violence of that Winter and continuing through the year convinced holdouts to support it over Dixiecrat opposition. It was well into the legislative process when the second tranche of troops was proposed in July without Congressional approval needed, I think, and the Voting Rights bill passed in August. Again, I can't find mention that anyone was brought on board by a promise to increase involvement in Vietnam. An aggressive stance on Vietnam against the spread of Communism was a feature of both Kennedy's and Johnson's policies of the time, and that's why I noted that four years later, it would be Johnson's undoing and propel Nixon into the presidency on an anti-war platform. Well, a peace platform, anyway.
The Bushes from my vantage only seem to reinforce my point. H. W's Desert Storm does not help him get re-elected and the 2004 re-election by W was decided on by Gay marriage as a wedge issue. At that point the search for WMD was stopped admitting the lie, Abu Ghraib had broken, Journalist are being beheaded, rendition and black sites were known about, the Battle of Fallujah left many appalled and probably a full scale civil war starting in Iraq. Never mind Guantanamo Bay. And W. Still got elected.
Bush 2 was re-elected during a campaign where the Democrats made a referendum of Bush's war - and lost. I question your timeline. The first Fallujah campaign was in April of 2004, and was sort of just another campaign. Second Fallujah was the worst bloodbath of the war - and it started on November 7th 2004, fully five days after the elections, and lasted for six weeks. That was the one that really engaged the public against Bush. Again, while Abu Ghraib was used as a big negative by Dems, it was not sufficient to take down Bush. The campaign, as I recall it, hinged on the GWOT, not on gay rights. According to later analyses, anti-gay-marriage amendments in 11 states did *not* increase Republican turnout. So I question that assumption.
The war was a popular, winning issue that brought enough of Bush's constituents out to win.
I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that foreign affairs are at *least* as powerful a motivator in elections as domestic ones.
I did contemplate changing the title and scope of the thread, but even after all this is resolved, I believe the issues caused by Netanyahu's proposed changes will still need to be dealt with. So I left it.
Anyone is welcome to start a Palestine thread.
I did contemplate changing the title and scope of the thread, but even after all this is resolved, I believe the issues caused by Netanyahu's proposed changes will still need to be dealt with.
If WaPo's reporting from a few weeks ago was accurate, Hamas told Iran and Hezbollah they were planning for October 7th back in March when Netanyahu started the whole mess that got this thread started. It seems fair to infer that Hamas decided to take advantage of the instability caused by Netanyahu trying to neuter the Supreme Court and avoid being removed from power via criminal charges.
So yeah, a fair argument could be made that everything discussed in this thread can be laid at his feet, from the near toppling of the State of Israel's democracy to cratering Gaza. Multiple crises of his making.
This is a long thread and it's late for me so I'll just say, I'm pretty sure we should go with the Scoia'tael.
As I've said years ago in relation to my own experiences the hatred I have is not for the young men and women who are ginned up to commit these acts as young people are dumb and easily lead. My hatred is for the old men and women who sit in comfortable surroundings and send these young people out to kill and be killed. If you are looking for "sides" that's how you should view these conflicts.
As always - don't look at it as a race issue, look at it as a class issue.
Sounds like Biden is increasingly angry about Netanyahu not doing anything to cool it with the radical settlers in the West Bank. More and more incidents keep happening there, instigated by the settlers, and the government isn't doing enough to chill out.
Even Israeli officials are getting frustrated with their government as it is creating a wedge between their country and the Biden administration.
Axon, I'd agree if these hypothetical young men and women you describe were opting to a life of resistance purely out of economic choice but this is plainly not the case in Palestine.
You're talking about millions deprived of any chance of peaceful economic prosperity. If you've got no future, of course you'll look at a life of striking those who oppress you and your loved ones. Hungry youth can't be blamed for being manipulated to commit and throw their lives away for a cause. If there was no cause worth throwing one's life away or would be a completely different calculus. The real blame lies in the machinations of post WW2 Europe and the US conspiring to dump the Israel problem on Palestinians.
The real blame lies in the machinations of post WW2 Europe and the US conspiring to dump the Israel problem on Palestinians.
Maybe I misunderstand your point, but the British took Palestine and declared in 1917 that they supported using it as a homeland for Diaspora Jews. They had previously promised the area as an Arab state, in the 1915 McMahon Note. This led to the 20th and 21st century issues, directly, because it was never sorted out enough for the British to create a self-governing state for either constituency.
But here was no independent (of Britain) state of Palestine until it was declared during the 1948 war. That lasted months at most as Israel succeeded in gaining its independence through the war.
The US did support, through words and diplomacy, but not supplies or troops, the foundation of Israel, but I can't see how you get from 33 years of British diplomatic screw-ups to the US "conspiring" to dump a "problem" - the state of Israel - on the Palestinians, who were at the time involved with several neighboring Arab states in trying to kill all the Jews in the Mandate, and had not had their own independent state.
Granted, the US quickly became the biggest booster of Israel as it's Jewish population made it's foreign policy desires known. And it has become an unquestioning partner, until this conflict, which has contributed to the massive subjugation of the Palestinians. But the root cause here is not the US "conspiring" to create a problem, since the problem had a 31 year history before Israel and Palestine came to be as independent states.
I don't think we are directly to blame for this. Sadly, I think it's Great Britain that was much more at fault.
Ro, I want to respond but I'm not going to as we are veering off topic. I'll open another thread later 
Axon, I'd agree if these hypothetical young men and women you describe were opting to a life of resistance purely out of economic choice but this is plainly not the case in Palestine.
You're talking about millions deprived of any chance of peaceful economic prosperity. If you've got no future, of course you'll look at a life of striking those who oppress you and your loved ones. Hungry youth can't be blamed for being manipulated to commit and throw their lives away for a cause. If there was no cause worth throwing one's life away or would be a completely different calculus. The real blame lies in the machinations of post WW2 Europe and the US conspiring to dump the Israel problem on Palestinians.
Yes, "old men and women who sit in comfortable surroundings". That's who I find fault with. I don't think we are disagreeing here. Also, don't forget I'm not applying this to Palestinians either. I'm also considering the young men and women in the IDF who are angry and scared, never mind the wider Isreali populace. I find their reaction understandable as well. As far as how they are used, that is for others to decide and not them.
To be honest, I don't like using the past to solve these issues or find blame as you have to deal with the here and now. Sometimes there are wrongs you can never make right so why open those wounds especially when the solution is going to be riddled with compromise and even unsettled issues as is?
Yes, best to start a new thread for that one, thanks. You make very good points, both of you.
I meant for the foreign policy vs domestic policy one. This one is fine
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