What Went Down At The January Democratic Debate

In a January poll from YouGov/Economist, 55 percent of Americans thought North Korea’s nuclear program was either an “immediate and serious” or “somewhat serious” threat to the United States. In the same poll, 45 percent of Americans thought it was more important to avoid war with North Korea than to take away the country’s nuclear weapons. Thirty-five percent thought it was more important to remove the nuclear weapons while 19 percent were unsure.

When I was asking readers earlier today what science issues mattered to them, I got a lot of responses about the importance of funding scientific research. As I listen to this debate about military spending and war, I’m sort of struck by how seldom we engage with the reality that federal science funding began with military spending and is still heavily tied up in that. In some ways, we have a strong history of science funding BECAUSE we also have a long history of high military spending.

I do think it’s a sign of how much fatigue there is around war in the Middle East that most of the candidates are talking about deescalation/the dangers of Trump’s actions in Iran without seeming to worry about whether voters will think they look weak on national security.