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When we say these are turbulent times, the only comfort is that the US isn’t the only place it’s happening. While it’s true that few countries have a freak show like the Musk administration, all the leading democracies are under strain. The danger, of course, is that with the whole world under such strain, it’s possible that things could go sideways very quickly.
The Wall St Journal reported this over the weekend:
One lesson from an unprecedented year of elections around the world is that voters in industrialized countries are particularly unhappy, ready to boot unpopular leaders out of office and making it more difficult for politicians in power to enact bold programs of change.
Rarely have the rich world’s political leaders been so widely disliked. No leader of an industrialized country other than tiny Switzerland has a positive rating, according to a survey of some 25 democracies by pollster Morning Consult. Ruling parties that went to the polls this year largely got a drubbing, including in the U.S. and U.K.
President Biden has a 37% approval rating. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has 26% approval, while France’s Emmanuel Macron sits at 19% and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at 18%, according to Morning Consult. Donald Trump’s popularity has been rising since he won the November election, but he still may start his term with a negative net rating, and he was the only president in modern history to start below 50% during his first term.
Voters in industrialized nations are anxious and angry after years of uncertainty caused by the pandemic, war in Europe, high inflation, stagnant real wages and surging immigration. Leaders are struggling to respond, constrained by tepid economic growth, higher borrowing costs and ballooning deficits that mean they are increasingly offering voters tough choices and trade-offs.
It’s a message many voters don’t want to hear, setting the stage for an era of increasingly fractious politics as parties squabble over how to share an economic pie that, with the notable exception of the U.S., isn’t growing. In European countries, it also threatens a kind of political doom loop, where unpopular leaders, often trying to hold together disparate coalition governments, struggle to pass meaningful legislation, preventing them from solving the problems voters elected them to fix in the first place.
France’s government collapsed last week for the first time since 1962 after a fight over budget cuts under Macron, who on Friday announced a new centrist prime minister. In November, Germany’s fractious coalition government collapsed over disagreements on economic policy, triggering a vote in February that spells likely defeat for Scholz. South Korea’s unpopular president, Yoon Suk Yeol, faces a second impeachment attempt this weekend after he recently declared a brief period of martial law, also linked to fights over budgets.
The upshot: Brace yourself for more political turbulence. This dysfunction is creating fertile ground for opposition parties, populists and antiestablishment politicians, from Trump in the U.S. to the far left and far right in Europe. And aided by social media, political cycles are going into overdrive. In the U.S., the incumbent party has now lost three consecutive elections for the first time since the 1890s.
Check this out:
I know I’ve written about this before as one explanation as to why we ended up with Trump again. Our curse is that the damned Republicans put up the guy we already turfed out four years ago again and we’re stuck with him for another term.
This is a sobering set of facts that people really need to absorb before they go on about how the Democrats failed because of their policy on this or that. I’m sure that’s why people are telling themselves that it happened but it’s obviously much bigger than that. This is a phenomenon confined to the rich world which is much angrier than the developing nations. Why?
The Journal offers up all the usual reasons for the dissatisfaction from immigration to status anxiety to ballooning deficits (what?) I’m sure there are many. One article that challenges that thinking is by a writer named Toby Buckle with an essay called “A Disease of Affluence” which I highly recommend you read when you have time.
He challenges the ubiquitous notion that working class Americans voted for Trump because of their economic anxiety pointing out the fact that lower income working people voted for Harris and vote for Democrats in every election. The average Trump voter is actually doing quite well.
He argues the opposite — that Americans, on the whole, are so relatively affluent that we’ve lost the social hierarchy that allows people to feel superior over their lessers. It’s a thought provoking riff on the economic and cultural argument that takes to task both the usual socialist bromides as well as the culture war rationales. It doesn’t explain everything but it certainly adds to the mix of ideas as to why the whole developed world is having a meltdown.
There’s a lot more to unpack on all this and we will do our best to do that as time goes by. We’re here seven days a week, sorting through the media, synthesizing it as best we can. If you have the means to help us keep doing that it would be most appreciated.
And Happy Hollandaise everyone!
cheers,
digby
