Around the Globe, Incumbents are Getting Slaughtered. Dems Should be Real Nervous
The party who is most able to convince the American voter that electing them represents a real shift in the nation’s direction will win the top prize.
If there’s one word to describe the political environment on planet Earth in 2024, it’s change. Most developed democracies the world over have seen their incumbent parties, no matter how entrenched, pushed out of power in some way.
The latest country to follow this trend is Japan, where the ruling Liberal Democratic Party suffered catastrophic losses robbing it of its majority in the lower house. Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections were a shock to many international observers and saw the party, which has ruled almost unilaterally since the end of WWII, forced to make some uncomfortable decisions about next steps to take.
Though many will attempt to point to a complicated financial scandal as the main reason for the Liberal Democrats’ loss, the ills facing many of the world’s democracies have landed on Japanese shores as well: a lower quality of life and a sense that those in charge are either complacent or actively making things worse.
As one expert put it in The New York Times, “The last 30 years of stagnation and the deterioration of the living standards, especially for young people — the frustration is there.”
Sound familiar? It’s the same story we’re hearing in Europe, where young French and Germans are feeling the social fabric tearing at the seams by unfettered illegal migration. There’s a sense of decline, like the great nations that once stood heads and tails above their peers are slowly sinking into the morass.
I recall the story of one young East German voter, who reported a sense that nobody went out into the streets anymore over fears surrounding societal decline. That sentiment came right after voters like him delivered the incumbent Christian Democratic Union a crushing defeat in the region.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Party saw massive gains even in the face of concerted efforts to deny them power. French President Emmanuel Macron took a beating from both the right and the left as voters declared they were fed up with his style of governance.
Rebuking incumbents isn’t simply a left to right equation, however. In Britain, Rishi Sunak’s Tories were taken to task by Kier Starmer’s left-wing Labour Party. In India, ultra-nationalist Narendra Modi lost his majority in the lower house to various smaller regional parties.
The routine routing of incumbent parties across the globe suggests it’s not necessarily a left-right divide, but a sense that people are just really pissed off at their current leaders and want change. Which brings us to America.
As much as Harris and the Democrats claim that they would bring change and move the country forward, their record suggests anything but. In a move that some could paint as potential campaign ender, Harris said there wasn’t “a thing” she’d have done differently from Biden were she in charge.
Really? Not a single thing?
Even before he was exposed for being the political equivalent of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” Biden was massively unpopular for a cavalcade of reasons. People were pissed off that the border was wide open, that the economy was in the tank and inflation was sky high, and that the world felt less safe as wars seemed to crop up every 20 minutes.
Democrats realized they were sleepwalking into an electoral blowout come November and pragmatically decided to throw Biden under the bus. Harris, now “freed” from Biden’s yoke, would be free to campaign as a new woman, no longer an incumbent. Except, oops she’s still campaigning like one.
This was clear right from the get-go when Harris was anointed as the nominee. The DNC platform document was exactly the same as when Biden still held the top slot, down to the same failed border and climate policies.
The international wave of political upheaval should make Democrats very, very nervous. Global voters are serving as a harbinger of bad tidings to come. The common man’s patience is wearing thin as mounting frustrations about declining living standards, a loss of identity and social hegemony, and increasing insecurity continue to build.
While I’m not a prophet, I can confidently predict that the party who is most able to convince the American voter that electing them represents a real shift in the nation’s direction will win the top prize. That’s a difficult claim for the current Vice President to make.
There’s an anti-incumbent tide rolling in. Democrats might want to find a life-jacket.