Politics has brought so much angst in recent years that when hope comes along we should savor it. Last week delivered a dollop of unexpectedly good news from the US, news that should encourage, and perhaps instruct, those who oppose the menace of nationalist populism the world over — even in the UK.
The struggle against that danger has enjoyed mixed fortunes this autumn. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was ejected in Brazil, only for an election in Israel to seal the comeback of former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu two days later.
However, the message from last week’s US midterms is clear: Populists can be defeated.
Illustration: Yusha
US voters had made that point two years ago, when they showed then-US president Donald Trump the door, but few thought they would do it again this time.
The talk was of a Republican Party “red wave,” with precedent and polls pointing to heavy losses for an incumbent Democratic Party saddled with rising inflation and an unpopular president. This was not just a media invention: With only the odd exception, senior Democrats were braced for defeat.
Instead, the party won several of the closest US Senate races and kept losses in the US House of Representatives so low that even if Republicans do take eventual control of that body — the votes are still being counted — it would not be with the emphatic majority they assumed.
It turns out that, even when Trump is not on the ballot, sufficient numbers of people in the US would reject Trumpist candidates who have plunged deep into unhinged conspiracy theory and contempt for democracy, and they would defend their rights.
There are lessons to learn here, for Democrats looking to 2024 most obviously, but also for those beyond the US battling their own versions of the Trumpist peril.
A first takeaway is that such an effort requires great discipline. The anti-Netanyahu forces in Israel lacked it: Had several small opposition parties put aside their differences and formed alliances, they would have won enough seats to deprive the former prime minister of a governing majority.
As it was, two of those parties narrowly failed to clear the electoral threshold to enter parliament, leaving Netanyahu smiling.
The US Democrats were much more focused, exhibiting “an incredible amount of message discipline,” Democratic Party strategist David Shor said.
They stuck to the issues where the US public agree with them and avoided those where they are out of step, he added.
They refused to be drawn on to the terrain where Republicans wanted to fight — even left-wing candidates distanced themselves from the “defund the police” slogan — instead digging on turf where Democrats enjoy public support, whether that be jobs, healthcare or abortion rights.
The latter issue was especially galvanizing, following the US Supreme Court’s summer decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and its constitutional protection of a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
However, Democrats also made a case that some feared would bring no electoral reward. They pressed the argument that Trumpist Republicans posed a threat to democracy itself, reminding voters that this was the first election since last year’s Jan. 6 attempted insurrection, an event that too many Republicans excused and for which all but a handful refused to hold the former president accountable.
Above all, Democrats cast as dangerously extreme the majority of Republicans who perpetuate Trump’s “big lie” that the election of 2020 was stolen.
Plenty of Democrats worried that was a mistake, fretting when US President Joe Biden made democracy the theme of his last major pre-election address. They warned that it was too abstract an issue, of grave concern to liberal elites — to the university seminar rooms and opinion pages — but a luxury consideration for voters preoccupied with the cost of petrol.
Yet the argument cut through. While those Republicans who had publicly resisted the “big lie” — the Governor of Georgia, for example — won easily, Trumpist election-deniers fared especially badly, losing winnable contests in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Arizona.
Moderate might be a dirty word to the Republican faithful, but extremist is a toxic label to the wider electorate. Strikingly, 56 percent of US voters who describe themselves as moderate voted for Democrats.
This is encouraging for anti-populists the world over. Of course, each context is different and few nations would have witnessed proof of the lethal danger posed by nationalist populism as vividly undeniable as the attempted coup of Jan. 6.
Nevertheless, the Democrats’ experience suggests one can be too wary of issues lazily dismissed as of concern solely to a liberal elite.
In the UK, the Labour Party has multiple reasons for steering clear of Brexit, but among the weakest is the notion that it is of interest only to the “remoaner” chattering classes.
Brexit is having an impact on people’s jobs, businesses, education, bills and basic freedom to move. In a way, it has more practical relevance to Britons’ daily lives than the question of democracy has to Americans’.
However, the UK’s opposition party is shy of touching it. Last week’s US Democratic Party successes make a case for the abandonment of such timidity. The Democrats were brave, and it paid off.
There is more advice contained in the US’ results. For any party of progress serious about winning, the support of women matters enormously: Exit polls confirmed that abortion rights trailed just a few points behind inflation as the issue of greatest concern to voters.
“Abortion voters supported Democrats by a larger margin than inflation voters supported Republicans,” an analyst said.
Unsurprisingly, those “abortion voters” included more women than men.
Young voters were also crucial. While the over-45s favored Republicans, the under-30s backed the Democrats by a staggering 28-point margin. Biden’s moves to shrink student debt deserve some credit for that.
As always, minorities were an essential part of the Democratic coalition, although the drift rightward of Hispanic voters — most noticeably in Florida, where they helped Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis win a landslide — is a warning to progressive parties everywhere that they cannot take the support of minority communities for granted. They have to earn it, demonstrating that they understand — and celebrate — the aspiration to move up and out as well as any conservative.
There is no shortage of lessons from the US. Of course, the differences between there and everywhere else are obvious and nothing reads across precisely.
However, the US election proved once more that the conventional wisdom is often wrong, that fatalism is always wrong — and that, every now and then, politics can turn out right.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing
A group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers led by the party’s legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (?) are to visit Beijing for four days this week, but some have questioned the timing and purpose of the visit, which demonstrates the KMT caucus’ increasing arrogance. Fu on Wednesday last week confirmed that following an invitation by Beijing, he would lead a group of lawmakers to China from Thursday to Sunday to discuss tourism and agricultural exports, but he refused to say whether they would meet with Chinese officials. That the visit is taking place during the legislative session and in the aftermath