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I've been Noticing lately that governments with any significant period of incumbency during the Covid period are tending to get hammered into the ground in the first 'dust-clears' election available. I suppose it's too much to think hope that voters are putting 2 + 2 together on the 'sky-money + forced business closure --> inflation + impending doom' thing -- but the 'inflation + impending doom' thing does seem to be enough.
I guarantee you that almost every swing Tory-Labour in the UK, Liberal-Conservative in Canada, or Labour-National in the New Zealand hasn't suddenly decided COVID policies were the wrong way to go.
They think, "it was good we got checks and didn't go crazy like the American's did opening up so soon, but bad prices rose."
Meanwhile, part of the reason, outside of general two party dominance that despite his current not great approval ratings, Biden is still outpacing most other incumbent world leaders is because regardless of what the Right and Left both think, the economy is currently the best in the world and inflation is amongst the lowest.
True -- but they are also Noticing that things kind of suck ATM and seem likely to get worse before they get better; this is what I mean by the electorates' inability to put 2 and 2 together at least not hindering them in making sure the incumbents reap what they've sown.
Note well that this isn't really a left-right thing -- the British Conservatives are probably getting hammered by a Labour party which in it's Blair iteration was to the right of the current Canadian Liberals -- who are set to be hammered by a Conservative party that is a bit incohate at the moment, but certainly very left wing by American conservative standards.
Sure, but if those parties had done what people here would've wanted on the pandemic, they would've likely lose elections in the 2020/2021 era, so at worst, they got three extra years in power, so they got to do what they likely thought was right, get celebrated for it politically, but then they lost as all politicians do.
Like, I know parts of this site likes to engage in conspiratorial-type thinking, but in reality, most politicians actually say and do what they believe on the big stuff. Poltiicians are actually far more honest today in 2024, worldwide, than they ever have been in history, because there's more feedback loops than anytime in history.
If you were a random Dixiecrat from North Carolina in 1966, you could go to DC, actually work well with your African-American colleagues in the Democratic party, vote for big-time spending bills that pushed a lot of money to inner cities, but also your district, then go back to your district, say some race-baiting stuff in some speeches, go to the opening of the bridge you got money for, slam the spending in Harlem, and easily win reelection, because nobody cares about a random House race in North Carolina.
Now, for good and ill, no politician can really pull that two step.
Most of the parties in question pulled snap Covid elections to cement their mandate (despite the dEadLY pANdemIC going on at the time) -- the timing in Canada anyways was such that a hypothetical politician with some shred of understanding about inflation could have hung in there with a Sweden-level response and reaped the rewards of a strong dollar (vs the US, always a political win) and low inflation.
You're right that most of these people probably believed in what they were doing, but the fact that the consequences were eminently predictible and they did it anyways leads me to believe (or hope at least) that some politicians might notice the correlation between "not believing stupid things" and long term electoral success/legacy. Politicians who go from 'strong minority govt' to 'scrabbling to maintain second place' are not generally treated kindly by the history books.
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"Politicians tell voters what they want to hear, but don't follow up" is conspiratorial thinking now? Don't get me wrong, as an open conspiracy theorist this is welcome news to me. The issue I tend to run into is people saying "that's not a conspiracy" when I bring forward a documented case, so it will be nice to have a reference to possibly one of the most milquetoast examples of following incentives, being deemed conspiratorial thinking by an anti-conspiracist.
Depends on your definition of didn't follow up. Also, it's bad politicking to say, "if we get elected, and a big enough majority, and nothing changes economically, we're going to do x and y." This is true for Republican's and Democrat's - I'm not being partisan here.
Now, do politicians sometimes sign on to various things from pressure groups in a primary, then basically ignore or hope it doesn't come up? Yeah, but again, it's still better than in the past, when politicians were supposedly better. No, there's just more coverage of it than there was in 1986.
Like, personally, as somebody very rare here - a pro-Democratic Party partisan social democrat, I'm basically fine with everything Biden did, as everything he said he'd do, but couldn't was a combination of Manchin & Sinema, or factors outside of his control. Maybe is there stuff at the edges, that lefties on Twitter sometimes claim he'd be able to do, but most of that is wishcasting.
Right, and if your electoral base really really wants X, which you are vehemently against, it's also bad politicking to not tell them "X? I love X! I will make the most X in the history of X!", and then coming up with excuses for not making X once you're in power. Or vice-versa for things they hate and you love.
It's not just that, they'll outright flaunt the entire reason they got elected. Approximately no one asked for the gender self-ID laws being passed in Europe, but we keep getting them. OTOH an end to mass migration, and having some semblance of a domestic farming / manufacturing base does tend to be popular, but we're just getting more globalisation.
Now hold on there, I never signed up for saying politicians were better in the past.
That's not even in the same orbit as "most politicians actually say and do what they believe on the big stuff".
" Approximately no one asked for the gender self-ID laws being passed in Europe, but we keep getting them."
I'm guessing transgender people and some college-educated non-religious social liberals asked for them, and since basically all politicians in non-reactionary parties end up being college-educated non-religious social liberals in modern times, they had no issue with it.
"OTOH an end to mass migration, and having some semblance of a domestic farming / manufacturing base does tend to be popular, but we're just getting more globalisation."
Now, I'm sure there's polling showing that on mass migration, but the issue is, there may be a majority opposed to mass migration, but once you account for people's salience on the issue, and what the parties advocating against mass migration are also for, that's where you run into problems. Also, there's the small matter that no European nation is actually totally independent anymore, but unfortunately for you at least, the aftermath of Brexit killed any real moves to leave the EU by any country for a generation, so even somebody like Meloni in Italy can't do much about the refugees.
But yes, you can have 70% in favor of stopping mass migration (just made up number), but if the only anti-mass migration party, because the others are all run by college-educated social liberals, are also staffed well, people who have either terrible policy views or continue to shoot themselves in the foot to win over normal voters, you get what you currently have. Now, I do actually think you'll eventually get what you want, a sort of Fortress Europe, but even then it's going to be very tough to deport many migrants already there, and Europe is basically on a permanent downslide that it's been on since basically the end of World War II, and people will blame the migrants, the EU, and such, and never blame the fact you guys just aren't special anymore. Meanwhile, us American's will screw up massively, then stumble upon some giant pile of lithium or whatever else we need, because that's how it goes.
Then, yes, in theory, people hate globalization, but they love the cheap stuff, and get very upset, as we've seen recently, when things get more expensive at all. Kind of a revealed preference in that people frankly, would rather have cheap stuff than a strong manufacturing base.
Did they? When I'm talking about self-ID, I do mean self-ID - a law that allows you to declare yourself to be another sex on the basis of nothing more than your say-so, and be considered such in the eyes of the law. My impression is that it's considered rather controversial even among trans people, seeing as this already resulted in rapists being sent to women's prisons, let alone for the modal non-religious social liberal. In countries like Spain and Germany, you could make the argument (I'd debate it though) that enough people must have wanted it, that the laws passed, as there was at least a proper public debate around them, but it's less believable in Malta where it was snuck through, or Ireland, where the activists themselves admit to pushing the law through under the cover of gay marriage.
An anti-immigration party losing fair and square because the issue isn't as important as others, or because they can't help but sperg out on other issues and turn off the voters is not what I'm talking about. Mainstream parties establishing "cordons sanitaires", because working with outright communists is fine, but a coalition with an anti-immigration party is beyond the pale, or playing with the idea of outright banning them when such a cordon might not be enough, is closer to what I'm talking about. But another part of it is when people elect supposed "fascists" on their anti-immigration platform, and they proceed to import immigrants anyway.
Yeah... that might be one of the reasons people were against immigration when there still weren't that many immigrants...
The problem with that argument is that pre-globalization is in living memory, and this claim doesn't make sense in light of it. My father-in-law supported his family on a single income, owns several properties, and his only education is a trade school. I think we could do worse then that (and in fact we are).
People get upset over expensive rent and food, not over expensive iPhones.
Revealed preference requires two options to be available to people, and taking the one that goes counter to what they express in public when you ask them. How does that apply to globalization? What switch can people flip to try the version of their country where they have expensive foreign goods, and a domestic manufacturing base?
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I think it's just a general vibe of "things are not good -> vote out the incumbents"
Not the best, but I'll take it!
Agreed -- one would like to think that it might act as a lesson to politicians that it may not be the best idea to jump off a bridge just because everyone else is doing it, but hahahaha not likely.
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