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Politics

Democrats Join 2024's Graveyard of Incumbents 385

An anonymous reader shares a post from Financial Times: The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world. From America's Democrats to Britain's Tories, Emmanuel's Macron's Ensemble coalition to Japan's Liberal Democrats, even to Narendra Modi's erstwhile dominant BJP, governing parties and leaders have undergone an unprecedented series of reversals this year.

The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that have been tracked by the ParlGov global research project and held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records. Ultimately voters don't distinguish between unpleasant things that their leaders and governments have direct control over, and those that are international phenomena resulting from supply-side disruptions caused by a global pandemic or the warmongering of an ageing autocrat halfway across the world.

Voters don't like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when inflation hit. The cost of living was also the top issue in Britain's July general election and has been front of mind in dozens of other countries for most of the last two years. That different politicians, different parties, different policies and different rhetoric deployed in different countries have all met similar fortunes suggests that a large part of Tuesday's American result was locked in regardless of the messenger or the message. The wide variety of places and people who swung towards Trump also suggests an outcome that was more inevitable than contingent.

But it's not just about inflation. An update of economist Arthur Okun's "misery index" -- the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates -- for this era might swap out joblessness and replace it with immigration. On this basis, the past couple of years in the US, UK and dozens of other countries have been characterised by more economic and societal upheaval than they have seen in generations.

Democrats Join 2024's Graveyard of Incumbents

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  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @08:23AM (#64932627) Homepage

    Especially unemployment rates. Some (many? most?) countries cheat on their numbers, by not counting people who have simply given up ever finding a job.

    Taking the US as an example, the official unemployment rate is the U-3 rate [bls.gov], which is currently 4.1%. More honest is the U-6 rate, which is published but never used, and is at 7.7%. However even that does not include people who simply don't want to work, for whatever reason.

    • Especially unemployment rates. Some (many? most?) countries cheat on their numbers, by not counting people who have simply given up ever finding a job. Taking the US as an example, the official unemployment rate is the U-3 rate [bls.gov], which is currently 4.1%. More honest is the U-6 rate, which is published but never used, and is at 7.7%. However even that does not include people who simply don't want to work, for whatever reason.

      Maybe, but that doesn't account for the election, since the U-6 unemployment rate is currently as low as it's ever been in the last 30 years. There's a slight hint that U-6 might have bottomed out and be heading up, but so far that change is a fraction of a percent, in the noise.

      The big spike in U-6 unemployment was the Covid years, when it hit 22.4% in April 2020.

    • Especially unemployment rates. Some (many? most?) countries cheat on their numbers, by not counting people who have simply given up ever finding a job.

      Yep, we're cheating. Only now obviously because right now it suits your narrative, but we weren't cheating a few years ago when the numbers looked higher right?

      More honest is the U-6 rate

      No it's not. There's nothing more or less honest. That's the whole reason multiple numbers are published. Each tells you a different thing about a different part of society. People who have given up on looking for a job are not correlated with the strength of the underlying economy which is why the number isn't typically used.

      • by godrik ( 1287354 )

        Actually, the U-1, through U-6 numbers are highly correlated. You can check the chart here: https://www.bls.gov/charts/emp... [bls.gov]

        Now I do believe that U-3 is the metric that most closely resembles what people imagine unemployment numbers should be.

        And I agree that we need to use one definition and not change it. I believe, for instance, France changed which number they used in the 90s from something that looks like U-4 to something that looks like U-3. That caused tons of people stopping to trust the official n

    • by godrik ( 1287354 )

      The reason why we mostly use the U-3 measure is because it is a natural definition of unemployment. It is basically "people who don't have a job and want/have recently searched for one". It also aligns with how most of the other countries measure unemployment which makes comparisons easy.

      I don't know that it makes too much sense to count part time workers who want a better job as if they were unemployed. In all economies you are going to have not-so-appealing part time jobs; you need people to fill them too

    • Guessing the spelling error in your Subject is evidence of your haste to FP. Apparently propagated more than 20 times and spanning about 20% of the discussion. So the span is evidence that you touched a nerve, or at least stimulated some nerves later on? So call it a pretty good FP with a distracting Subject?

      My initial response would have involved expanding to consider deliberating pushing workers out of the labor force. Especially old folks from the perspective of yours truly. But at this point in time the

  • Fancy words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by korgitser ( 1809018 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @08:25AM (#64932629)

    The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world.

    That's a very fancy way to say that they've done goofed up...

    • The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world.

      That's a very fancy way to say that they've done goofed up...

      Yup. And now need to explain why those irrelevant folks, er, let's call them "voters", rejected them.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

        The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world.

        That's a very fancy way to say that they've done goofed up...

        Yup. And now need to explain why those irrelevant folks, er, let's call them "voters", rejected them.

        I'll go out on a limb and note that there is an elephant in the room.

        Kamala Harris had a real male voter problem. And that makes for a problem, because people with penises are still allowed to vote.

        And not much was done until they brought out the really cringy Men for Harris advert, which probably made it worse. A Chad, a Tyrone, but then for some reason they put in a dirty morbidly obese guy who bragged about knowing how to rebuild a carburetor, an effeminate guy sitting on his pickup tailgate, and a

        • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:48AM (#64932823) Homepage

          I'll go out on a limb and note that there is an elephant in the room. Kamala Harris had a real male voter problem. And that makes for a problem, because people with penises are still allowed to vote.

          Does not explain why this data shows incumbent parties are losing "in every single one of the 10 major countries" worldwide.

          • I'll go out on a limb and note that there is an elephant in the room. Kamala Harris had a real male voter problem. And that makes for a problem, because people with penises are still allowed to vote.

            Does not explain why this data shows incumbent parties are losing "in every single one of the 10 major countries" worldwide.

            That is correct - Which is why I only mentioned Harris' problem. Her campaign was aimed at women voters. There was a pretty clear delineation, and even when they tried to address it, they made a stereotype advertisement that was pretty cringy. It showed what their concept of men are, and definitely did not help their cause. I haven't voted for republicans for over 20 years now, and didn't this election either.

            But I get a lot of hate from women who believe that I am the problem because I am a man.

            As hu

        • Re:Fancy words (Score:5, Interesting)

          by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:57AM (#64932845)

          It's funny that I only hear this type of thing from conservative men. I know I personally have never felt any meaningful level of women perceiving men as any kind of enemy. Yes, many women take issue with the fact that more men than women appose abortion but I've certainly never felt that was an issue with men in general.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            It's funny that I only hear this type of thing from conservative men. I know I personally have never felt any meaningful level of women perceiving men as any kind of enemy. Yes, many women take issue with the fact that more men than women appose abortion but I've certainly never felt that was an issue with men in general.
            It's funny in 1972 when Nixon won 49 of 50 states, Paulina Kael said she didn't know any Nixon voters, unlike you though, she did not doubt their existence, just she did not know any. If y
    • Re:Fancy words (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @08:32AM (#64932645)

      The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world.

      That's a very fancy way to say that they've done goofed up...

      And you have a very fancy way of saying they fucked up in unimaginable ways.

      Losing, is one thing. Losing like we haven’t seen in 120 years? That deserves a seven-figure fight contract with the UFC just for the entertainment value.

    • That was a really simple post to show you didn't get the point at all, and you're exactly the kind of voter who is the real problem.

      "Bad thing happened, blame politician regardless of actual cause and effect, vote for opposition without considering policy".

      Wonderful.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 )

        If anything, you calling him the real problem IS the real problem.
        It's an inherent fault of democracy that politicians get judged on promises and fast, charming talk, while incumbents get judged on actual results.
        You could say that voters should do their homework and look into the candidate's past and do proper diligence, but that too is an inherent fault of democracy since the vote of someone who does due diligence, and someone who's gonna decide based on what the guy in front of him will pick, both count

        • This might be a tall reach, and it will only get taller with every year of internet brain rot.

          Reagan broke school funding. Whether you agree that this was intentional or not (I do) this has had an undeniably significant effect on our education systems, which were already starting to suffer. Something had to be done, but what he did wasn't it.

          Screwing up education has been a bipartisan effort. Biden was instrumental in creating the student loan problem, for example. But the Gipper really leaned in there and hit us at an early age.

      • No, you didn't get the point. All of the western leadership has fscked up in a major way during the last 50 years. Voters flipping between parties is them searching desperately for someone to actually deliver some results. In vain, because there is no results to be found, only more fsckups.

        Voting is not going to change any of this, as the choices offered up for vote are meaningless. Whichever cheek of the ass you vote for, the ass is still going to shit all over you.

    • That's a very fancy way to say that they've done goofed up...

      Who did? Democrats? The left? The continent? When you move outside the bubble and see that cost of living has skyrocketed the entire world over and transcends all of the political spectrum and even transcends economic systems, it shows the only people who have "goofed up" are the idiots who blame it on political party X in their home country.

      • Everyone goofed up. The idiots who blame it on party X goofed up, but you cannot blame them, because the parties have conditioned them to do that through constant media bullshit; in any case these idiots goofing up is nonconcsequentianonl, as they don't have any sway over the political functioning of a country.

        The leadership goofing up, all of them, every party and every country, that has real consequences, and the consequences are here, and dire, and we haven't got the faintest actual idea of how to do any

  • People point at the core inflation rate as if it were the total and complete description of prices, and that's stupid at best and a deliberate lie at worst. But lie all you want, someone living in said economy knows when prices are up. If rent, food, and gas are up well that's most of what I'm paying for if I'm in the bottom 50% of income and it's a significant amount if I'm in the bottom 70%. You think quoting me a lie on a national news network is going to make me feel better about the tough choices I hav
    • One of few things where political instincts and the public's best interests align behind the lie, I think.

      If a politician comes out and says, "we're fucked, folks, bend over and grab your ankles"... you get widespread panic and the situation gets worse, and the politician gets run out of town. They have to lie with the most optimistic interpretation of the economy that they can sell, for both their own self-interest and the general public's.

      Of course, the politicians seeking power are free to tell us all t

  • Great. Because politicians are known for being altruists who would rather do their best to lead us for the common good and not craven opportunists. (/s)

    If you want your party and your personal political career to survive... you have to bail as soon as something bad and outside your control appears on the horizon, let the other party take the fall for it, then come in as the savior afterwards. That doesn't sound like a great formula for good governance.

  • Incumbency?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by La Onza ( 7334544 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @08:48AM (#64932673)

    Please don’t take this as some kind of MAGA victory lap – because it isn’t. That said, I have seen very little to no consideration by those on the left of the possibility that the American people simply believe the Trump’s policies overall are better than Harris’s. The pundits and politicians on the left site incumbency or misogyny or racism or some strategic messaging mistake to urban single men in the south with red hair without even taking a breath to slow down and consider – maybe the people just don’t want her policies, and, yes – to really consider that maybe the people made the right decision based on their own self interests. It is possible.

    • You are exactly right. I live among many Trump supporters. They were *not* reacting to "incumbency." They are instead, horrified by Biden's policies.

      They *hate*
      - abortion
      - gay marriage
      - being forced to use transgender pronouns and allowing boys to compete in girls' sports, etc.
      - immigrants (No, not just the illegal ones, all immigrants. If they were really OK with legal immigration, they would be in favor of reforming the process to enter legally, but they are not.)
      - excessive environmental regulation (exce

      • While those wedge issues were likely a factor, exit polls noted that the #1 issue for voters was the economy. People were angry about inflation, jobs, and taxes.

        Of course, inflation is now down to 2.4%. Unemployment is at a ten year low. The stock market is at record highs. Federal income taxes are near the 50-year average. Corporate profits are high. Gasoline prices are down. The US currently has one of the best economies in the western world. But when you talk to Trump supporters, they blame Biden

    • Trump was running commercials back in 2020 calling Biden's age into question. Now Trump is older than than Biden was back then.

      President Trump, you – you talked about how the increase in the price of food, gas and rent is hurting families, but the real cost that’s breaking families’ backs and preventing women from participating in the workforce is child care. Child care is now more expensive than rent for working families and is costing the economy more than $122 billion a year, making it

      • Did we all forget his sundowning to Ave Maria at a rally ? His election did not make him competent. Policy and Politics aside, the person is just not fit for the job....but Baron VonShitsThePants will be hitting forward on his computer soon so Vlad will see The President's Daily Briefing on the regular again.
  • by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:09AM (#64932723)

    Yes, a "rightwing" party lost big in Britain, if anything in Europe can count as "rightwing." But this was also the same party that's been undoing the damage from the Right Honorable Head of Lettuce for the past two years.

    Yeah the dems got some headwinds. But you know what: if you lose the popular vote to Donald Trump, it's not headwinds, it's your own dumbass policies that done it:

      Natural gas export freeze, drilling bans, ICE car bans, gas stove bans, bullshit dishwasher efficiency standards, loan forgiveness for grown ass adults who made suboptimal choices and now want mommy government to take the ouchies away, Sam Brinton (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Brinton) in charge of securing nuclear waste, "whole-of-government" equity mandates, you name it.

    • by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:23AM (#64932767) Journal

      But this was also the same party that's been undoing the damage from the Right Honorable Head of Lettuce for the past two years.

      This was the same party that installed the Right Honorable Head of Lettuce. Only the Tory party MPs got to vote on the replacement for Johnson.

      Let's not forget the sleaze brought to politics by Johnson and his cronies.

      Trying to blame Tory party problems in Liz Truss is nonsensical.

    • Yes, a "rightwing" party lost big in Britain, if anything in Europe can count as "rightwing."

      I'm not sure what you're trying to say, presumably literal neo-nazis are not "right wing" enough for you. Do you think Orban isn't right wing? Wilders? Meloni? What does someone need to do to please you? Pass a law legalising the lynching of immigrants? What about the entire AfD which just made headway in regional elections throughout Germany, you know the party that proposed deporting all Muslims even if they are German citizens?

      Yeah nothing will ever be right wing enough for you, presumably not until we r

      • Nazis. Communists. All statist, collectivist trash.

        Tell me, comrade: Does your favorite "rightwing" bogeyman or woman deign to allow unrestricted speech? Permit free citizens to carry arms for self-defense? Entrust the population to manage their own finances without the state demanding a 40%+ cut, for their own good?

        Have fun wallowing in the ashes of the Old World, friend.

    • Yes, a "rightwing" party lost big in Britain, if anything in Europe can count as "rightwing."

      Either you don't know much about Europe or you think that the Republican party is to the right of the Italian neo-fascists. Sure you know what I'll let you have that one.

      But this was also the same party that's been undoing the damage from the Right Honorable Head of Lettuce for the past two years.

      Not really. Truss was a spectacular, but ultimately a minor bit part. This is the party that eviscerated public services

    • The government isn't taking away your cars or stoves. I can explain the stove ban (more like a warning label) if you care to listen. Newly constructed homes are well sealed and don't have good air exchange leading to higher carbon monoxide levels and other combustion byproducts. Ah but there is a magic new technology in the culinary world known as induction. In fact it heats pans faster than gas and has tons of features like being able to lock in pan at a specific temperature. Induction stoves even have sen

      • There's a magic device next to my stove called an "exhaust vent." I'm sure many homes have one.

        There's also this thing called amperage. A home or neighborhood designed for gas heating and cooking will have lower amperage conductors feeding it. Maybe a couple or three guys on the street can electrify but doing it for the whole block would require upgrading the transmission capacity at significant cost.

        This latter effect is known as the fallacy of composition: the assertion that what's good for me is going to

    • Re: "drilling bans" -- Record drilling under Joe. Gas prices are mostly controlled by other nations and more drilling won't change that. Drilling is a false hero.

      Re: "ICE car bans, gas stove bans" -- LIES

      Re: "bullshit dishwasher efficiency standards" -- Prove it's BS

  • Mandate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quintessencesluglord ( 652360 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:12AM (#64932739)

    Even with all the hopes for change, yesterdays' incumbents were at one time the winds of change, but they became arrogant and bought off.

    And I hold no illusions the same won't happen again.

    I doubt any structural change will happen without the threat of civil war, and in such fraught circumstances, it is difficult to chart a course towards that change.

    Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

  • by andyring ( 100627 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @09:22AM (#64932765) Homepage

    When campaigning: "Put me in office! I'll fix all the stuff you don't like!"

    Once in office: "Your life now sucks, you can't afford anything, and you lost your job? Not my fault, sorry! Can't do anything about it. But don't you DARE elect those other guys, they'll just make it worse!"

  • FTFS:

    Voters don't like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when inflation hit.

    Well, actually, voters don't like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when corporate price gouging and housing price gouging hit and never backed off.

    Also, because they have no other lever to "encourage" the corrupt political system to do something about it. Not that they will, of course. Have to keep those sweet corporate bribe flows running smoothly.

    • by XanC ( 644172 )

      In a competitive market, price gouging is a fiction. I think a big reason Harris lost was her proposal for Soviet-style price fixing.

  • Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Big Bipper ( 1120937 )
    It's not that countries are swinging to one side or the other. The real reason is that the people, who have been taking it in the ass since their politicians came out of the closet and showed their true colours during their covid hoax, are letting those politicians know what we think of them and their agenda. They are the ones who are really the deplorable garbage.
  • And keep it out of the workplace.
    And out of the movies.
    And out of bars.

    As a bartender explained to a reporter why she turned the sound off at the bar on election night, "politics makes people angry, and angry people don't buy drinks."

  • People felt like they were lied to about the state of Joe Biden after the debate performance to the point that even the dems. were saying we can't hide this anymore and out him. To make matters worse they install someone as the nominee who absolutely failed in primaries and as a vice-president had extremely low approval numbers. Secondly look at how the campaigns were ran Trump went to flyover states and smaller towns and listened and held genuine conversations with them while the democrats were insulting t
  • by jd ( 1658 )

    ... But to be fair on voters, the Democrats were well aware tgat Trump's policies were dangerously inflationary and that the world situation was dangerously unstable when they went into power.

    They could have urged the Federal Reserve to take action sooner (although they couldn't have actually made them).

    They could have put fewer constraints on the money for moving chip manufacturing back to America.

    They could have offered incentives, as part of that deal, for Intel to boost QA, which would have resulted in

  • Sadness. The topic needed some levity.

  • by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Saturday November 09, 2024 @05:40PM (#64933801)

    Every single one of these losing political entities was populated by jackasses who hang out with the globalists who go to Davos every year and plot to undermine nation states, national sovereignty, citizenship, national identities and cultures, and the lives and concerns of average people. These political leaders who went down in flames all participated in various schemes backed by guys like Klaus Schwab and George Soros to import massive waves of immigrants, clamp down on unapproved speech and opinions, reduce punishments for serious violent criminals, and move industries around to maximize profits for the billionaire globalist elites with no regard for the effects on average people. They all introduced or worsened the chaos in their respective countries to satisfy a bunch of would-be Dr Evils. In short, they all behaved towards their own populations in ways that would have made Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette blush, but this being modern times, they were not beheaded; they were simply kicked out of office.

    This is not about "left" or "right" (no matter how those terms are defined in the various countries), but rather it's a conflict between average people who were comfortable in their particular countries with their particular cultures, and globalists who want to flush that all away and build a "new world order" in which a small pool of self-selected rich and powerful people dictate the terms of life to everybody else.

"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..." -- Badger comics

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