"We never had a chance"

I borrowed that title from a band called Brian Jonestown Massacre - a clever name for a band that has been around since the 1990s. Why? I have been processing what happened on election night here in the US. What I have to say won't provide any real comfort, since we still face a uphill battle to prevent this nation from descending into fascism and chaos for the foreseeable future. But perhaps I can help provide some perspective. 

A theme I have seen emerge in elections in reasonably well-functioning democracies around the world since 2023 is that the majority or governing party in almost any election we can think of has been voted out of power. Sometimes that is meant that a liberal or social democratic led government gets replaced by a conservative led government. Sometimes the conservative - or in the case of Poland authoritarian government - gets replaced by a coalition of more moderate and liberal parties. See what happened to the Tories in the UK. In France, the centrist party got wiped out and its President now leads with a coalition of parties that have absolutely nothing in common aside from preventing a fascist party from seizing power. There does not appear to be a coherent ideological shift. It seems more like each nation's respective voters are simply unsatisfied with their present government and want change. 

Why this trend toward change elections? I don't truly know, but I will offer a few educated guesses. I doubt anyone was truly happy about how elected governments handled the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a genuine catastrophic event that killed millions and traumatized so many others. I'd like to think most governments did the best they could. In my country, Trump botched the response to the crisis, and aside from agreeing to throw tons of money at pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine, he used his time in office to deny the crisis or to offer anti-science conspiracy theorizing or pushing various forms of snake oil instead of using his platform to encourage safety. I suspect if I were to have an in-depth conversation with any of my counterparts in the democratic parts of the world, they would have their own specific grievances with how their governments handled that crisis.

If you look at how our global supply chains work, you probably can suss out that all of us were going to end up experiencing a ton of inconveniences, including shortages of supplies which along with a fair amount of consumer spending drove up inflation. Inflation really gets folks' dander up. I understand. I watched my weekly grocery bill go up considerably, had to wait for appliances that were much more expensive than before the pandemic, and of course felt the pain at the pump whenever I needed to refuel my car. Wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East disrupt supply chains further, and can drive up prices of fundamental commodities such as grains. Even though presidents and prime ministers have no real control over the ensuing supply chain disruptions and inflation that results, voters tend to blame them anyway. So when the voters got their chance to go to the polls, they have almost universally chosen to "throw the bums out." Maybe that can be a positive in some contexts and a negative in other contexts. Yes, Moldova's President defied gravity in her recent re-election campaign, and did so in spite of massive Russian interference in that election. That the pro-EU referendum just barely passed there should give us pause. It was supposed to pass handily. 

I am telling you this to give you some context for understanding why our election in the US went the way it did. It was obvious by mid-2023 that Joe Biden's approval ratings were going to be way underwater no matter what he did, and that is usually a harbinger of becoming a one-term President. Inflation was going to be pinned on him no matter what. It may not be rational, but we humans are not rational animals. A case could be made that he step aside then and allow the Democratic Party to run a competitive primary to find a successor as party leader. His age did not help, especially after his disastrous debate performance in June this year. The choice to pass the torch to Harris was probably as sound a decision as any, and Harris ran an energetic campaign, pulling in a potential grand coalition against Trump. In the end, it may not have mattered. Prices are still higher than before the pandemic, and there was no way to get around that. Trump could run as a "change" candidate and in spite of his godawful performance in debates and at public events won. It's arguable that Harris never had a chance, but she came across as hopeful and energized a number of us who were despondent prior to late July. Too bad there isn't a prize for a second-place finish. 

I hope that you at least understand that the Democratic Party's losses this election year are understandable when placed within a larger global context, in which governing parties across the world have been voted out. We were no exception, and we are not special enough to be an exception no matter how much we may have wished it to be otherwise. That knowledge will not help with the fact that anyone residing in the US, outside of a select few, face dire consequences in the weeks and years ahead. But at least we can move forward a bit minus the lament that the Democratic Party's losses made no sense. They make quite a bit of sense, even if the outcome is going to have tragic consequences.