Good news for once. With a little bad in its slipstream

Good news never seems to come untarnished, does it? There’s always some accompanying bad news to take the sheen off a bit.

Still, my feeling is that while there is some good news around, let’s celebrate it. It doesn’t matter that it’s not unalloyed. It’s just so welcome after such a long time of depressing events.

They’ve mostly taken the form of moves towards ugly autocratic regimes in country after country, toxic in themselves and desperate for the future of the planet, as they generally deny that anything’s going wrong with it. We’ve had the re-election of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. We’re witnessing the rising power of the far right in France. And most recently there’s been the actual formation of a government of the extremist right in Italy. 

All very depressing.

That’s why it’s been such a joy to see a few authoritarians getting a bloody nose recently. Bolsonaro defeated in Brazil. Putin’s army forced to abandon the Ukrainian city of Kherson. And now the US electorate burying Donald Trump. 

The American mid-term elections weren’t just a balm to the soul because of the right’s failure to deliver the tsunami it had promised. Or threatened. It was immensely satisfying above all for the way Trump-endorsed candidates, or any candidate who upheld Trump’s big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, generally underperformed expectations. And the loss of reproductive rights, because of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, worked against anyone associated with him, since it was his appointees that made that happen. The faithful stuck with him, but they’re losing numbers, while in the meantime, independents turned out against him.

Being endorsed by Trump seemed like a sure road to electoral success in the not-so-distant past, but at these elections it turned into a millstone, costing candidates votes, and in many cases victories that looked all but in the bag.

Rob Jesmer, a former Republican strategist, commented that, “it's not a question of whether it was a negative, it's a question of how negative it was”.

This kind of conversion of a vote-winner into a vote-loser is by no means unprecedented. It has even happened in Britain in recent years. Twice.

Yesterday's men; Corbyn, Johnson, Trump
Vote winners who turned into vote losers

The first time was on the left. Jeremy Corbyn, from the hard left, was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015. An inspirational figure, he seemed at first to be a major electoral asset but, in 2019, he took Labour to its worst defeat since 1932.

The man who beat him, the Conservatives’ Boris Johnson, had the same experience. After leading his Party to an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons in 2019, his unethical behaviour and blatant lying punctured his balloon, until his own party finally ditched him earlier this year, as the only hope of mending its electoral chances. Vote winner to vote loser, just like Corbyn and Trump.

All of them men of the extremes. None able to keep the support of moderates.

But, as I said, good news doesn’t come unqualified. While it looks as though Trump has been struck a fatal blow by his underwhelming performance, the elections were clearly not won by the Democrats. Doing less badly than expected, even a lot less badly, isn’t the same as winning. The House of Representatives is slipping from their grasp, even while they take pleasure from retaining control of the Senate.

If there has been a clear winner, alongside Trump as a clear loser, it has been in the state they both call home. In Florida, Ron DeSantis romped home in his bid to retain the governorship, drawing Republican candidates on his coattails to unprecedented success across the state. He emerges from the election greatly strengthened in his own bid for the presidency and, while he’s at least as right wing as Trump, he’s less of a buffoon, which makes him more dangerous.

I just hope that he’s going to have trouble winning support for his particularly extreme brand of politics outside his state. What’s more, Trump has rounded on him, giving him one of his trademark nicknames, though rather a clunky one, Ron DeSanctimonious: even his touch in inventing nicknames seems to have abandoned him. It’s just possible that the two of them will tear each other apart, undermining the credibility of both and handing the next presidential election to the Democrats.

Still, that may be too optimistic. The right has done the left a favour in these mid-terms, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be as helpful in the run for the presidency. Besides, Democrats would have to find a candidate people can believe in, which there’s little sign of now.

Oh, well. Let’s wait and see. After all, as the Hungarian and Italian elections showed, electorates have trouble learning lessons. Take Britain, again. The Conservatives were elected to power in 2010, on a promise to bring debt down and wipe out deficits in government spending. The price would be some years of austerity, but they claimed the prize was worth the suffering. 

Twelve years on, debt has grown and there’s no sign of a balanced budget anytime soon. The Conservatives even elected a leader, Liz Truss, who in the shortest time in office of any Prime Minister in history, cost the British economy a further £30 billion. Meanwhile, austerity has torn the public services apart, particularly the National Health Service, buckling under the load on it and with its nurses about to strike over their appalling, and deteriorating, pay and conditions. 

And what’s the government promising? Why, more austerity again.

Fool me once, they say, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. As Conservative poll ratings tick up again, it looks as though many British voters – with luck, a minority – plan to vote for them again, allowing themselves to be fooled twice, and without an ounce of shame.

See what I mean? We’re beginning to get some good news. But always with a nasty streak of bad news close behind it.