Both leaders, facing waning support, are ignoring voters’ hunger for change
ALMOST EVERY DAY, I hear someone talk about how terrible things are right now. Whether it’s the crushing cost of housing, the escalating climate crisis, misinformation and rabid disinformation, the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, or the humanitarian crisis in Gaza—the list is endless. Older family members on both sides of the Canada–US border shake their heads and make comments about how terrifying and screwed up their country is. My ninety-two-year-old great aunt has said she’s glad she won’t be around much longer, while others in their seventies have put it more bluntly: it’s a good time to die. These are off-the-cuff statements, but they always leave me with a sinking feeling.
These days, what’s considered terrible is often a point of contention. What I think is terrible about our current situation isn’t necessarily what others think, nor do we agree on who or what can rectify it. And yet, across the political spectrum, across demographics and borders, there’s a palpable sense that things are broken and we need real change—fast. It’s as if critical aspects of the world we thought we lived in have finally started to crumble. Chronic instability is at the heart of it, the recognition that we’re living through a turbulent time in history.
This desire for change is one reason why calls for US president Joe Biden and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to not seek re-election feel so similar, though there are major differences between the two. Biden’s biggest liability is his age. At eighty-one, he’s part of the so-called Silent Generation, while Trudeau is quintessentially Gen X. Biden’s only been president since 2021, but he was vice president from 2009 to 2017, under Barack Obama. Trudeau’s been leading this country since 2015.
But both Biden and Trudeau embody an ethos and vision that are in stark contrast to the reality we’re facing. Both display a breathtaking confidence in their political prospects that borders on entitlement, as well as an inability to meaningfully address the severity of our current polycrisis. In Biden’s interview with ABC News on July 5, an interview that was supposed to calm nerves after his catastrophic appearance in the first presidential debate, Biden rejected any claims of pessimism. The New York Times called it “an exercise not just in damage control but in reality control.” Trudeau and his inner circle have similarly dismissed the storm brewing, especially after the recent by-election loss to the Conservatives in Toronto-St. Paul’s, previously a safe Liberal riding. As investigative journalist Justin Ling put it in an article for this publication, “if this government hopes to heal itself, Trudeau himself will need to appreciate—not explain away, or deflect, or tamp down—the anger that people are feeling.”
The right has done a great job at speaking to people’s economic anxieties. And by “great” I mean horribly exploitative, disingenuous and not a little bit fascist. Similarly, the erstwhile-left (and, given the shellacking the left took in Europe, this is a global thing) have done a terrible job at it, largely substituting identity issues for class ones, and loving themselves some neoliberalism because, well, it paid really well.
The political left has had it’s lunch eaten by right-wing populists who’ve been selling fascism as a cure for their supporters’ economic anxiety. It’s bullshit, of course, and the right-wing knows it’s bullshit, but it works, and the left is letting it work because they rather liked the Blair/Clinton third-way era and the money and power they got as a result. They liked getting invited to the cool kids’ parties. They don’t want to go back to being called “socialists” and having to grub for donations from little people.
The left is waking up, waaaaaaay too late in the game, to the idea that they’re about to become lines in Niemoller’s poem.
Is it tho? In a Canadian context, I only see mobilization around Culture War wedge issues that are framed by the right.
Left leaning talking heads show up in current affairs shows, decry neoliberal policies, but that’s about it. There’s no mobilization around cost of living concerns, underemployment, or corporate gouging.
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This. ^^
The right has done a great job at speaking to people’s economic anxieties. And by “great” I mean horribly exploitative, disingenuous and not a little bit fascist. Similarly, the erstwhile-left (and, given the shellacking the left took in Europe, this is a global thing) have done a terrible job at it, largely substituting identity issues for class ones, and loving themselves some neoliberalism because, well, it paid really well.
The political left has had it’s lunch eaten by right-wing populists who’ve been selling fascism as a cure for their supporters’ economic anxiety. It’s bullshit, of course, and the right-wing knows it’s bullshit, but it works, and the left is letting it work because they rather liked the Blair/Clinton third-way era and the money and power they got as a result. They liked getting invited to the cool kids’ parties. They don’t want to go back to being called “socialists” and having to grub for donations from little people.
The left is waking up, waaaaaaay too late in the game, to the idea that they’re about to become lines in Niemoller’s poem.
Is it tho? In a Canadian context, I only see mobilization around Culture War wedge issues that are framed by the right.
Left leaning talking heads show up in current affairs shows, decry neoliberal policies, but that’s about it. There’s no mobilization around cost of living concerns, underemployment, or corporate gouging.