It has been called an anti-incumbent wave. Incumbency, notes Reg Whitaker, “once thought to bestow an advantage” on a government seeking re-election, is now “more of a curse.” Here in Canada, British Columbia’s centre-left NDP government, expected to sail to an easy victory, barely hung on against a right-wing populist Conservative Party that came out of nowhere. Two days later, New Brunswick voters tossed out a right-wing government in favour of a Liberal alternative.
In the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris, effectively running as the incumbent after President Biden’s withdrawal, lost to Donald Trump. In Japan, the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its majority. Even authoritarian regimes were not spared. In Bangladesh, student demonstrations forced the end of Sheikh Hasina’s illiberal rule in August. As I write in December, Syrian rebels have just brought down the Assad family’s 50-year dictatorship.
Much of this issue of Inroads is devoted to these events. In The Return of Donald Trump, three Inroads editors analyze the results and implications of the U.S. election through three different lenses. Henry Milner explores the factors that led American voters to elect a “psychopath” such as Trump. While political ignorance played a role, it was not the whole explanation. Anne Michèle Meggs relates the election to the World Values Survey and the prevalence of “survival values” among Trump voters. Reg Whitaker, while not regarding Trump as another Hitler, nevertheless sees disturbing parallels between Trump’s victory and Hitler’s assumption of power in Germany on January 30, 1933.
Mark Crawford finds that Tectonic Shifts Lie beneath Japan’s Leadership Change. After heavy losses for the ruling LDP under new Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, he suspects that Ishiba may not last long, as Japan’s own “iron lady,” Takaichi Sanae, waits in the wings. John Richards, who for decades has spent part of each year in Bangladesh, expresses cautious hope for that country’s new interim government in Bangladesh’s Moment of Opportunity. In contrast to Bangladesh’s history of massive corruption, he reports, the government is honest, from the widely respected Muhammad Yunus on down.
Geoff Meggs takes us on a journey through British Columbia’s extraordinary election campaign in British Columbia’s Polarity Shift. He details the brutal end of Kevin Falcon’s BC United party, the rise of John Rustad’s insurgent Conservatives and the failure of David Eby’s NDP to capture the mood of the people. Reg Whitaker sees the BC election result as part of a broader phenomenon in The Polarity Shift is Global. “The defeat or near-defeat of a previously powerful incumbent government,” he notes, is “the current global norm.” Meanwhile, Saskatchewan bucked the anti-incumbent trend and gave the Saskatchewan Party its fifth straight majority (albeit a reduced one). Dale Eisler asks How Did Saskatchewan Politics Get to be About Nothing?
Also in this issue:
• A year after Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, I share some accounts of how the hostages held in Gaza have become a divisive issue in Israel in October 7, One Year Later.
• German Bender explains why a strike of Tesla’s Swedish employees constitutes an epic battle between the Scandinavian model of industrial relations and Elon Musk’s refusal to recognize unions in Taking on Tesla.
• In The Saga of Willow’s Run, Robert Bockstael (with an introduction by Henry Milner) recounts how a decision to write a novel turned into a nine-year adventure in getting his book to market.
• Anne Michèle Meggs, who writes about current immigration issues, reviews a book that covers the whole story of human migration over 300,000 years in Homo Sapiens on the Move.
• John Richards reviews Eric Cline’s account of how Saskatchewan’s potash wealth was “squandered” for ideological reasons in The Politics of Potash.
• In At the Century’s Quarter Mark, Philip Resnick’s poetic eye falls on Donald Trump, the paradox of a transatlantic flight and the dim prospects for the remaining three quarters of the 21st century.
— Bob Chodos
