It is remarkable that both Biden and Ardern began with strong momentum, yet Labour got smashed at the next election and Biden is now trailing against Trump nearly everywhere. Do Labour and the Democrats have something in common?
Like Obama did for black America and many minorities, so Helen Clark for women and many minorities. They both united single women, the university educated, and immigrant minorities, in ways that ensured massive and stable governments that made huge institutional changes that are still with both countries.
Since the retirement of Obama and the progress of Helen Clark on to global roles and think-tank leadership, both the Democrats and Labour have simultaneously haemorrhaged the support of males and working-class and lower middle-class voters.
The issues that drove these voters away include immigration, the decline of unions and the national industrial manufacturing base of closed factories, the scale and personal oversight of government into ones’ life, state favouring of minorities, and furors over sexual identity. These are not the fields of failure of traditional social democrat focus such as health and education.
None of the above issues speak to how well both Obama and Clark did to build institutions that gave citizens more tools to fight monopolies, more savings options, more consumer power, and a stronger state to deal with crises when they loom high and hard. Voters clearly care about issues of immigration, minority rights, and the right role of the state more than anything else. If that sounds unfair, well voters are clearly unfair and it’s not voters that have to deal with it.
By 2010 Democrats were down by an overwhelming 23 points among this large diverse group and even further behind in the industrial Midwest. It’s worse now since they lost the Congress majority and are on a razor’s edge in the Senate.
In 2023 New Zealand Labour is down to 26.9%. It has been ejected from heartland working class and immigrant seats right across the country and it now has a tiny on-ground electorate MP presence.
Both parties are failing massive segments of voters. In Labour Prime Minister Ardern’s policies tracked far away from what was acceptable to its old base. New Zealand in the 2023 election was particularly fortunate that it did not have a cult figure like Trump to step into that abandoned space. As a result the Democrats in the United States are now facing a series of constitutional and electoral crises the likes of which they have not seen since the Civil War. New Zealand may also face its own constitutional crises about Treaty of Waitangi legislation.
Labour and the Democrats need to compare notes to start with. Both the US Democrats and NZ Labour need to take hard looks at themselves. Failure is not inevitable. But there is now only one English-speaking centre-left democracy left in the world: that is the state of where we are now.
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