The COVID Repudiation Election

If you are chronically online, you may have seen this chart. It essentially indicates that, in most industrialized nations, the incumbent party had losses in 2024. This leads to the theory that maybe 2024 is a reflection of “the long tail” of COVID malaise. It is also covered in this video, albeit from a liberal perspective:

This theory makes some sense, absolutely. COVID was a massive global event, and you had lots of factions emerge from it. Some people were terrified; some people didn’t believe it. In the United States, we had the unfortunate reality of COVID happening in a Presidential year, and Trump needed to stoke his base because he was already seen as chaotic, so suddenly you have guys in Arizona drinking koi pond water because he mentioned it in one press conference. Meanwhile, red counties shut down for four to six weeks, and blue counties seemingly shut down for four to six years, and we still don’t really know the impact on public education via “Zoom School,” but so far it doesn’t seem so good.

So maybe, four years later, people all over the world decided to “kick the bums out” and that’s where the anti-incumbent attitude comes in.

If you view “Occupy Wall Street” after the 2008 bailouts as a major turning point in division in America (which is a justifiable view), then a post-COVID turning point would also make sense, because COVID was fucking great for the rich, and not so great for the rest of us.

I should probably half-correct that last statement. COVID was good for people for a minute with child credits and free checks and generalized worker protections, and most people had more money in savings then. But long-term, was it better for the already-affluent or “the average man?” You guessed it: the former.

If you want to look specifically at America, the Trump mandate is a bigger story than just COVID, although COVID does factor in. While Trump had a lot of misses from January 2017 to January 2021, he was the last President of “the before times,” and some Americans I am sure had nostalgia for that. Is this the main reason he won? No. Joe Biden’s hubris is a big reason; Kamala not doing the types of interviews that would resonate more is a reason. Bro culture is a reason. Gilded cage white wives are a reason. Abortion as less of an issue than the cost of car insurance is a reason. So in America, there are lots of different fingers you can point.

But America is clearly part of a global anti-incumbency trend here, and that does need to be considered.

We’ve asked this question before: what will COVID actually change?

The big answer for most people is “education” + “broader public health concerns.” But maybe the answer is also politics. We’re beginning to see a bit of that globally.

What would be your take?