Be it the saffron wave in India, blue flag of the EU, red or blue states of the US, the world political landscape is replete with colours. But whatever the colour is, it is clear that after Modi, Brexit, and Trump, the liberal colours are fading and its message is either not reaching the targeted electorate or being rejected. After three major defeats of liberals in two years in the world’s largest democracies, it is clear that the liberal narrative needs to be rewritten for a broader audience.
India’s populist nationalist party BJP’s rise to power with only 31% of the votes garnering a record 51% of the seats, Europe's anti-immigrant parties winning the country's referendum to leave the European Union, and Trump's ascension to the White House by winning the electoral votes and losing the popular votes by more than 2.6 million are not isolated incidents. These are symptomatic of the loss of resonance of the liberal message among the targeted population as much as it is about the success of the right wing’s precise targeting of the electorate with messages that mattered in the election.
Modi, Brexit, Trump, and even the rise of Austria’s Norbert Hofer and France’s Marine Le Pen to political prominence are clear indications that the liberal ideological construct must evolve for it to make political progress and create a just society.
Austria’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO) head Norbert Hofer’s sound defeat on December 4th’s rerun of the May vote may be interpreted by the liberals as a signal of rejection of populist movements and anti-establishment anger sweeping Western democracies in Europe ahead of elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands next year.
While Hofer lost in an election for a ceremonial seat, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi took a shellacking in the constitutional reform referendum on the same day and resigned a couple of days later.
The Guardian wrote on December 5, 2016, “The results [in the Italian referendum] will be seen as a clear rejection by voters of establishment politics in favour of populist and anti-immigrant forces, much as the UK’s vote in June to leave the European Union and the election last month of Donald Trump in the US were.”
In 2014, Narendra Modi was widely expected to win the election but not by the margin by which he won. Prime Minister Modi’s acute understanding of the anxieties of the middle class, his perception of the Left’s middleclass alienation by secular snobbery and elitism, and his masterful campaign driving home the point that the liberals falsely equated religiosity with communalism helped his party win the election. Tailoring the message with an eye on the vote bank produced the favourable outcome for Narendra Modi and his party.
In a country like India where thousands gather in awe to watch Ganesha statues drinking milk, liberals have to understand how deep this faith goes. Ignoring the country’s culture, demeaning the population’s steadfast adherence to myth, religion, and ritual, treating minority violations as just and deserved and majority reactions as prejudices, India’s liberals themselves created the middle class upsurge against the Nehruvian elites. It was a “change” election and Modi played it well.
Liberals with their false sense of superiority may laugh at the British population who after the referendum were searching what the EU meant on Google, but Britain’s outward looking global elite cannot deny their failure in creating the right narrative in a language that clearly explains the benefits of globalisation, remaining in the EU, and the associated mobility to these people at whose ‘ignorance’ they were laughing. Who should the “Remain” liberals blame when right under their nose, in a referendum with more than 30 million people voting with a turnout of 71%, “Leave” won by 52% to 48%?
In the US, in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three reliably blue (Democratic) states — and the swing state of Ohio, Trump flipped 47 counties that Obama had won in 2012 in his favour to secure an Electoral College win.
Clinton liberals did not realise that the success of Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primaries in the Rust Belt was a canary in the coal mine for the Clinton campaign, a now-obvious sign that she was in trouble. Tone-deaf Hillary Clinton’s arrogant pronouncement in coal country West Virginia where she was destined to lose by a land slide: "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” resulted in a silent backlash in coal country in the neighbouring states. Across eastern Ohio and rural Pennsylvania, political signs in town after town declared some version of, "Elect Trump, stop the war on coal."
Bernie won in Michigan during the Democratic primaries and yet Clinton visited Michigan only once to campaign and that too two days before the election. Clinton did not visit solid blue Wisconsin even once. Should her campaign be sued for malpractice for ignoring two states with a combined total of 26 Electoral College votes?
Today’s Rust Belt with its rusting abandoned factories was once — before the economic decline, population loss, and the accompanying urban decay — America’s thriving ‘manufacturing belt’.
Limousine liberals either didn’t understand, or willfully overlooked, the stark reality of the white blue-collar jobless man in these areas who sees nothing but a void beyond the smoke stacks of the closed factory when peering through the living room window of his house which is about to be foreclosed. To these frustrated men, sophisticated political ideologies mean very little.
Liberals failed to tie “politically correct” fragmented messages regarding immigration, free trade, climate change, and clean energy into a powerful narrative that would be acceptable to this population and stop the right-wing populism of an unqualified and unhinged demagogue like Trump. This loss exposed the impotence of US liberalism and the failure of its identity politics. Democrats mistakenly assumed that the changing demographics, identity politics, and celebrity firepower of the House of Clinton would be enough to stop the right-wing populism of Trump.
Instead of pointing to why rightwing politics is bad, liberals need to explain in clear details and plain language why immigration is good, free trade helps development and makes the pie bigger for everybody, why climate change is not a hoax, why the broader goal of achieving social equality is the right thing to do, why business regulations help build a safer environment for all.
Perhaps coming to grips with reality that history at this time is no longer on their side is difficult for the liberal glitterati to admit but realising that the liberal message had a successful past that requires a new template to be effective once again should provide the impetus to evolve. However, don’t expect different outcomes in Europe’s elections next year if the aberrant liberal echo continues to drown the true liberal voice.