Beto O’Rourke. Stacey Abrams. Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris. John Kerry. Hanging Chads. Swiftboating. If, like me, you are a close watcher of US politics you will know those names and phrases from campaigns when the Democrats thought things were about to change then they… didn’t.
That isn’t the story of last night. Last night there was not a ‘blue wave’; there was a blue tsunami. Democrats won in places that were so previously safe Republican that the double takes were tripled. Texas, Iowa, South Carolina.. KANSAS! As you read this we still don’t know who won Mississippi… MISSISSIPPI! Places that just don’t sound like they would vote for Democrats did just that.
For me, the result of the night was the win for Amy Acton as governor of Ohio. If you don’t know about the advert that an organisation supporting her opponent Vivek Ramaswamy ran against her I won’t ruin your breakfast by going into the details. But trust me when I tell you that even for Trump’s Republicans it sank to a new and shocking low. In the end, decency won. That matters and should be remembered. Not because our politics and politicians can’t be ruthless. They can and do in all factions and all parties. But there are lines.
But for UK politics, there are lessons from elsewhere too.
For a start, the money that went into this election was shocking even by American standards. Not least that spent by one man, Elon Musk, especially in his home state of Texas. But it turns out that money doesn’t actually buy you wins and the Democrats swept the Lone Star State winning the Senate seat and the governorship. Someone tell Nigel Farage that he might not be able to buy our democracy after all. In fact, voters really don’t like very rich people trying to tell them they are on their side.
Because of course this was an election about the cost of living. It was an election about unaffordable petrol prices and everything costing more. But it was also an election about whose shoulders the burden of rising costs were falling on – and those who felt that they had been lied to. It was an election where corruption was one of the highest polling voter concerns. Voters aren’t stupid. They know that politicians can’t do everything. But they need to know they get it. That they are trying to do what they can. Not that they are out for what they can get.
The American voters who turned their back on Democrats when they refused to see what voters saw when they looked at Joe Biden are now just as angry that they were duped by a president who promised them a share in a wealthier nation that turned its back on endless wars in the Middle East and turned around and enriched himself even as he drove up prices by starting a war in Iran. Promises matter in politics.
Politics is about contrasts. Be it in two-party or five-party politics you have to not just sell the best of your own party but also make the contrast with your opponents. Be they the Tories, Reform or the Greens that is how elections work. Yes, it is more complicated when it isn’t a straight choice but a multiple one. But the fundamentals are the same. Labour has to be the party that most understands the everyday concerns of ordinary people.
Yes, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. But it’s also ensuring people understand that we get that. We feel that too. Democrats ran a range of candidates that represented their right and left flanks. They differ on a range of issues within their coalition – as members of broad parties do. But the one thing the new-look Democratic Party has in common is something I would say the Labour Party also tends to do well across our own factions. The sense that we are not above our communities but a part of them. That we understand what people who aren’t political obsessives (you know, the kind who stay up all night watching the results of the US midterms…!) care about and that we want to be elected to help them thrive.
That has been the mantra of Burnham’s time in government. It needs to remain our unrelenting focus.