Here is something short from my other social media accounts.
Weathervane elections forthcoming: Brazil presidential run-off, Israeli parliamentary elections, US midterms and NZ general elections. These are true tests of where voters want their countries to go. The choices are foremost about reaffirming or rejecting the Right as a governing force. These elections occur in four parts of the globe with country-specific issues needing address but one unifying, underlying question: does the (moderate) Left present a realistic and preferable alternative to Rightwing dominance of national politics in these (ostensible) democracies?
At the risk of over-simplification, here is a quick take:
I have already written here about how the NZ Left has to reframe the political narrative away from the market mantras of the last three decades. So far it has not done so, which means it is nibbling around the margins of a pie that is already cooked (in both senses of the term) rather than focusing on its ingredients and allocated portions. The Greens are trying to do that, but Labour prefers to nibble. And in spite of its obvious decay and increased price of the pie, National claims that it is perfectly edible even if it now has an (Opportunity-flavoured) teal mold tinge to it, while Act wants the pie smaller and NZ First wants it to be a different colour with less flavour ingredients.
In Brazil the question is whether to re-elect a corporate Left leader with corruption problems or a Trump-worshipping son of a convicted seditionist former president with ties to organised crime (both of them). It is about becoming a servitor imperialist vassal that submits to the “Donroe Doctrine” or remains an independent sovereign State in a highly stratified society.
In Israel it is about reaffirming or rejecting the politics of genocide and ethnic cleansing. There is more than that, of course, but above all it is a referendum on the Netanyahu-led coalition’s policies leading up to and after October 7.
In the US it is about consolidating the slide into neoimperialist kleptocratic despotism or breaking the Russian-favoring stranglehold that the MAGA Right has on US politics.
For these reasons the next three weeks are very significant in terms of electoral politics in democracies. What happens in them and what their results turn out to be will set the stage for what is to come in global politics, for better or worse.