Capitalism, mass anger and 2024 elections

In the wake of his huge defeat on June 30, 2024, when 80% of voters rejected French “centrist” President Emmanuel Macron, he said he understood the French people’s anger.

In the UK, Conservative loser Rishi Sunak said the same about the British people’s anger, as Labor leader Starmer now says as the anger explodes. Of course, such phrases from such politicians usually mean little or nothing and accomplish less.

Such leaders and their parties just keep calculating how best to regain power when they lose it. In that, they are like the US Democrats after Biden’s performance in his debate with Trump and like the US Republicans after Trump’s loss in 2020.

In both parties, a small group of top leaders and top donors made all the key decisions and then organized the political theater to ratify those decisions. Even surprises like Harris replacing Biden are temporary departures from resuming politics as usual.

However, unlike Trump, the others missed opportunities to identify with an already organized mass base of angry people. Trump stumbled into that identification by saying loudly and crudely what traditional politicians treated as publicly unspeakable about immigrants, women, NATO and traditional political taboos.

That set the tone for Trump then doubling down by insisting he had won the 2020 election but had been cheated out of it. The mass anger of populations feeling victimized in their workaday lives found a spokesperson loudly claiming parallel victimizations. Trump and base grasped that together they might victimize their victimizers.

Whether or not they can politically exploit voters’ anger, no mainstream leader in the collective West, including Trump, seems actually to “understand” it. They mostly see only as far as