Biden could spread democracy globally

There’s a long-standing habit among Americans of reading our own politics as a signal for where the whole democratic world is moving. Sometimes it’s justified. Ronald Reagan’s election was clearly part of a broad movement toward the free-market right in the 1980s. Bill Clinton’s embrace of a centrist brand of progressivism in the 1990s was widely imitated.

So is a Joe Biden wave forming out there? Perhaps more importantly, has the drift toward right-wing authoritarianism that Donald Trump’s ascendancy seemed to herald been checked?

It’s early, and many key national elections — in Germany and France, for example — lie in the future. But voting in the Netherlands this month and recent state elections in Germany and Australia point to a COVID-ERA seriousness about government’s responsibilities, a search for democratic stability after a series of right-wing uprisings, and a redefining of progressive politics in a green direction.

Taken together, these things don’t necessarily suggest a Biden wave, but they do point toward the same sensibility that led to his election. Activism with a moderate tone, competence and focus in ending the pandemic, alertness about climate change — these approaches are being embraced by the center-left, but also by parts of the moderate right.

Here’s the most striking fact about the Dutch vote, two state elections in Germany and an election in Western Australia: The incumbents did well in all of them.

And while parties of the far right in the Netherlands and Germany held their own — advancing a bit in the Netherlands, moving backward in Germany — their surge has been checked. They are no longer, as they were in the Trump years, at the center of the news.

In the Netherlands, Mark Rutte and his center-right VVD (from the Dutch name the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) topped the list of 37 parties that contested the election. Rutte, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, will be forming his fourth coalition government. While his handling of the pandemic was far from perfect, he was seen as safe and experienced. That was enough this year for a sizable plurality of the electorate.

“Their priorities now are a stable government and reliable politicians,” University of Amsterdam political scientist Matthijs Rooduijn said, “and they see Rutte as someone who can lead the country out of the crisis.”

Coming in a surprisingly strong second was the ever-so-slightly left-of-center D66 party, partners in Rutte’s last government — and who expect to join him again and hope to move the next government in a more progressive direction, particularly on climate. A middle-class social liberal party, D66 appeared to draw votes from the Green Party, Rooduijn said.

In Germany’s Baden-württemberg, 72-year-old Winfried Kretschmann, the Green Party’s only state minister-president (in U.S. terms: governor) was comfortably reelected, rewarded for his moderate policies and grandfatherly image. (His simple slogan: “You know me.”) The Greens have been surging nationally and threaten to displace the Social Democrats, Germany’s traditional center-left party. But in Rhineland-palatinate, Social Democratic incumbent Malu Dreyer won reelection by converting her personal popularity into a showing far stronger than the Social Democrats’ national standing.

In both states, outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party lost ground, partly because of a corruption scandal around the acquisition of face masks that led to the resignations of two senior party members. The Social Democrat Dreyer, who led a coalition government that also included the Greens and the middle-of-the-road Free Democrats, suggested that such an alliance might be appropriate for the country as a whole after September’s national elections. It would actually resemble Biden’s own electoral coalition.

Until this months’ vote, Merkel’s extraordinary durability made a government without the Christian Democrats seem inconceivable. Now, said Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats’ national candidate, voters can see the possibility of a majority without the Christian Democrats.

Finally, in Western Australia, incumbent Premier Mark Mcgowan converted exceptional personal popularity arising from his handling of the pandemic into an astonishing sweep. His center-left Labour Party won 53 of the 59 seats in the state parliament.

Perhaps the clearest signal of the shift in the political winds from an expressive nationalist politics to pragmatic reform is Rutte’s path to his fourth victory. A politician skilled at reading public sentiment, Rutte offered a tough line on immigration in the last election to push back against the far-right surge. He has not walked away from that position, but he moved toward the center this time with a program for more affordable child care, raising the minimum wage and expanding clean energy subsidies.

If nothing else, Biden’s defeat of Trump has shifted the momentum away from the global far right. And the pandemic and growing concerns about the climate have made electorates more practically minded and more focused on results. That’s progress.

Activism with a moderate tone, competence and focus in ending the pandemic, alertness about climate change — these approaches are being embraced by the center-left, but also by parts of the moderate right.