LATIKA M BOURKE: Donald Trump’s win confirms inflation is destroying one-term governments. Will Albo be next?

For Anthony Albanese, the world stage is getting a little lonelier.

The American voters comprehensively rejected the untested duo of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for Donald Trump and JD Vance, who insulted their way to a landslide victory but ultimately and successfully targeted voters’ concerns about the cost of living.

By January, Albanese’s Democratic ally in Joe Biden will be gone and the Democrats will be left languishing in the political wilderness, struggling to exert any influence or power over a MAGA Administration that could have control of the House and the Senate, as well as the White House and an already-stacked Supreme Court.

In Germany, Albanese’s other mate, the hapless Socialist Democratic Party leader and Chancellor Olaf Scholz has sacked his Finance Minister and called on a vote of confidence in the disastrous three-party coalition government that he leads.

The vote will take place in January paving the way for elections in March.

This is around the same time Albanese could go to the polls in Australia or most certainly be in campaign mode.

The result of the US election should terrify the Australian PM about what’s ahead. Not only did US voters cast aside any doubts they had about Trump being an extremist with a questionable character, but they overwhelmingly endorsed him and gave an incumbent Administration the middle finger.

Why? Kamala Harris’ tone-deaf concession couldn’t answer that question.

But Barack Obama did.

“As I said on the campaign trail, America has been through a lot over the last few years — from a historic pandemic and price hikes resulting from the pandemic, to rapid change and the feeling a lot of folks have that, no matter how hard they work, treading water is the best they can do,” he said.

“Those conditions have created headwinds for democratic incumbents around the world, and last night showed that America is not immune.”

In short, it’s a terrible time to be in government seeking re-election, particularly in one where inflation has dominated your term in office.

According to Investopedia’s analysis ranking the average year-over-year inflation rate for all months of each presidential term, Joe Biden’s average was 5.2 per cent, the fourth-highest of all the presidents dating back to Dwight Eisenhower.

Trump’s was fourth-lowest at 1.9 per cent.

This was the challenge Democrats failed to overcome. Despite the overall strength of the US economy, the smart decisions to establish a new generation of American manufacturing through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act, his would-be successor Kamala Harris could not explain how she planned to lower people’s prices.

Trump’s proposal to impose blanket tariffs of 10 per per cent on all imports and 60 per cent on goods from China will of course be inflationary.

But in the absence of a clearly articulated economic agenda that focussed on everyday costs compared to overall economic growth, combined with the memory that things didn’t cost as much when Trump was in the White House, it all boils down to the fact that the hip pocket matters more than character.

Put simply, “It’s the cost, stupid,” to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s strategist Jim Carville.

And this is why Albanese will not just be feeling a little lonelier today as he watches his left-wing counterparts fall and decline, but should also be feeling equally scared.

US GDP grew at 2.8 per cent last quarter, and inflation was at 2.4 per cent in September, down from a high of 9.1 per cent in the middle of 2022.

By comparison, inflation has remained stubbornly high in Australia and has only just fallen to 2.8 per cent from the December 2022 high of 7.8 per cent, the lowest level in three-and-a-half years.

By the time Albanese heads to the polls, will the rate of prices slowing be felt and of any comfort? Unlikely.

Grievance is the new currency in politics. It is fuelling a near-permanent mood for change meaning both Albanese and Keir Starmer’s UK Labour government risk being one-termers, like Biden and possibly Scholz.

From now until election day Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will only need to talk about little else but the cost of living, and ask the PM why people don’t feel better off since Labor’s election to power.

Add to the mix the risk of a minority Labor government propped up by the Greens and Teals and you begin to see how voters, faced with an insecure world, might think about giving the Coalition a serious look, despite ejecting them from office only three years ago in historically brutal fashion.

Labor has already spent far too much of its Government time trying to cast Dutton as a supervillain who has no agenda other than to divide Australia. But they should note that the Democrats couldn’t make such a strategy work against Donald Trump, who is a convicted felon and believes the January 6 insurrection was a “day of love.”

Obama, in his statement, went on to say: “The good news is that these problems are solvable.”

Yes, they are. But The Democrats couldn’t produce a convincing enough program to show how in contrast to Trump.

The challenge for Dutton is to show how he will and for Albanese and his Treasurer Jim Chalmer to explain how another three years will lead to the economic relief voters have so desperately been waiting for.