Month: November 2024

People have good reason to doubt the veracity of campaign promises because they have good, abundant evidence that politicians hardly feel honour-bound to keep them.

For many politicians, making promises you can’t keep is as natural as breathing on the campaign trail. In turn, the electorate is conditioned to expect political promises to be like piñatas: designed to be broken.

But it looks like the Donald Trump’s victory may be ushering in a new era.

Exhibit A — Trump’s statement in his victory address on election night: “We will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises.” (Sharp political observers will remember these exact words helped propel former Ontario Conservative leader Mike Harris to two majority governments in Ontario.)

Fooled once (as if one vast helping of humble pie wasn’t enough), his opponents are now clinging to the refuge of an additional fantasy — that it’s still all smoke and mirrors, that he won’t make good on those seemingly terrifying promises.

There is not a cup of coffee in the world strong enough to wake these people up — because there is absolutely zero indication anyone can reasonably cling to this belief. Trump’s ever-running announcements of yet more appointments of the most rabid, radical elements of the MAGA movement to the highest offices of the land is a shotgun blast to these life rafts. Conspiracy enthusiast RFK Jr. as health secretary. Russia enthusiast Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Don’t get me started on Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

But I suspect the deeper point is that the 2024 U.S. election represents a larger, more fundamental sea change — a definitive transition from values-based politics to transaction politics.

And there is no better testimony to this shift than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the difference between the political movement that first swept him into office and the one that is going to blow him out.

In 2015, Trudeau had it all: celebrity, charisma, charm. But more than anything, he spoke to and represented values. The core tenet of Trudeau-ism was politics done, if only notionally, differently.

In 2024, here’s what is crystal clear: people are sick to death of this. What they want delivered is not the talk but the goods. They want prices down. They want criminals in their neighbourhoods locked up.

Simply put, they want results.

What is clearer still is that Canadians believe Trudeau can’t deliver those results.

So, Trump’s victory will do absolutely nothing for Trudeau’s chances in the next election. In fact, it will do the opposite. It will inspire Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s team to keep pursuing the scent they’ve already so sharply picked up: that when life gets tough people desire — not a lecture on political correctness — but a promise on making life affordable.  And more than that, a government that they can count on.

But, more importantly, it should do something else too. It should serve as a wake-up call to those who believe in the utter nonsense that Poilievre won’t do or doesn’t mean what he says. Axe the tax. Shutter the CBC. Cut the GST on new homes. He will do these things. And, critically, he’ll do so faster than you expect.

Having served as an MP since 2004, Poilievre’s long record in the House of Commons is often used against him by his critics. They cast him as a permanent politician. But experience is the ultimate teacher. Don’t forget, the early Stephen Harper years were minority governments, and the agenda was largely frustrated by constant deal-making with the opposition parties.

Eventually, Harper got his majority and Poilievre his seat at the cabinet table. But it took precious time to get there.

So, the point is this: should (and it is essentially certain) the Conservatives win a majority, the new government will face a crucial window of opportunity. A mandate to act and not a minute to spare.

Because the 2024 presidential race has underscored the public appetite for results over rhetoric. And, for my money, it is as clear a signal as any that Poilievre will spend zero time on symbolic gestures and all his time delivering on his promises.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my time writing this column, it’s that readers, especially those who read regularly, would rather I be direct, precise and dead wrong, than prevaricating, wishy-washy and possibly correct.

So here goes.

Donald Trump is going to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. On election night. Decisively.

He’ll do so for three key reasons.

Reason one: neck-and-neck national polling means advantage Trump.

In a polemic on the inaccuracy of polling, political scientist Lindsay Rogers took its proverbial grandfather, George Gallup, to task, stating, “Instead of feeling the pulse of democracy, Dr. Gallup listens to its baby talk.” Yes. No. Don’t know.

Ever since pollsters failed to predict Trump’s 2016 victory, many gleefully echoed this sentiment — proclaiming the death of polling. The fact that, this time out, the majority of the national polls find Trump and Democratic candidate Vice-President Kamala Harris in a virtual dead-heat hasn’t helped. Declaring the race is within one per cent has unsurprisingly only contributed to the impression that pollsters have utterly failed — yet again — to locate that pulse.

But that impression is flawed.

Pollsters have gone to great pains to make good on their previous errors — ensuring, for example, more noncollege educated Americans are represented in their sample populations. But the one thing you can never fully account for is nonresponse bias, those voters who like Trump’s policies — tax cuts, mass deportations, etc. — yet are embarrassed to admit as much outside of the privacy of the polling booth.

So, while I believe the polls are more accurate than they were in 2016, I still suspect they understate the former president’s support.

In the end, for Trump, winning the popular vote may be a tough test given the Democrats have won the popular vote the last seven times out. But only the electoral college matters and here Republicans enjoy a structural advantage. That means Harris needs to be ahead in the national polls by at least a healthy margin to take the presidency. She’s not there and, at this point, she won’t get there.

Reason two: Pennsylvania.

It’s nicknamed the Keystone State for a reason and in my view, the race comes down to this commonwealth.

With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania was part of the “Blue Wall” until Trump flipped it red in 2016.

In 2020, the Democrats’ answer was to run a native son, “Scranton Joe.” It worked.

While Harris is doing everything she can to correct Hillary Clinton’s neglect of the Blue Wall states in 2016, the vice-president failed to pick the state’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate.

A strategic mistake I believe will cost her this election.

Third, the Trump formula has worked.

The pundit class loves to say that Trump has rewritten the campaign playbook. They’re wrong. He’s following it to the letter. If we judge a campaign on the basic metric of whether it has effectively appealed to people’s priorities, Trump has been successful this time out, just as he has been before.

Trump and his campaign see what many cannot see: the genuine views of a significant portion of the American electorate.

Accordingly, his most concrete campaign promise is his most ludicrous and fascistic — the mass deportation of newcomers to America. To many Americans, illegal immigration sounds like a major and, in listening to Trump, a deeply frightening problem. Mass deportation sounds like a primary solution. Its appalling inhumanity is secondary.

What those voters have not heard enough from Kamala Harris is a) an admission this is a problem and b) an appealing answer to address it. While this is just one example, it is representative of a campaign that needed to focus more on articulating how a Harris administration would address the real priorities of the American people and less on her opponent.

The fact is commentators who have assumed that the stain and chaos of Trump’s first term would disqualify him from the Oval Office a second time are fundamentally mistaken. The damage he has wrought upon American institutions and the electoral process has only lowered the bar.

And in the democratic landscape he has salted, Donald Trump will claim victory, regardless of the objective outcome.