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Category: Chairman’s Desk

JD Vance may lose Republicans the White House

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“One day you’re cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.”

 A politician must have cooked up this brutally cruel expression. After all, it is the perfect encapsulation of public life. Its vicissitudes. The hard, immutable fact that it is fleeting. For those who sacrifice so much to serve, this truth is painfully evident.

As I watched the astonishingly rapid turn of the spotlight towards Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, and away from Joe Biden, I couldn’t help but be reminded of this.

But this reality also brought me back to the principle behind it: that “events” (as Harold Macmillan famously observed) are the real drivers of political life. And how it holds true even for the president of the United States.

In recent weeks, “events” initially appeared overwhelmingly favourable to Joe Biden’s political rivals. The failed assassination of Donald Trump was a great rallying cry for Republicans. Trump seemed to be able to quickly coalesce a party previously split between diehard zealots and moderates into one; building a coalition stronger, more determined than ever. And it was in the context of this fervour that Trump revealed Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. A man who opined that President Biden’s “rhetoric” was directly responsible for the attempt on Trump’s life.

Then, it seemed only right to anoint an heir, one that would ensure the continuation of the MAGA legacy even after Trump had exited stage left. The “attack dog” who would gin up the base and ensure that base turned out on election day in a campaign, as I’ve written before, that wasn’t about persuasion but about turnout. Clearly, the tide was coming in and the Republicans only needed to ride it.

And then, the axiom “whoever speaks first loses” reared its ugly head and “events” quickly illustrated Vance’s selection was a grave, potentially fatal, mistake.

I’ll leave it to other pundits to divine his eclectic, ideologically elastic biography. My point is much more straightforward. Simply put, he is the wrong tool for the job, the proverbial knife for what is now a gunfight.

Events, especially those of historic significance, are never static — they multiply. And with Kamala Harris’s ascendance to the top of the Democratic ticket (Biden is the first eligible presidential incumbent since LBJ to opt-out), that “fight” has significantly shifted. Because now, the Democrats are building a movement. What was a rematch is now a race.

And in a contest that will hinge on turnout, Harris has demonstrated her prowess in the most critical arena for success — mobilization. Beyond her record fundraising efforts, the Vice President has already excited and motivated key Democratic cohorts, including African American women who have long been considered the backbone of the Democratic Party and younger voters who were discontent with President Biden’s record.

Her recent speech to more than 6,000 members of the historically African American Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and sudden embrace of Gen Z-focused social media trends illustrate a campaign that is going to use a different playbook — with a goal of exciting those groups.

Vance, suffice it to say, might well run-up the score in red states, but he will do next to nothing to turn the Trump-curious into Trump voters. People who support Vance already support Trump. His candidacy is not a growth proposition, it is a consolidation effort. Moreover, it’s worth noting that two white males at the top of the GOP ticket are woefully unsuited to take on a woman of colour.

And so, as Harris works to make the Biden campaign her own, to make room for the thousands upon thousands of Americans she has excited and animated, she holds an additional ace: the ability to make a far more strategically sound VP pick — one that will meaningfully expand her support in the key swing states she must win.

From where I sit, you would be well-advised to strap on your seatbelts for this one and all the events that are sure to come between now and election day.

The best replacement for Joe Biden is the most obvious

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Just prior to the implosion that rocked global financial markets, Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld assured investors his bank’s liquidity and capital profile were rock-solid.

Before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission pursued charges, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos swore her magic box (the “Edison machine”) was functioning just perfectly.

Hours before their stock tumbled to historic lows, Credit Suisse issued an infamous memo to their staff, claiming total financial stability.

These moments in history come crashing across my mind every time I think of the Democratic Party today and I guarantee that soon, very soon, U.S. President Joe Biden’s “firm” commitment to stay in the race, come hell or high water, will be added to this ignominious list.

So knowing that these strong, declarative statements are doomed to failure from the beginning, why do people keep trying them?

The answer is as simple as it is flawed: it comes from desperation and the belief that any sense of weakness will only hasten the inevitable end.

These things don’t work because, on their face, they contradict what people can see with their own eyes and end up doing the very opposite of what they are intended to achieve.

As a result, Biden’s candidacy to defeat Republican candidate Donald Trump is facing what can best be expressed as a bank run of confidence. Movie stars, left-wing pundits, old-guard Democrats and other influencers are withdrawing support faster than the Biden camp can manage. In fact, the campaign is doing nothing better than merely catching up to a place where the majority of the American electorate has already arrived.

It has grown into a full-blown crisis entirely of the campaign’s, and the candidate’s, own making.

Now, this crisis, as with all crises, comes opportunity, and the bright spotlight of opportunity now falls on Biden’s natural replacement: Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Her positives and negatives have been well documented.

To recap her negatives:

  • According to the poll aggregators at Five Thirty Eight, her 37.5 per cent approval rating is barely stronger than Biden’s and is just lower than Trump’s.
  • Harris’ 2020 presidential bid — where she dropped out before the first ballot was even cast—was disastrous.
  • Her vice-presidential tenure has been, to be charitable, uninspiring where, amongst other disappointments, she failed to make serious progress on the border.

On the positive side:

  • Her candidacy provides an opportunity for Democrats to transition from an octogenarian white man to a candidate whose diverse life experience can energize the base and attract new areas of support.
  • The election rules enable Harris to inherit the war chest accumulated by the Biden campaign, along with the well-established organization that accompanies it. Both assets are nearly impossible to replicate in the remaining time.
  • She would be the most natural recipient of, and benefit from, a Biden endorsement, for whatever it is worth.
  • Crucially, Harris also has the ability to align herself with the popular aspects of Biden’s agenda while distancing herself from those less favoured by key voter groups.

But more than anything, Harris is the best option to drive a sharp contrast with Trump on abortion. Not only can she more credibly advocate for reproductive rights, but she is also uniquely positioned to harness the momentum from the Democratic success in the 2022 midterms by making the election a referendum on this issue.

While it is true that successful candidates are not formed in laboratories, if they have the right fundamental makeup, over time the electorate comes to see that, net-net, they are the best choice.

As former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was fond of saying, he didn’t have to be better than Mother Teresa (thankfully), he just had to be better than his opponent John Turner and he didn’t consider that to be a difficult task!

In 2020, Biden didn’t have to be perfect. He just needed to be a better alternative to Trump, which he proved to be. In 2024, considering her strengths and the current political climate, Harris is not only the stronger alternative but is also better-positioned to clearly define and communicate what that alternative consists of to the American people.

And for that reason, today’s Democrats would be well advised to start highlighting her positives, rather than doing the Republicans’ job for them and only focusing on the negatives.

It’s time for Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau’s advisers to speak truth to power

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Dr. Martin Luther King said the true measure of an individual is not how they behave in moments of comfort and convenience but how they stand at times of controversy and challenge.

For political advisers, this principle isn’t just part of their job description — it’s the very essence of it.

It is never easy to speak truth to power, and it is even more difficult in the face of genuine competing priorities that pit your allegiance to a candidate against your loyalties to your party and your duty to your country.

And yet, this is precisely the spot those who work with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden find themselves in. Whether you agree with their politics or not is immaterial. These people have chosen to go into public life to make this place — our place — a better one.

To do this, they have picked a side (a party), a quarterback (a candidate), put the rest of their life on hold (family and friends) and worked like hell to make that difference.

But as hard as these advisers work and as smart as they are as analysts or strategists or leaders, to truly serve well, they must never lose their objectivity. As the truism goes, a candidate who is their own campaign manager, leads a campaign doomed from the get-go.

But what is that objectivity? Where does it sit? How does an adviser know when they are too close to be both the partisan warrior and the ruthlessly dispassionate adviser their principal needs them to be? How do they know the moment that the only door before their candidate is the one marked “exit.”

Those entrusted with supporting both Trudeau and Biden are facing that moment, that decision, right now.

And as much as it might seem blindingly obvious based on every tanking poll, raving pundit, rat leaving the ship, not to mention plain old common sense, it is extraordinarily difficult advice to give.

Having been one of those advisers, I know how hard it is. I’d love to say I dared to stand tall and stand up to the leader, my colleagues and friends, and spoken my piece. But the truth is that for every time I have done that, I have succumbed to group think too many times and signed on to the machismo of the political locker room and opted to be “one of the boys.”

I have explained my choices away by describing how difficult or complex the situation was. And even though the truth of the matter is that it wasn’t, there are usually three things that make arriving at a decision seem more difficult than it is.

First, political leaders exist in a bubble shared with people whose jobs depend on that leader keeping their job. And while these are at their core opportunities rather than jobs, advisers have just as challenging a time grieving a defeat as their candidate.

Second, wishful thinking spreads like wildfire in these bubbles. Often expressed as an “out-of-the-box idea” or a “Hail Mary pass,” it is most often presented with a sense of obligation on the part of the campaign to deliver it for the candidate. Of course, this is nonsense. When the campaign gets to this stage, it’s time to stop feeding the fire with the furniture and make the tough decisions needed to preserve resources to fight another day.

Third, there is no luxury of indecision. And that’s because the leader is the leader until they are not. The entire campaign must convey the image that they are in it until the end. That’s why you will hear Trudeau and Biden resoundingly declare they’re staying on until, seemingly suddenly, they announce they’re going.

Getting to the point where advisers show a candidate the exit may be a straightforward exercise, but it is complicated by the conflicting priorities of the candidate, the party and the country. These competing challenges and their relative imports are unknowable.

What is known is the importance of being surrounded by advisers during those moments of controversy and challenge. Advisers don’t just form the present; they are a direct driver of what shape that leader’s legacy takes for all time.

If Joe Biden really wants to stop Donald Trump, he’ll get out of the way

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It was over before it began.

Thursday night, U.S. President Joe Biden lost the moment he walked onto the CNN stage. He moved like an animatronic from Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. He spoke softly, like a hoarse ghost. He looked down — like someone who didn’t know where he was.

If there is one sound Americans will remember, it will be that of their President struggling to find the words that just didn’t come.
And if there is one image that will be seared onto the collective psyche of the American imagination, it will be the look of fatigue and bewilderment cast across their President’s face.

Joe Biden’s candidacy is over.

It will either go down in a fireball of defeat on Nov. 5 — taking many “lower ballot” candidates with him — or President Biden will do what’s right for his country, his party, his family and, quite frankly, himself, and resign as the Democratic nominee by the time the last Independence Day fireworks disappear from the sky.

If the way Biden walked on stage was the indictment, the following exchange was the final verdict.

Biden: … Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary … person … eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID — excuse me — with — um — dealing with everything we have to do with — look — we finally beat Medicare. (Anchor interjects)

Trump: He’s right he did beat Medicare; he beat it to death.

That was not the only Biden bluster. And it was far from the only Trump savaging.

Joe Biden’s performance Thursday night came up well short. He was wide of the mark on every metric that matters.

On the economy, he failed to convince Americans he was working to make life more affordable and to explain what was wrong with Trump’s vision. On Afghanistan, in which Trump hammered Biden on the embarrassing withdrawal, Biden failed to point out that it was Trump who made the exit deal with the Taliban in the first place. On abortion, this election cycle’s equivalent to a “get out of jail free card” for Democrats, he failed to directly and persuasively speak to women voters about what a second Trump presidency would put at stake for them.

On golf, well, don’t even get me started. All I can say is both men deserve an Academy Award nomination for best impersonations of seven-year-olds at recess.

And if all of that wasn’t horrifying enough, this shambolic performance allowed former president Trump to do what he is a master at: lie, dissemble, conflate; to get away with the symbolic debate equivalent of “shooting people and not losing any votes.”

But worst of all, Biden never told the American people how, exactly, they would benefit from a second Biden term.

This was a glaring indication of a campaign — and a candidate — fundamentally lost.

Remember, it was the Biden camp that wanted this debate: at this surprisingly early time, on this stage, with muted microphones.

They did so because they knew they were down: in crucial swing states, with disengaged voters, with younger voters and with African American voters.

But little did they know what down was. That is until 9 p.m. last night when they found out that it is a place from which there is, for their team, simply no way back.

I’ll spare you more pile on. Biden deserves better after a lifetime of public service.

And I’ll spare you the lengthy campaign strategy lecture that underpins this advice.

But of this I am certain: If Biden really wants to defeat Trump, he will get out of the way. There simply isn’t a minute to wait because the value of such a withdrawal is logarithmic. The truism says, “go to end game as fast as possible.” After all, you are going there anyway.

I know because I’ve been there before from my years of experience as an adviser on municipal, provincial, and federal campaigns here at home. I’ve been in the room alongside headstrong candidates, who — after a self-inflicted blow — are coddled by members of the inner circle attempting to justify the unjustifiable. My only regret was not saying what needed to be said as early and often as necessary: that there was no coming back.

I understand well that the options in front of the president are as lousy as they are unfair. But he is where he is. And the only way he can recover a modicum of respect is to follow those great leaders who have gone before him and not only put country before self but done so at the expense of self.

Olivia Chow’s greatest vulnerability? Her friends

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Imagine the confusion.

Toronto’s most labour friendly mayor in recent memory and still — a major strike that would have paralyzed this city. Or, as Mayor Chow put it, wrought “huge, huge economic damage.”

Sometimes in politics, success rides not on the platforms you pronounce or the policies you deliver, but on the bullets you dodge. And a TTC strike would be about as destructive a bullet for Mayor Chow to duck as can be conceived. Because while the political confusion and upheaval that would have followed is challenging to predict, the wrath of Torontonians would not be.

Already faced with a congestion nightmare, a housing crisis and high crime rates, the inability to commute to work or an urgent doctor’s appointment would have amounted to an unbearable degree of frustration. Make no mistake, that frustration would have turned to outright anger and Mayor Chow would have borne the brunt.

To deepen the political trap, provincial sources made it crystal clear they would have only drafted back-to-work legislation at the request of the Mayor.

But Olivia Chow never let it get that far — stepping right over this trap. As she acknowledged in the days that followed the last-minute agreement, she wisely set aside enough money in her budget to account for this negotiation. And behind the scenes, she undoubtedly used her political capital with the union in a way that John Tory never could.

This win, therefore, is as good an opportunity as any to consider what lies ahead and what avoiding this catastrophe reveals about her future.

Let’s start with the pure political numbers.

At the outset of her tenure, Her Worship’s popularity was nothing short of stratospheric, fluctuating between 71 per cent and 75 per cent approval. Since the budget this February, those numbers have predictably returned to earth. But while the honeymoon may be over, her approximately 50 per cent approval today is still impressive — especially considering how negatively Toronto residents continue to view the state of the city.

To be clear, I believe she’s earned that approval. Far from the harbinger of doom her opponents promised she would be, the Mayor has proven to be an effective leader. So, credit where credit’s due: she has expanded affordable housing, improved public transit, taken steps to enhance community safety and services and advanced various climate action initiatives.

More importantly, overall, there still persists a strong sense that she is a breath of fresh air, an antidote to the status quo and someone with the ambition and determination to actually turn this City around.

But politics is an unfair sport and if she is not vigilant, that sense will disappear overnight. And it’s now, when the Mayor is in a position of relative strength, that she must assess her greatest vulnerability.

Matt Elliot hit the nail on the head when he identified that to be exactly 30,735 — the number of City workers belonging to CUPE Local 79 and CUPE 416 whose contracts expire at year’s end. These are workers who feel they got a raw deal last time out and who make our city “go”: they clean the parks, run essential programs, process permits, collect the garbage (need I say more?).

But the reason those 30,000 plus workers walking off the job presents such an existential challenge for Chow is not just the obvious furor and chaos that would reign as a result, but rather because it is a direct assault on the pro-union, labour-friendly Chow brand.

Put another way, her greatest vulnerability lies not with her enemies but rather with friends. In politics, as in life, friends have expectations and sometimes, regrettably, they’ll try and take advantage of you. And given the impossible fiscal situation Chow has inherited, she has zero wiggle room.

In other words, the math simply does not work.

But Mayor Chow’s path to re-election in 2026 will only remain open and clear if she can maintain her core base of support. This danger is the same one that faced Bob Rae provincially in 1995, when he lost his core base and subsequently his government after a crushing electoral defeat.

And it is only by finding a way to make the math work — to keep her friends friendly — that Chow will avoid a fracturing of her strong left-wing coalition and the ire of Torontonians whose eyes are watering from the smell of rotting garbage.

After all, that smell has a way of lingering and translating to dire political consequences. Just open the history books to 2009 and ask former mayor David Miller about that.