Tag: American election

No slow news days here

In the journalism biz, summer is generally considered slow news season. That’s why our publishing schedule takes a bit of a hiatus. Then there are years like this one.

Rarely in political history has anything so upended American politics than the debate by President Joe Biden against former president Donald Trump June 27. Biden’s performance was deemed so portentous of defeat that a groundswell of Democratic party operatives mobilized to replace him on the ticket mere weeks before the election.

Avoiding potentially divisive competition, the party instantaneously rallied around Vice-President Kamala Harris, who then selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate and, according to early opinion polls, the race has been completely shaken up. This week’s Democratic National Convention was the Harris-Walz ticket’s effort at solidifying the momentum that began with her selection a month ago.

Practically the only bad news the Democrats have had during this honeymoon period has been the disruptions at Harris rallies and at the convention by anti-Israel campaigners and those pushing for an end to the Gaza war. As the vice-president said to one group of hecklers, “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that.” 

Israel’s opponents are not the only ones agitated by the Democrats position on the Gaza war. At the fringes of the pro-Israel movement are those who believe a President Harris would undermine the US-Israel relationship and those who have particular concerns about Walz. In fact, both candidates are effectively in line with the mainstream Democratic party and larger American consensus, which recognizes the invaluable and special relationship between the two countries.

On the other hand, pro-Trump Zionists, who insist that the former president’s rhetoric and family connections guarantee a degree of loyalty to Israel, premise these assumptions on the flawed idea that Trump has loyalty to anything beyond his own self-interest or that he subscribes to any coherent position on anything. And they ignore his connections to and endorsements of far-right and antisemitic figures and movements. As we saw on Trump’s 180-flipflop on electric vehicles after he was endorsed by Tesla-founder Elon Musk, or on bitcoin or on TikTok after donations and endorsements from other billionaires, Trump has no core principles. It would not be in the interest of Israel, American Jews, Jews around the world, or the rest of the world to trust the future to a person who is demonstrating increasingly erratic behaviour and policies.

The Democratic party’s comparatively speedy defenestration of their incumbent president has inspired some members of Canada’s Liberal party to wonder if such a political decapitation might happen here.

The incumbent government is stuck in opinion polls far behind the opposition Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre. The loss of an erstwhile safe Liberal seat in a Toronto by-election in June has a number of Liberals wondering if self-preservation demands the replacement of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader. This fall’s return to Parliament – and probably the outcome of two upcoming by-elections, especially one in a relatively safe Liberal seat in a Montreal suburb – will almost certainly determine whether the Liberals stand by their man or take a lesson from their cousins to the south. 

Still closer to home, British Columbia politics has been heating up over the summer. The BC Conservative party under leader John Rustad is polling higher than that party has dreamed in about a century. Since being thrown out of the BC Liberal caucus two years ago, Rustad has taken the failing provincial Tories – a party that last won an election in 1928 – to opinion poll heights of a few points off top spot.

Kevin Falcon, whose disastrous rebranding of the BC Liberals to BC United seems to have left millions of voters unclear on what party he leads, is now in the single digits and faces complete obliteration, if polls are to be believed. Fears of a split centre-right vote (a perennial driver in BC politics for a century or so) seems to have been obviated by an overwhelming consensus by non-NDP voters to rally around the BC Conservatives.

Of course, campaigns matter. When voters realize that Falcon’s party is the one they used to know as the BC Liberals, some may return to familiar patterns, especially since BC United has frantically prevailed on Elections BC to allow them to include both their new and old names on this fall’s ballots.

It all just goes to show that you should take nothing for granted. With the BC election on Oct. 19, the US election on Nov. 5 and a minority Liberal government with increasingly uneasy backbenchers (and frontbenchers), the slow news season of the summer seems likely to usher in a rather exciting autumn. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. 

Let the American race begin

When Joe Lieberman was named Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, there was some discussion about the potential for America’s first Jewish vice-president. With the exception of the dustiest corners of the internet, the discussion was respectful and more curious than bigoted. It was probably less heated than the issue of America’s first Catholic president that came up when John F. Kennedy ran in 1960 and, because the Republican base is made up of a great number of evangelical Christians, probably even less significant than Mitt Romney’s Mormonism in 2012.

Now that Bernie Sanders is a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for this year’s U.S. presidential election, there has been almost no discussion of the potential for America’s first Jewish president; the discussion has been far more about the potential for America’s first avowedly socialist president.

After a seemingly interminable campaign, voting begins next week, launching the process of elimination that will determine the Republican and Democratic candidates for president this November. Voters in the first caucus state, Iowa, will gather in church basements and town halls on Feb. 1. In New Hampshire, eight days later, voters will cast ballots in the first primary of the season.

While American politics has always had many differences from European politics, the U.S. version this year seems to reflect, to some degree, the trend in Europe away from the centre. The Republican candidates are largely clustered on the right side of the spectrum, if not the far right. Donald Trump, the leading candidate according to polls, does not fit easily into ideological boxes, but his many very extreme comments appeal to at least some of the people we would describe as far right.

On the Democratic side, Sanders, an erstwhile low-profile junior senator from Vermont, who self-describes as a democratic socialist, is fomenting what is no doubt a very unwelcome sense of déjà vu for the once-presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Clinton was to be the unbeatable Democratic candidate in 2008, until an almost unknown senator from Illinois caught fire and bolted into the White House on a wave of reformist zeal. While not a single ballot has been cast yet in the 2016 battle, Clinton’s inevitability has almost evaporated.

What is it that explains Clinton’s inability to seal the deal, even with voters in her own party?

Part of the issue is her gender. How could it not be? If elected, she would be the first female president. But is gender an advantage or disadvantage for her? Perhaps it is both. Part of the challenge and opportunity Barack Obama faced was around his race. Whether race or gender are, in the end, advantages or disadvantages depends on a huge range of factors, including time and place, and the individual embodying them.

However, perhaps gender, race or religion will be less significant in this election because voters seem to be craving something different altogether. Even left or right may not be such key factors as (apparent) authenticity.

After decades in the public eye, Clinton is a consummate politician. Yet consummate politicians, even exceptional diplomats, are not what Americans seem to be seeking right now. Quite the opposite. American voters, in both parties, seem to be gravitating to unorthodox figures who do not follow scripts. Clinton seems both orthodox and tightly scripted.

Say what you will about Trump, his xenophobia and verbiage seem absolutely authentic. On the other hand, whatever Sanders’ ability or inability may be to get elected and then get any sort of socialistic agenda through Congress, his channeling of Americans’ economic realities and fears appears equally authentic. Both men have captured something in the zeitgeist that scripted politicians have failed to exploit.

And, while the Democrats and Republicans battle it out, a third option looms. There has been talk that, should the Republicans nominate Trump and the Democrats Sanders, a third-party candidate might emerge, appealing to wide swaths of the centre and chunks of both the left and right. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg – a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent – is seriously considering a run and will announce his intentions by March, associates told the New York Times. Imagine a three-way presidential campaign – with two Jewish candidates. That would be an authentic landmark.