The Phantom Public

When Republican Michael Waltz became President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, he vacated his Florida congressional district seat, which set in motion a special election to fill it. That election takes place Tuesday, April 1st.

It is probably true that few people believed the Republicans would have a difficult time holding the seat given the fact that in November Walz won by an impressive 33 points and Trump beat Vice President Harris in the district by 30 points. But all of that was before Trump decided to take a torch to American Democracy as we know it. Now voters in this very red district will have a chance to weigh in on how they feel about what the president has done so far on important issues like Elon Musk’s DOGE efforts, tariffs on imports, and immigration policy, to name a few of the hot-button items defining his presidency to date.

The race is between Republican state Senator Randy Fine and Democrat Josh Weil. There have been a few polls and amazingly this one appears to be competitive, with one survey showing the Trump-endorsed Fine with a 4-point lead and another actually putting Weil ahead by a few points. Both of these polls are within the margin of error, but given the political leanings of the district, this is quite amazing. Add to this that the Democrat Weil has significantly out-raised his Republican opponent by more than 10 times.

Another indicator of how much trouble the Republicans may be in is that some members of the Florida GOP establishment are already calling this race “candidate-specific” meaning that if Fine underperforms, it’s on him and not President Trump or the party. Throwing shade on your own candidate in the days leading up to the election is definitely not a good luck.

The Republicans may well hold this seat given the history, but even if they do, the margin will matter. Similarly, Matt Gaetz’s seat in the Florida 1st Congressional District is up for grabs and while no one is suggesting the Democrats have a real shot there, the margin of victory will matter.

When the dust settles, spinners will spin, but if the Democrat’s significantly over-perform, you have got to believe that vulnerable Republican members of the House and the Senate will notice and will perhaps be a little less likely to rubber stamp Trump’s agenda. We all know how well the threat of a primary challenge has been used to keep congressional Republicans in line but if they start to feel like winning their party’s nomination is a short-term victory on the way to ultimate defeat, some things could start to change.

In the couple of months since his second term began, President Trump’s attacks on the Canadian economy and sovereignty have given rise to a fair bit of anger from Canadians. Yes, we are nice, but we have our limits. Trump’s tariffs, and promises of more, despite having signed onto a new free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico near the end of his first term, and his threats to make Canada the 51st state, have enraged Canadians to the point that these issues are top of mind for nearly everyone here.

The response is taking several forms. Certainly the Canadian government has been clear that it will retaliate with tariffs of its own and has signalled a willingness to pursue other economic measures such as export taxes on energy to the the U.S. Canadian politicians from all parties have loudly rejected challenges to our sovereignty.

The people of Canada have also made it clear what they think as they cancel trips to the United States either as a political statement or because they have concerns about how non-citizens might be treated. The New York Times has reported that Canadian airlines are “eliminating tens of thousands of seats to the United States this April, a peak period when Canadians travel to warmer destinations.” There is considerable community effort to encourage Canadians to avoid buying goods made in America, and all sorts of social media activity encouraging Canadians to keep their “elbows up,” a hockey reference essentially calling on Canadians to remain strong in the face of threats made by Trump and his administration.

For many of us, the single most interesting development is what it has done to our electoral politics. Prior to the beginning of Trump’s second term, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, was trailing his main opponent Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party by as much as 25 points in the polls. Trudeau stepped down and Mark Carney, former head of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, was chosen as new leader of the Liberal Party, becoming prime minister in the process. Whether or not Trudeau would have been able to close the gap with Poilievre in the face of Trump’s aggressive actions is a moot point as his leadership had become untenable.

Mark Carney has closed the gap and more, erasing Poilievre’s lead in the polls, going ahead by 5 points according to an aggregation of polls. This change is based on the simple fact that Canadians have decided Carney is in the best position stand to to Trump.

According to a report from Ipsos:

Mark Carney is thought to be the best federal party leader to help Canada navigate challenges associated with the Donald Trump Presidency, performing well ahead of Justin Trudeau on the same measures. By contrast, Pierre Poilievre is the candidate chosen by Canadians as most likely to roll over and accept whatever President Trump demands…

If you have any doubt how serious Canada is about the threat Donald Trump poses, know that a more than 30 point swing in the polls has taken place based upon the belief that the incumbent Liberal Party and it’s leader will do a better job on this one question. The general election will take place on April 28th.

Earlier this week, Carney had a phone call with Trump which was characterized by both parties as positive. According to reports, Trump signalled more respect for Canadian sovereignty in discussions with Carney and may even have suggested that new world-wide tariffs to be announced on Wednesday will not fall as heavily on Canada as previously thought. Perhaps a good signal but we also know things can change in an instant.

It should be noted that all of the above is within the realm of fairly normal politics. There is much unpleasantness, but these things can, let us hope, be managed. The other side is what might happen if Donald Trump decides he no longer wishes to play by the rules of the game either at home or abroad. What can we possibly say about this very real possibility other than a call to work together to make it unbearably costly for him to go that route? Canadians have so far refused to capitulate and been clear that it will respond to Trump’s bullying in any and all ways proportionate to the challenge.

In Timothy Snyder’s useful little book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, his first lesson is to “not obey in advance.” He writes:

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who acts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

With the appropriate adjustment to the world of international relations, Canada never considered obeying in advance and it may have caught Trump by surprise.

Growing up in the United States as I did, I can say that most Americans know very little about Canada but they are learning, especially the president and those around him.

There are many things that have changed since we first watched Donald Trump come down that escalator on June 16, 2015, but if there is one thing that stands out it is that we no longer have any confidence in our ability to know what matters and what doesn’t matter when it comes to a presidential candidate’s competitive viability.

I remember thinking that Trump had destroyed himself and his political future, in July of 2015, when he said about John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” In Rick Perlstein’s 2014 book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, he makes the point that President Nixon executed a pretty clever mind trick by convincing many Americans that the return of the country’s Vietnam POWs was, in a strange sense, the victory America sought. Never mind that the war was a disaster, the pictures of reunited families on tarmacs, of children and wives running to their fathers and husbands was, Nixon hoped, a story happy enough to make people forgot what had been lost.

The extent to which Nixon succeeded is debatable, but the place of those returned POWs in American folklore, particularly among conservatives, has never been in doubt. For Trump to criticize John McCain, famously known for refusing early release from captivity, surely made many of us think Trump had done himself irreparable damage. On top of that, of course, is that the remarks came from someone who had ducked the draft through college deferments and medical exemptions, another “black mark” that has raised eyebrows in past presidential campaigns.

We could talk about the Access Hollywood tape where Trump bragged about the sexual assault he is able to get away with because he is a celebrity. There is the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit, the Stormy Daniels case, January 6th, and on and on with scandal after scandal. January 6th is interesting because so many high profile, experienced Republicans thought Trump’s political career would be over because of his support for the rioters, though they mostly backed off when it became clear his base (and their base) didn’t care. Again, old rules did not apply.

Then there is Tuesday’s debate when any number of truly laughable statements were made by Trump, statements about immigrants eating pets, Kamala Harris’s ethnicity, and January 6th rioters. It’s all so new we don’t need to go into detail, but the point is that it really hasn’t seemed to matter.

Why is that?

There are three things that come to mind. The first is in a clever term that someone came up with called “sane-washing,” which has been defined as “an act of packaging radical and outrageous statements in a way that make them seem normal.” The argument goes that reporters, charged with making the world make sense for us go the extra mile to make otherwise incoherent statements meaningful.

Another factor is in what some of Trump’s supporters tell us we should do, which is to take Trump “seriously but not literally.” Trump strategist Corey Lewandowski once said that “the problem with the media is that [they take] everything Trump says so literally. The American people don’t.” I guess this means we are supposed to be satisfied that Trump doesn’t literally mean that immigrants are eating cats and dogs, but that they are here and doing bad stuff in general. Perhaps his question about whether Kamala Harris is really black isn’t that he cares about such things, but that she changes positions for political gain. You get it.

And finally, the existence of Fox News has created an immensely powerful safety net for Trump, an entire network dedicated to his protection. Someone once said that if Fox News had been around in the early ’70s, Richard Nixon would not have had to resign because a sufficiently robust counter-narrative would have been available to protect him and to make Nixon’s voter base sufficiently organized to threaten any Republican who got out of line.

I’m sure there are other reasons Trump gets away with so much, and the few ideas proposed here don’t, I’m sure, explain everything nor do they operate in silos. More than one mechanism can be at work at once, and different mechanisms are likely at play with different kinds of statements and actions.

To end where I began, since Trump, we no longer have any confidence in our ability to know what matters, and it is frustrating as hell, though I doubt I am alone in thinking about it, a lot.

A question on the minds of many a supporter of Kamala Harris’s presidential bid is the extent to which Trump will be able to effectively attack her new running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as a radical leftist.

With all the appropriate qualifiers about how Harris is the one at the top of the ticket and vice presidential nominees don’t move that much vote, Democrats are still hoping that Walz can help to balance concerns voters might have about Harris’s perceived vulnerability of being too liberal.

Put simply, Harris and her campaign team are hoping that Walz’s image, his midwestern-nice, gun-toting, football coaching, military serving, dad-energy personae will make enough people, particularly older white men in the middle of the country, comfortable enough with the Harris-Walz option to vote for it and thus eat into the majorities this cohort will surely deliver for Trump. And make no mistake, this calculation is about losing this bloc of voters by less and not outright winning it.

Republicans are hoping they can point to a bunch of policy decisions and actions by Walz that make it easy to tar him as a radical. They say he is on board with much of Harris’s liberal agenda with issues such as expanding benefits like paid family leave, protecting abortion rights, and restricting guns. They ramble on about his policy of free tampons in school bathrooms as a way to accommodate transgender students and voting rights for felons. They are particularly vocal about how he handled the civil unrest in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

Democrats are hoping to emphasize something entirely different. As Lisa Lerer writes at the New York Times, “The Democratic strategy is based far more on the identity politics of race, gender and cultural affiliation than on any policy calculation.” It is, according to this argument, about who he is, or who he is perceived to be and not what he has done or supported through work and deed.

The argument is, however, more complicated.

My guess is that no matter how hard Trump and Vance try to suggest these positions he has taken and the things that he has done are the work of the devil, a large chunk of voters, even many white working class men, are going to see this as the kinds of positions one might take when they try to serve their constituents as governor, when they try in good faith to get things done.

Maybe this is a hard sell in today’s political environment, but if you respect voters enough to tell them why you have done what you have done, they are not going to be overly fussed that they don’t agree with everything you have done.

The magic of someone like Walz, a guy who exudes integrity and decency, is that whatever policies Trump thinks he can attack him with, it is precisely the way Walz presents himself, his identity, that makes him attractive to voters. In others words, it’s not who he is versus what he has done; it’s his ability, because of who he is, to talk to voters in a respectful way about why he did what he did, and what he thinks needs to happen next.

Trump doesn’t respect people who vote for him. And don’t forget Hillary Clinton’s major blunder of describing some who might vote against her as deplorables. Walz will not get a majority of white working class voters. But he is going to get some of them by being who he is, a guy who knows you can disagree with people and still respect them, and sometimes even vote for them.

On Wednesday night President Joe Biden spoke to the nation about his decision to step down from the 2024 presidential race. He framed it as a necessary step, as a passing of the “torch to a new generation” required in this moment to save democracy. Much has been written about how difficult it must have been for him to make that decision and how rare it is for someone in such an important role to walk away for the greater good.

What is important, though, is how the greater good should be framed by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris as she attempts to define her candidacy. For no matter how true it is that this next election is in fact a fight for democracy itself, it is also true that such a framing is simply too abstract, to difficult to articulate in the kind of raw political terms required by a national campaign for the nation’s highest office. It’s always harder and less effective to defend an idea than it is to point to what you are going to do to make people’s live better, and what voters are going to get if they choose you.

As Kamala Harris no doubt has some very smart people on her campaign team, it is clear they understood the challenge and have begun to rise to it.

Less than a week after President Biden’s speech, the Harris for President Campaign released their first official video. As narrated by Harris, the first words are “What kind of country do we want to live in?” She goes on to say: “There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos. Of fear, of hate….but us, we choose something different…we choose freedom.”

And then she tells us what that means:

The freedom not just to get by, but to get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty. Where we can all afford healthcare. Where no one is above the law.

The tag for the ad, the promise she makes, is this. “We believe in the promise of America and we’re ready to fight for it. Because when we fight, we win.”

Now, one might think it counterintuitive that Democrats would run on a theme extolling the value freedom given that Republicans like to claim they are the party of liberty. But, of course, Republicans are not the party of liberty; they are the party of making sure everyone lives according to their values.

In a speech to the American Federation of Teachers in Houston on Thursday, Harris used the phrase, “We are not going back,” as she cited the draconian measures laid out in the Project 2025 policy book like big tax breaks to corporations, ending the Affordable Care Act, and destroying gains made through collective bargaining in America. She talked about the Republican’s “full-on attack on hard-won, hard-fought freedoms,” like LGBTQ rights, abortion access and gun violence restrictions.

There is a truism in politics that people are far more tolerant of not getting new benefits than they are of having things they have come to expect taken away from them.

There is little doubt that democracy is at stake in this election cycle, but Team Harris has quickly figured out that to defend democracy voters need to be reminded what they will lose if they elect a candidate and a party who are all about taking away so much of what Americans have to come to expect and value. Freedom is on the ballot.

The Lincoln Project is out with their first ad in support of Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. While honouring Joe Biden for the difficult decision he made, the announcer also gives us a sense of how the Harris campaign might come after Trump. The narrator says, “Vice President Kamala Harris is ready, experienced, and as a tough prosecutor, Kamala Harris dealt with men like Trump all the time — rapists, con men, frauds, criminals.”

The prosecutor vs. the criminal. Buckle up.

Joly tells China’s top diplomat Canada won’t ‘tolerate any form of interference in our democracy’ – Globe and Mail

Montreal city councillor to represent Liberals in byelection (CBC News)

Federal Liberals launch website lambasting Poilievre’s record as a Conservative MP – Montreal Gazzette

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals head into summer with lowest share of committed voters since they were elected in 2015 – Toronto Star

Trudeau taps MacKinnon to be new labour minister, ahead of cabinet meeting (CTV News)

Not 24 hours after Joe Biden stepped down to make way for his Vice President Kamala Harris to become the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Nate Cohn at the New York Times is already harshing our buzz by reminding us that victory in the November election will not be a walk in the park for Kamala. Surely her nomination is not in doubt, as we have seen a number of high-profile Democrats, many of whom would have been considered viable candidates in their own right, endorse her. Though we are not sure what process the party will put in place to nominate her, there is little doubt we are looking at a Harris-Trump match-up. It is also absolutely true and, frankly, obvious that this will be a tough election.

Cohn makes the perfectly reasonable case that “the majority of voters have long had an unfavourable view” of Kamala Harris, just as they have had an unfavourable view of Biden. Still, he says, as recently as a year ago many Democrats were not particularly concerned about their unpopularity because they saw the election as a referendum on democracy itself and Trump’s obvious authoritarian impulses. They believed that American’s would understand this and that an “anti-MAGA” majority would reject Donald Trump.

A deeper dive, as Cohn points out, shows that there is surely more to it. For example, recent polling has suggested that, beyond Biden’s age, a majority of voters are not happy with the direction of the country and have deeply held concerns with issues such as immigration and the economy, areas in which many voters seem to trust Trump more. Kamala Harris was a key part of Biden’s team and can be easily blamed for any perceived failings of the Administration so, again, no walk in the park.

Mr Cohn does suggest that Kamala Harris could be seen as an agent of change able to present a vision for the country that successfully addresses concerns voters may have. He does not, however, seem overly optimistic.

I think he misses a key point.

When news began to circulate that Joe Biden was going to do the very brave and noble thing of stepping down for the good of his country, there was not only a sense of relief but also of excitement, almost giddiness that now Americans terrified of another Trump Presidency would have a fighting chance.

After Trump’s truly awful acceptance speech at the GOP convention, many pundits said that his rambling incoherence was proof that he was beatable. There is an old saying, however, that you can’t beat something with nothing, and many of us felt that with Biden at the top of the ticket that was the problem. In the June 27th debate, every time Trump would lie, more than 30 times according to CNN fact checker Daniel Dale, we could see for ourselves that President Biden was not capable of offering a challenge. In subsequent appearances, which were intended to quell our concerns, we were never quite sure what he was trying to tell us.

Of course we don’t know what the outcome of the election will be; we don’t know how Kamala Harris will perform, but we know we have a chance. The overwhelming sense that I felt and that I think was shared by many others when we heard that Biden was stepping down was excitement and even fun at the prospect of taking on Trump effectively.

The Biden Administration has a good record to run on; they are on the winning side of issues like reproductive rights and foreign policy, and Kamala Harris will be able to draw attention to the terrifying policies that we are likely to get with four more years of Trump, such as those promoted in Project 2025.

For the first time in a while, it’s fun and exciting being a Democrat, and that’s the sort of thing that opens checkbooks, draws volunteers, gets people to their polling stations and wins elections now that we have something to fight with.

The GOP love-fest in Milwaukee is over. Trump is back on the campaign trail with his new best buddy J.D. Vance. President Biden is hunkered down in Delaware with COVID-19 trying to figure out his next move, which increasingly looks like a departure, though no one is sure. I’m siding with those who think Joe Biden is no longer able to campaign effectively and will most likely lose if his name is on the ballot in November. It’s a lot to think about, a lot to say, and those who are paid to write about it and talk about it are hard at it.

As we look ahead, my biggest concern is that the media will continue to ignore or minimize who Donald Trump is and what he has said and done because they are exhausted by the horror of it all, and don’t believe their audience has much of an appetite to rehash it either.

Here is a case in point:

On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, was shot and wounded in the right ear at a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. It was in all the newspapers. It was, of course, a tragedy and something we hated to see. The bit of blood across his face, the pumped fist in the air, the flag in the background, and the exhortation to “fight, fight, fight” made many of his supporters marvel at his courage, heroism, and toughness. Some were even saying that America hadn’t seen such a brave and tenacious presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt in the early 20th century.

Well, there was a presidential candidate in 2008, a Republican by the name of John McCain. Most people will remember that McCain was taken prisoner of war in North Vietnam in October of 1967. He was shot down by a missile over Hanoi, fractured both arms and a leg when he ejected from the aircraft, and nearly downed when he parachuted into a lake. He was transported to the “Hanoi Hilton” where, though badly wounded, his captors wouldn’t treat him.

In a fascinating development, in 1968 his father John S. McCain Jr. was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theatre. The North Vietnamese wanted to release McCain for propaganda purposes though he refused unless other prisoners taken before him were also released, which the North Vietnamese would not do. He was subsequently tortured and held as a prisoner of war for five and a half years, until his release in March 14, 1973. His wartime injuries resulted in a permanent disability.

Old news, right? And to suggest that Donald Trump is tougher than John McCain is of course absurd, though not the point. The point is that in July of 2015, Donald Trump, while appearing at an event in Arizona, said of John McCain, “He’s not a war hero…he was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Here’s the deal: the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was a terrible thing, and under the circumstances one would have expected his supporters to make the most of his supposed brave response. But those in the mainstream media who made too much of his bravery, courage, and toughness in the days following without also mentioning what Donald Trump said about a real American hero like John McCain were doing the country no favours.

At some point, as a part of the narrative, Trump’s attacks on McCain should have been a part of the story; they were not. Perhaps even mention of Trump’s many Vietnam era deferments, and his statement that those who gave their lives to defend America were losers could have been in the mix.

Whatever else happens in this campaign, whoever runs for the Democrats, I am convinced Donald Trump will win if the media fail to report on the now long history of terrible things he has said and done because it is old news. As they search for new angles, new ways to generate advertising revenue, sell newspapers, and generate clicks, I fear they will do nothing to remind the public who this man is because the stories are old, and anyway there are too many of them, and we all know what he’s like, right?

With apologies to Maya Angelou, Donald Trump has been showing us who he is forever. Voters will believe him, and reject him, if the media, and the rest of us, have the patience to repeat the awful stories and reexamine the awful facts that are a matter of public record if only we can overcome our own weariness.