Canadian border guards had best be on their toes. If we are to take them seriously, a crush of left-leaning Americans Democrats are set to flood the border and migrate to Canada to escape the second coming of Donald Trump. We’re only a couple of days in, but I’d place my bets on this not happening. Higher taxers, colder weather, and bleaker job prospects aren’t attributes that tend to attract top talent from the world’s richest country.
Trump easily won the electoral college by a modern day landslide and, more astonishingly, the popular vote as well; a feat the Republicans haven’t managed in 20 years. Trump’s victory is astonishing, and the monumental nature of the accomplishment must be acknowledged. It cannot be undersold. It is immense and staggering. Though, of course, we cannot know for sure, it may well be that many of us have just witnessed the most incredible and unlikely political comeback will see in our lifetimes, even if we live to a hundred.
What Trump’s presidency holds remains a matter of conjecture. There will inevitably be outbursts of a deranged and raving manner from the returning president, whether on X, Truth Social, or into a microphone. Whether those deranged outbursts translate into policy, however, remains to be seen. It will likely be four years of content overload, both good and bad.
More interesting will be the response of the Democrats to this embarrassing defeat. And, make no mistake, this loss is hugely embarrassing. If you call your opponent unfit, crazy, a liar and a Nazi, and yet still can’t beat them, what does that say about your side?
What the Harris loss does not prove is that America is full of hateful, misogynistic Nazis. Are there hateful racists in the U.S.A.? Yes, but they can’t account for the magnitude of such a loss. Many regular, well-meaning and decent people looked at their own situation, sized up the two candidates, and decided Trump was the better option. Denying this fact is a sure path to future electoral defeats for the Democratic party.
It is always difficult to pinpoint the reasons for losing an election but, in 2024, two things stand out. First, incumbents across the board are having a rough time. This is likely chiefly due to inflation and the rising cost of living across many western countries. Many, if not most, voters looking back to four years ago are likely to feel that, economically speaking, life was better and more affordable.
Second, and equally as important, are the culture wars. Here, the Democrats have only themselves to blame. In Trump’s victory, the Democrats are reaping the rewards of eight or more years of lecturing and hectoring anyone who didn’t agree with them on how they were racists, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes. Donald Trump 2.0 is their prize.
The options that now present themselves for the Democrats are to either back away from the more extreme positions of the culture wars — such as the stance that there is no biological difference between men and women and trans women should be allowed unfettered access to women’s sports — or to double down. To double down is to invite an even worse loss next time around. So far, this seems to be the chosen path. On election night MSNBC characterized Florida as a “fascist-type” government for Ron Desantis’ use of Trump-style tactics. The next morning, on Morning Joe, while discussing Harris’ loss, host Joe Scarborough broadened out the misogyny accusation to include not only whites, but also Black and Hispanic men. He then added that Hispanics were also racists towards Blacks.
Accusing minority groups of racism and sexism is a new one, even for MSNBC. Could it not be that, perhaps, Latinos were just tired of being called “Latinx” when the very language they speak has genders built into it? “El” and “la” definite articles aren’t transphobic, they’re Spanish. Plus, even if Joe had a point, it’s hard to see how calling more people “racist” is a sound strategy in order to attract voters.
If the lesson the Democrats and the left take from Trump’s thumping win is that there are many more racists, misogynists, and just jerks in general in the United States than anyone ever imagined, they are doomed to failure. Most people in the United States (and, for that matter, Canada) want equality, dignity, respect, and opportunity for all. What they object to is being told is that they and their country are irredeemably racist and hateful because they think that America, it’s history and its people, while not perfect, aren’t all that bad.
If the Democrats can learn this lesson, they will flourish. If ignored, they will perish.
Adam Pankratz is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.
National Post