Experience has taught Canadians our prime minister is resistant to opinions that differ from his own or his tight coterie of loyal advisors.
For an extended period he has been pressured to shift voters off their sense it’s time for new faces in Ottawa, an urge that has Liberals regularly trailing Conservatives by 15-20 points.
Justin Trudeau’s been pressed to shift gears, change direction, abandon unpopular or ineffective policies and adopt new ones, pay more attention to Canadians’ doorstep concerns, treat his caucus’s fears with greater regard, shake up his cabinet, call an election, step aside for new blood and generally offer some evidence he understands the state of the unrest afflicting his party and country … all to little effect. His response is to forge ahead, stick to the plan, ignore the naysayers and wait for the day everyone admits he was right in the first place.
This is the same approach used by the Democratic Party as it strode confidently into last week’s wholesale defeat. Post-election analyses show Democrats lost ground to Republicans pretty much across the board: among Black voters, Hispanic voters, young voters, rural voters, blue collar voters, independent voters, swing-state voters; they lost support in wealthy neighbourhoods and unhealthy neighbourhoods. You name it, they lost it. There’s no question it was a deep expression of discontent with the world as Democrats see it.
Much of the blame for the debacle is pointed straight at the party’s key figures and their refusal to see what was right there in front of them. President Joe Biden is at the top of that list, naturally. He stayed too long, wouldn’t listen to warnings, surrounded himself with a claque of long-term loyalists who insisted he could easily do another four years despite a physical decline so obvious it had him working limited 10 a.m.-4 p.m. shifts and struggling to coherently complete a full sentence.
But Biden didn’t do it all himself. His administration followed a policy framework aligned snuggly with traditional Democratic thinking. Party brass maintained it was plenty good enough to beat Donald Trump despite his ardent fan base and curious resilience. A week before the vote old salt party strategist James Carville was still insisting Kamala Harris had it all over Trump. His three reasons: Trump was a repeat electoral loser, Harris had gobs of money to spend, and a spidey-sense that Americans remained too good-hearted and reasonable to support an ogre like Trump.
Now the task is to sort out the mistakes, with considerable early opinion arguing it’s well past time to abandon “progressive” moralizing and impregnable self-regard. Stunned by the election result, Carville was beside himself.
“We had every rock star, cultural icon, athlete you can imagine. We had a superior field operation, the canvassing, the door-to-door stuff. We also raised more money. You look at all the intangible advantages we had and it didn’t amount to anything.”
What’s wrong with those voters? How could they be so stupid?
The view that voters were too dumb to grasp the essential rightness of Democratic policies struck many as central to the party’s defeat. Overpopulated with college-educated professionals, tech workers, academics, consultants, activists, left-wing podcasters and the like, party bosses refused to recognize they had lost touch with vast stretches of the country.
“The Democratic Party has one job: to combat inequality,” wrote columnist David Brooks. “Here was a great chasm of inequality right before their noses and somehow many Democrats didn’t see it. Many on the left focused on racial inequality, gender inequality and L.G.B.T.Q. inequality. I guess it’s hard to focus on class inequality when you went to a college with a multibillion-dollar endowment and do environmental greenwashing and diversity seminars for a major corporation.”
“The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of 50 years ion neoliberalism, which left legions of Americans adrift,” concurred Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy in a lengthy posting. “We don’t listen enough; we tell people what’s good for them.”
“Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left,” asserted Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres. “When over 70 per cent of Americans think we are on the wrong track or headed in the wrong direction, that’s not a messaging problem. That is reality problem.”
Left-wing warhorse Bernie Sanders, re-elected for a fourth term at age 83, issued a statement reflecting much the same view.
“It should come as no surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he charged, denouncing “the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party.”
All the conditions that brought down the Democrats are rife among Canadian Liberals. A prime minister convinced he’s on the right track no matter who says otherwise. An uneasy caucus in need of a new leader but lacking candidates other than paler versions of the one they’ve got. A restless electorate convinced it’s not being listened to. A surging opposition happy to ride the wave of public discontent.
Like the Democrats, Liberals can’t think of any response to challengers but to call them names and denigrate their existence. The last thing they’re prepared to do is listen. Even as their American cousins were deep into self-examination, two Trudeau ministers — ignoring the gains Conservatives have made by questioning unpopular climate policies — announced the government’s latest set of obstacles to the energy industry.
“We’re asking the oil and gas sector to invest their record profits into pollution-cutting projects,” declared Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, unveiling a demand for a further 35 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
“I think most Canadians — even those that aren’t my biggest fans — would agree that it’s not OK for a sector to not be doing its share.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith denounced the emissions cap as a “deranged vendetta” against Canada’s biggest export industry, worth US$143 billion a year with operations in seven provinces. Lisa Baiton, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, predicted the result of Guilbeault’s emissions cap would be “lower exports, fewer jobs, lower GDP, and less revenues to governments to fund critical infrastructure and social programs.” Industry executives and analysts warned of higher production costs and less investment.
Not so, insisted Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. Ottawa has modelling that indicates otherwise, he said. “I think that the way we’ve designed the cap, they will take some comfort from the fact that it is really based on technical achievability. It is not based on shutting in production.”
As for Smith, Guilbeault dismissed her remarks out of hand. “What the government of Alberta is saying is not true.”
Alberta is wrong, the industry is mistaken, executives know nothing, modelling offers a better bet than experience. Liberals know better, based on their insights from Ottawa. It’s magical thinking, of the sort that rewarded Democrats with a crushing defeat.
It’s hard to hear when you have your thumbs in your ears. America’s Democrats are at least becoming aware of their plight. For Canada’s Liberals it looks set to take longer.
National Post