Roundup: Hopes and fears for Biden

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And there we have it – it has been declared that Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the presidential election in the United States, and with that declaration, Canadian leaders of all stripes sent their congratulations over the weekend. While our foreign affairs minister hopes for some more stability and predictability in the new administration, the energy sector in this country is nervous that Biden had pledged to rescind the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline (thought it has been held up in American courts).

But as much as everyone is celebrating and sending out clips from the end of Return of the Jedi over social media (an odd choice considering that the Empire didn’t fall after that battle, but kept on kicking for another year, and its remnants metastasised into the First Order that decimated the New Republic), I feel the urge to be a bit of a wet blanket to point out that some 70 million Americans still voted for Trump and everything that he stands for, including racism and the march toward a fascist state, and he’s still in office for nearly three more months. The American impulse tends to be that politics is to be treated as a spectator sport, where they cast their ballots once every four years and then watch the show in between, rather than actually grappling with the real issues that face their country – particularly given that their Congress is largely unable to as the real likelihood that the Republicans have maintained their hold on the Senate will mean that virtually nothing will get done for the next couple of years. Not to say that civic engagement in Canada is a whole lot better, but at least our Parliament is actually built to move things through rather than for gridlock, as evidenced most recently by the fact that we could get pandemic supports for people and businesses out the door, whereas they are stalled in the US Senate. The lure of Trump and his ethos is not far gone, just because Biden won the White House, and that should remain the cautionary tale rather than people thinking the problem is solved and returning to complacency.

To that end, Susan Delacourt warns about Trumpism and the lure of “ordered populism” in Canada, as it is not a phenomenon contained solely to the United States. Likewise, Aaron Wherry notes that it was not a landslide for Biden, that Trumpism is still around, and that America needs to reckon with itself on this fact. I will note that Chris Selley did try to grapple with what Trumpism is without Trump, but I think that when Delacourt quoted pollster Frank Graves about “ordered populism,” that it may be the more accurate handle once Trump is out of the picture.

Good reads:

  • The pandemic is breaking new records of case numbers across the country, as Ontario is starting to loosen restrictions, so that’s helpful.
  • Marc Garneau has (finally) said that help for airlines will be contingent on refunds for passengers, leaving to wonder why it took so long to reach this point.
  • The government hasn’t issued proper ministerial guidelines for CBSA’s surveillance operations, and yet they’ve been on the drawing board since 2014.
  • As the RCMP grapples with its systemic racism, its hiring statistics show that diverse recruitment has essentially stagnated over the past decade.
  • As we approach Remembrance Day, here are some recollections of Black Canadians who fought racism to be able to serve during the Second World War.
  • Bloc House Leader Alain Therrien has tested positive for COVID.
  • Economist Mike Moffatt gives some thoughts about better alternatives to basic income, that will achieve more for less money.
  • Heather Scoffield makes the obvious point that re-opening businesses too early will cause another resurgence of the pandemic, and yet premiers won’t listen.
  • Susan Delacourt looks back on the last four years in Canada-US relations, and finds the silver lining in that Canada no longer takes the relationship for granted.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Hopes and fears for Biden”

  1. Delacourt’s piece is incomplete, possibly due to directive from the ToryStar’s new ownership or a reflexive journalistic resistance against supposed “bias”. But the CPC is *absolutely* the party of Trump, and everything mentioned in that piece is O’Toole’s platform (and Kenney’s). Not enough attention is being given to Alberta as the laboratory of Canadian fascism. Moreover, the NDP have become its enablers for their own self serving purposes, in the same manner as the hard left in Germany attacked the centrists only to enable you know who to Vienna-waltz up the middle.

    The Sanders/AOC cult that Singh and his Young Pioneers stan for, are doing the same thing to the “establishment Democrats” under Pelosi and Biden just like they did to Hillary Clinton in 2016. The NDP are doing just that to Trudeau now, having never forgiven him for breaking Jack’s “Nach Harper, Uns” plan and grabbing the brass ring in 2015. They’re tag teaming on the committees and in QP and their social media missives to attack NAFTA and frame the Liberals as the “corrupted elite.” Should Trudeau depart they’ll go after Freeland in the same manner, the CPC already showing signs of calling her a communist while the left laments that she *isn’t*. “Warmonger,” “imperialist,” and of course “crooked,” Freeland is in peril of becoming the the Hillary Clinton of Kathleen Wynnes. Just like how, for every Conservative still convinced that Trudeau is the love child of Fidel Castro, there’s a purity-prone Dipper who laments that he is *not*.

    I wish there could be more thinkpieces and TV segments about the horseshoe theory of politics and “heightening the contradictions.” Trudeau and Biden are trying to salvage sanity amid polarized extremes, but Yeats’ law of political absolutism is rearing its ugly head yet again: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Stand on guard, Canada.

  2. Oh and speaking of NDP enablers of fascism, I notice that Ralph Nader Mulcair has some words out in Maclean’s this morning, praising O’Toole as “disciplined” and implicitly hoping for both Trudeau *and Singh* to lose to him and Annamie “Jill Stein North” Paul. SMDH these guys never give up a grudge.

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