When they suck at it so badly?
Quite by accident I found myself watching a Global News Broadcast last night and David Aiken was "analyzing" the potential impacts on Canada of a Trump presidency. Part of that analysis was to state that the PM is no longer as strong as he was during the first Trump presidency with Mr. Aiken stating that "Donald Trump can read polls too."
Of course, this is reference to the public polls stating that the Liberals appear to be in some trouble. Ok, if you are going to talk about Canadian polling during an analysis of the impact of a Trump presidency on Canada at least talk about the right polls.
The party preference polls are irrelevant to that analysis but the polls indicating that over 2/3 of respondents preferred that VP Harris win the White House are quite relevant. I would bet a sizable chunk of money that if a poll is conducted about levels of anxiety amongst Canadians at the prospect of a second Trump presidency a similar proportion would be anxious to very anxious.
I would also point out that when Canadians do not agree with the occupant of the White House they tend to rally around the government when that White House does something Canadians do not like. Jean Chretien received a rather large boost in popularity when he told George W Bush that Canada would not be joining in the second invasion of Iraq, over the protestations of Stephen Harper and the media. That decision is still considered to be one of the wisest ever taken by PM Chretien. The same is true for Justin Trudeau. He received a boost in popularity after the agreement on the new NAFTA treaty. The media tried their best to play down his accomplishment but most Canadians realized that the deal they made was much better than it could have been and they appreciated it.
The new administration is going to be belligerent but it is probably also going to be incompetent. They have also promised to make moves as soon as possible so stuff in going to happen well before next fall. If the Trudeau government can be seen to stand up to the belligerence while taking advantage of any incompetence that will go along way towards "rehabilitating" their image, particularly in the provinces that would suffer the greatest impacts of that belligerence.
All that being said I would caution against trying to discern the exact impact the election of Donald Trump will have on our politics. Whoever occupies the White House usually does not have any impact. Most of the time the President is seen as innocuous and Canadians do not tend to get worked up about them but Donald Trump is probably not going to be seen as innocuous so how the government handles him will be an important issue for Canadians. As well, how a Poilievre government would handle Donald Trump is probably going to become an issue. Our media will try to shield him but I believe that Canadians are not going to settle for empty slogans and constant criticism of the government without them saying how they would do things differently. They were able to do it the first time around but I believe they will not be able to this time. If Donald Trump lives up to expectation Canadians are going to want to know how the two major parties will deal with him and they will want details.
In such a situation the Liberals can point to a track record and the Conservatives cannot. Again our media will try to play down that track record but Canadians will still be looking for substantive answers from both parties and so far the Conservatives have been short on providing such answers for many issues.
The election of Donald Trump has the potential to modify the current political dynamic in this country. How it does so remains to be seen but how Canadians view Donald Trump (which is very negatively) and how the Canadian government deals with him is much more important to that dynamic than the current party support numbers in the Canadian public polls. If David Aiken was the political analyst he believes he is that is that is what he would have talked about last night..
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