There’s no win for Canada in this US election

As I write this, America is in the process of deciding who will be its next president. By the time you read it, the answer may already be clear. And while voters in America will either be delighted or depressed by the outcome, the calculus is a little more complicated for Canadians. That’s because barring the sort of Reagan-esque landslide victory for Harris that sees Trump defeated in places like Texas, Florida, and Ohio (which nobody is predicting), he isn’t about to go away — much less quietly. 

He will still be the front-runner for the 2028 Republican nomination, after all. Even if he decides not to run in it, he’ll still have the ability to effectively anoint his preferred successor. And while Americans could be forgiven for not fully appreciating the risks he posed to their democracy back in 2016, they no longer have that excuse. If he’s elected president again, or even if he comes within shouting distance of winning, Canadians need to think long and hard about what it says about America — and what it means for our country’s future. 

With the exception of Ukraine, Mexico, and perhaps Taiwan, Poland, and the Baltic states, we have more at stake here than anyone else. For decades now we have had the mostly good fortune to live next to the world’s preeminent economic and cultural superpower. It bought our goods, defended our shared continent, and shielded us from any geopolitical threats we might face. In most respects, but not all, it has been an ideal neighbour. 

In 2016, we all realized that this arrangement was not necessarily guaranteed, and those neighbours were getting a bit restless. Now, in 2024, we have to face the fact that 2016 wasn’t a fluke. There are tens of millions of Americans who have looked, to varying degrees, at Trump’s long track record of illegality, incivility, and amorality and decided he’s worthy of their vote. In many cases, they’ve decided he’s worthy of their undying loyalty, and that no facts about him or his depravity can possibly change their feelings.  

As such, it’s tempting to compare him to authoritarian strongmen like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and India’s Narendra Modi, if not outright fascists like Benito Mussolini. In a conversation with other conservative columnists at the New York Times, Bret Stephens offered a different political analogue: former Argentina president Juan Perón. “He draws his power not only from the adulation he inspires among supporters but also from the hatred he generates from his opponents. If he reversed all of his positions tomorrow, his followers would still love him, and his enemies would still hate him. He’s a once-in-a-century phenomenon.”

Perhaps. But in some respects, America has always been like this — and always waiting for the right political leader to capitalize on the fissile material of a right-wing media ecosystem, an underfunded public education system and long-simmering resentment against growing equality for women and minorities. There is a subset of the American public that’s been willing to vote for almost anyone, no matter how debased or depraved, so long as they’re identified as a Republican. 

Back in 2005, screenwriter John Rodgers and a friend coined this as the “Crazification Factor.” They were discussing Barack Obama’s last Illinois Senate race that saw him running against an out-of-state parachute candidate named Alan Keyes. As Chicago Magazine’s Whet Moser wrote in 2011, “he wasn’t from Illinois; had spent the better part of the decade as the electoral equivalent of the Washington Generals; and regularly said things that were either ‘crazy’ or ‘surprising to hear in the realm of generalized American political discourse’ depending on how charitable you feel. And still got 27 per cent of the vote.”

In other words, in most parts of America there’s a not-insignificant chunk of the voting public that is, as Rodgers said, “either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision-making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.” After eight years of Donald Trump, I think it’s fair to say that the Trumpification Factor is now closer to 40 per cent — if not higher. That means that if 150 million people vote in this election, 60 million of them are essentially unreachable by conventional means of factual or logical persuasion. 

As Canadians, there’s nothing we can do to change that. But we can start to prepare for the consequences. That means building more robust defences for our economy, our cultural institutions, and our information ecosystems. It means finding ways to depend less on our American neighbours wherever possible. And it means supporting the things that enhance our political resilience against Trump-style demagoguery at home, from public education to proper regulations on social media companies. America may one day recover, at least partially, from the toxic influence of Trumpism. But as this election has made abundantly clear, we can no longer afford to take that for granted.