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Day: October 12, 2020

None of us.

There is a simple reason why no one really wants to say Donald Trump is going to lose in 2020.

Because no one really got it right in 2016.

This writer is one of the many who got it wrong.  Never saw it coming.  And I was close enough to the action to know better.

Full disclosure: I've helped out the Democrats for years, and I was again proudly working for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  As a foreign national, I couldn't donate to her campaign, or get paid.  But I could volunteer for her, and I did in Maine, in New Hampshire, and at her Brooklyn headquarters.

We had more money.  We had better people.  We had organization.  We had ideas galore.  We had experienced campaign managers.  And we had the best candidate, too: a former Secretary of State, a former Senator, a former First Lady and accomplished lawyer.  We had it all.

Our opponent was a joke.  Donald Trump been caught on tape, proclaiming that he "grabbed [women] by the pussy."  He refused to release his taxes because, we suspected (correctly), he hadn't paid his fair share.  He was an unapologetic racist, calling Mexicans drug dealers and rapists, and pledging to bar Muslims from entering the United States.

And he had denigrated captured war heroes like John McCain who was being tortured in Vietnam right around the time Trump was dodging the draft and chasing escorts around New York City.

We couldn't lose or so we thought.  For months, every national poll had shown us far ahead of Trump.  The politics and the punditocracy, too: all were convinced we'd win.

We didn't.

Even though Hillary got three million more votes than Trump, the United States' byzantine electoral college system produced a perverse, and shocking, result: the narrowest of victories for Donald Trump.  Because slightly more than 70,000 votes went the wrong way in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump bested Clinton in the electoral college.

Could it happen again?

It could.  It might.  A characteristic of Trump's core vote, those of us on Clinton's team later learned, is that they are older and tend to hide from pollsters in the lead-up to voting day and then they come out to vote, en masse.

Trump was assisted, too, by Bernie Sanders in 2016.  Sanders had repeatedly demonized Hillary as corrupt and a captive of Wall Street thereby suppressing our youth vote.  The clueless, witless FBI director also helped to kill Hillary's momentum when it hurt the most, with a bogus and needless probe of some emails.  And, finally, white suburban women who we had thought would be repulsed by Trump voted against their self-interest, and for a "man" who bragged about sexual assault.

Four years later, and with three weeks to go until voting day, none of that applies anymore.  For Donald Trump, the political landscape is radically different.

The coronavirus has sickened or killed Trump's most loyal supporters white retired seniors.  Poll after poll now show that older Americans have abandoned Trump because they have been appalled by his mismanagement of the pandemic, which has killed 215,000 Americans.  Seniors are now mostly lining up behind the Democrats' Joe Biden.

Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has a far better relationship with Biden than he did with Clinton.  As a result, Sanders has urged his youthful supporters to rally behind Biden and they have.

This time around, there is no manufactured scandal swirling around the Democratic presidential nominee.  Trump tried to get one going in Ukraine against Biden and his son, of course.  But that only resulted in Trump's impeachment and Biden winning the Democratic nomination in a walk.

Finally, white suburban women long ago abandoned Trump, fed up with his sexism and misogyny and payoffs to porn stars.  Biden's massive national polling lead has been fuelled, for the most part, by female voters.

But that's the polls.  Is Joe Biden winning on the ground, where it counts?

This time around, I am doing phone banking calling up registered voters, to I.D. the vote, to get out the vote.  I've called hundreds of residents of New England states so far, asking how they've marked their absentee ballots.  And this is how many have told me they've voted for Donald Trump:

None of them.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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Annamie Paul, the federal Green Party's newly-minted leader, might be a great environmentalist, but I suspect she'll make for a lousy politician.

I say that because she was recently whining about how, during the last federal election, the NDP had distributed pamphlets attacking her Green Party, attacks which included the accusation that the Greens share "many Conservative values."

Horror of horrors!

Anyway, Paul was apparently so shocked that the NDP would carry out such an audacious attack strategy, that even a year later, she still feels the sting.

Said Paul recently to the media, "there is still a lot of hurt and confusion about the NDP's decision to use American-style attack ads and literature during the 2019 (federal) race.  The Green party is a relatively young party; we have lots and lots of former NDP members, we have lots who are very sympathetic to the NDP, and who have lots of friends in the NDP.  So, there's still a lot of hurt and confusion about the decisions they made."

OK, there's a lot to unpack here.

First off, I think it's kind of cute the way Paul equates pretty harmless pamphlets to the dreaded "American-style attack ads."  Talk about being overly sensitive!  I can only imagine the amount of "hurt and confusion" she'd feel if a rival party ever actually did unload a bona fide negative blitz against her!

She might have to hide away under a solar panel.

Secondly, it seems Paul isn't all that confident in the loyalty of her Green Party supporters, if she fears even the slightest of criticisms will cause them to break ranks.

And lastly and most tellingly, Paul's comments seem to betray a stunning naivety about how politics actually works.

Otherwise why would she be so astonished that the NDP would attempt to pry away Green Party supporters, whom she admits "are very sympathetic to the NDP?"

Of course, the NDP would try to woo away such supporters, just as the Conservatives would try to woo away Liberal supporters who might be sympathetic to them.

My point is, the NDP and the Greens are basically both fishing in the same voter pool, so naturally there'd be some conflict between them.

It's inevitable; it's the political law of the jungle.

If Paul doesn't get this reality, she's in for a rude awakening.

Mind you, Paul's predecessor as Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, also wasn't exactly savvy when it came to political tactics.

I remember, for instance, when May hired Warren Kinsella, a combative, aggressive, fire-eating political operative, who wrote a book called Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics to help her set up a "war room".

Many at the time, including myself, saw this move as evidence that May was getting ready to duke it out with the other parties in the political arena, giving as well as she got.

Indeed, the Green Party deputy-leader Jo-Ann Roberts told the media: "Elizabeth had to admit that she does not have the sophistication it takes to deal with this stuff.  We can play to her great strength, climate change, but only if we don't let other people take her apart at the knees.  Kinsella knows the dark world much better than we do.  By hiring him, we are sending a message to other parties: we will not just let ourselves be attacked."

Yet, as it turned out, May wasn't totally sold on the Kinsella concept.

In fact, when Kinsella went on Twitter and tweeted this line: "Elizabeth May brings on Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics author Warren Kinsella to help Green war room", May responded with this tweet: "Greens do politics differently. @kinsellawarren knows we have no 'war room.'  Peace Room?  Situation Room?  Room of Zen?"

Unfortunately, for May, her "Room of Zen" didn't stop the NDP attacks.

Perhaps this is why the federal Greens, despite getting mainly positive press, are still essentially just a fringe party.

Sure, its pro-environment message might resonate with a lot of people, but when it comes to the "dog eat dog" world of politics, it's just a puppy.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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