Politics and the fear of losing
Like her or not, Kamala Harris is a woman who knows who she is and works hard to do what she thinks is best and if there is anything that sets toxic men’s teeth on edge it’s a woman who doesn't need their approval for, well, anything.
To say she gets under Trump’s skin is a spectacular understatement. And really, most of what she needed to do to win this debate was 1) be herself and 2) let him show everyone just how fucking unhinged he is.
Mission accomplished. (“They’re eating the cats!”)
Honestly I was a little disappointed by her performance tonight. She seemed nervous and stumbled a few times explaining her positions. But at least she was rational.
I especially enjoyed her raised eyebrows when he talked about murdering babies and immigration being bad for the economy and Harris being a Marxist. And not answering whether he’d veto a national abortion ban. And he totally took the bait on the size of his crowds, did he.
Will tonight's performance be enough to win her the big job? I’d be a fool if I said I knew. I’m more likely to fall back on big trends and some timeless truths about elections – both in the United States and in Canada – to try and suss out what I think will happen in the near and medium-term future.
Fear of being afraid of something
Most people would rather die slowly than live fully, I say more often than I care to mention, because living fully is scary. Living fully involves risks. Most people prefer enjoying what they have over reaching out for more, mostly because they fear losing what they have more than they want what they might gain.
A known known beats any unknown. Pain avoidance is a likelier predictor of behaviour than just about anything else. The trick is to be accurate about what people are legitimately worried about losing.
In 1984 when Ronald Reagan ran for re-election with his “morning in America” schtick it worked because times were good, generally speaking, and voters didn’t want to lose that. Reagan won every state except Mondale’s Minnesota and the District of Columbia, which would rather melt into the Potomac than vote red.
Things were less rosy in 1992, with the Gulf War and a nasty recession the year before and Bill Clinton, “the man from Hope,” represented the change people wanted to turn the economy around (the fact that Ross Perot split the vote on the right also helped Clinton but I’m trying to make a simple point here).
Two Clinton terms and two Dubya terms later, we get to 2008 and everybody was sick and tired of wars that wouldn’t end, especially with Saddam dead (bin Laden’s demise would have to wait until 2011). It was a different world and people were tired. They felt the world hated them and mostly it was generalized dislike of George W. Bush that was to blame but still. Barack Obama’s “yes we can” felt like precisely the hope and change that was missing.
Trump fucked everything up in 2016, including many long-term electoral patterns as well as the very nature of the Republican party. I don’t know how long it will take grown-up conservatives in the US to recover, and I do wish them luck because the truth is that democracy works best when it represents a wide diversity of opinions. Provided of course that they all stay within the confines of universally accepted principles like the rule of law and individual liberties very much including sexual and reproductive freedom.
This is now what millions of Americans have lost. The certainty that individual liberties were properly protected. If abortion rights can be removed by the stroke of a few justices’ pen, what’s next? This isn’t just about women’s rights. Human rights are everyone’s rights and like a chain, they’re never as strong as their weakest link. Since Dobbs, nobody is safe.
In this election, Kamala Harris is key to returning to an America where individual rights are guaranteed. Or more to the point I'm trying to make, Trump is precisely that which will ensure more people lose more rights.
Bringing this back to Canada, since the end of the pandemic we’ve all been living with a serious affordability crisis. Even people who earn decent incomes are faced with rising costs everywhere — rent or mortgage, taxes, utilities, food. And don’t get me started on shrinkflation. Eight dollars for a box of cereal that barely lasts two weekends? How can people who earn less than average manage if they have terminally hungry teenagers?
A thing that’s scary for people who live in Canada right now is to lose purchasing power. Nobody wants to keep working harder in order to be able to get less.
To my mind the biggest crisis in all of this is the one where home ownership is now out of reach for most people who don’t already own a home. That’s a lot of people. My kids are included in that. I’m a voter and I want my kids to have at least a decent chance of being able to house themselves without having to devote half their income to putting a roof over their head.
There is nobody right now talking about this in simple and plain language at the federal level except Pierre Poilievre. Now I don’t believe he’s got any clue how to fix this in a way that will work, but I have to give him points for talking about it in simple language. This issue alone might be enough to get his party elected — that’s how serious it is.
The Liberals are bringing in the former governor of the bank of England (and also Canada) to advise the same aloof bunch of disconnected politicians on how to build a long-term economy. They’re so out of touch they can’t even use language that resonates with today’s concerns.
In November last year I wrote this:
There is no shortage of debate about the right time for Justin Trudeau to take his own walk in the snow (I know, it’s overused, so not sorry). And I think that’s inane. The problem right now isn’t that Justin Trudeau is unpopular. It’s that times are tough and the only political party that seems to be talking clearly (or, you know, at all) about the cost of living is the blue one. It’s always the economy, stupid. It’s also about the rights of minorities. The Liberals are good on the latter (compared to the trumpian crap the Tories are peddling, at any rate) and if they find a way to talk convincingly about fixing the former and then act on it with the right kind of speed, they should be fine. I mean, they sure as hell won’t be if they don’t.
So far, they haven’t.
