Back in August, when I had dreams of being a political consultant, I sent an email to the Donald Trump campaign headquarters. The basis of my email was a suggestion to start using a quote first uttered by one of our own prime ministers.
For you older folks, I’m sure the name John Diefenbaker rings a bunch of bells. “Dief the Chief,” as he was referred to, was one of Canada’s most colourful and patriotic Canadians. A great admirer of Winston Churchill, Diefenbaker possessed the same powerful wit as Churchill – and the same ability to get into real hot water with some of the statements he made. The quotation in question: “Everybody’s against me except the people.” When ‘the chief” made this comment, it was an accurate reflection of his then current position and I can think of no statement that better describes what we saw in the United States on Tuesday, November 8th.
That everyone was against Trump is obvious. The media abandoned any sense of impartiality and condemned Trump constantly. Only one major newspaper in the entire country endorsed the Republican candidate. Celebrities had to stand in line to get their chance to run down “The Donald,” and the lineups were long, indeed. It was only natural that Democrat operatives heaped on the abuse, but what was remarkable was the degree that Trump’s fellow Republicans seemed to relish running down their own candidate. Republican candidates for both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate routinely refused to take the stage of any public event if Trump was rumoured to be within a thousand miles of their current location. Even foreign leaders got into the fray, with our own idiot prime minister making loud, disparaging remarks to anyone who wasn’t already tired of listening to him (these groups were very small, indeed).
In last month’s Gazette, I mentioned “The Bradley Effect,” and how Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley lost the race to be California’s governor, despite leading handily in the polls. It was discovered later that a lot of people who said they were voting for Bradley actually voted for his opponent. I’ll let you decide whether the fact that Bradley was black and his opponent was white had any effect on the voters. However, I did speculate that the same thing might be happening in the U.S. Presidential election. Turns out that prediction was 100 per cent accurate.
During the election coverage, one journalist talked about a meeting he had with a Democratic political operative in Philadelphia at the Democratic Convention. When he asked the operative how things were going, the response he received was: “I’m worried – there are a lot of leaners.” The journalist didn’t understand this reference and asked for an explanation. The answer was “I see a lot of people saying they are voting for Clinton, then they all lean over the counter and whisper in my ear: I’m really voting for Trump.”
Now, these switch voters do not explain everything. The other reality was that Clinton did not get the voters of the “Obama coalition” to go to the polls. In virtually every American city, especially the inner cores of the major cities, she got far fewer votes that Barack Obama managed to get in 2008 and 2012.
Meanwhile, my invoice to Donald Trump for my sage advice: “Everyone’s against me except the people” is in the mail.
Brian McLeod is a St. Albert resident.
