Repositioning Portland

Portland used to be the place that was crazy-liberal, and in a good way.

Then Portland was the national example of Democratic misrule, a willing victim of riots, vandalism, and homeless encampments.

Portland is getting a new brand: an oasis in a country that has gone MAGA.

Story in Sunday's Oregonlive

Vibe is hard to measure, but it is real.

For a decade Portland, Oregon had developed a reputation as the best city on the West Coast. It was liveable, prosperous, and growing. It was a tech center. It was less expensive than Seattle, San Francisco, L.A.,  and Silicon Valley.

Portlandia image of local residents

The TV sketch comedy Portlandia parodied it. Portland was the place where waiters showed diners family photos of the happy lives of the chicken, before it was served for lunch on a bed of organic kale. 

Then the summer of 2020.

I have been very critical of the way Portland handled the demonstrations -- and then riots -- following the suffocation of George Floyd in 2020. Over the course of a hundred days, anarchists and hooligans positioned themselves amid Black Lives Matter protests. The vandals carried out a campaign of statue-toppling, arson, and window-breaking. Portland's system for civic order broke down. The Multnomah County District Attorney, Michael Schmidt, came into office in August, 2020 as a "reformer," announcing that he was opposed to "mass incarceration" and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. He would not prosecute anarchist vandals. In response, Portland police went on an informal work-stoppage. They weren't going to arrest or stop vandals and arsonists if they weren't going to be prosecuted. Some people within the liberal BLM protesters were conflicted, so they did not identify and exclude the vandals. On one hand, the hooligans were hijacking the protests and destroying their message of peaceful protest. On the other hand they claimed to be ideological allies, also angry about the status quo but more willing to walk the talk. Liberals knew the argument that "violence is the language of oppressed," so one should expect some violence to protest the greater systemic violence done to marginalized people. 

Meanwhile, court decisions in the Ninth Judicial Circuit made it impossible for Portland to control homeless encampments which grew up on sidewalks and roadways. 

Within that mix of opinion and behavior, the very blue Portland sustained a summer and fall of disruption, destruction, and ugliness. The downtown hollowed out. Images of fires showed nightly on Fox News. Portland became the national poster child for Democratic inability to govern. The Portland reputation and vibe went negative. 

Portland is coming out of the funk. Portland citizens voted a major change in its governance. The mayor was replaced by Keith Wilson who ran as a "common sense businessman." The city created a city manager position and expanded the council to 12, which makes them neighborhood representatives, not operational department heads. Mike Schmidt got replaced by a district attorney who said he would prosecute crime. It is too soon to see if the organizational change will improve governance, but it is not too soon for there to be a vibe-change. Portland projects competence again.

Portland -- and Oregon -- is still liberal, and that gives it a brand position. It is still an immigrant sanctuary state. A trans male-to-female high school athlete won races, and is being supported by government officials. There are reasons to think Trump may target Oregon and try to make an example of it, as he is now doing with Maine, which has a female governor who refused his demand for a public apology for saying she would obey Maine laws. Portland and Oregon are giving off a proud don't-tread-on-me vibe. That is the new brand.

It isn't all rosy. Oregon's largest private employer, Intel, was behind the curve on AI and it is laying off people. The federally-sponsored CHIP Act expansions will take place in Arizona, New Mexico, and Ohio -- not Oregon. Nike, headquartered in Oregon, is struggling. With stock at $64/share it is in a four-year slump from a 2021 price of $155. And the supposed Trump increases in timber harvests off federal lands cannot get started if there isn't staff to manage the process. 

Still, Portland is regaining a national role and brand as a leader in the resistance to Trump, DOGE, and MAGA. A premise of this blog is that the Trump movement is now experiencing the exhilarating feeling of winning big. He is overreaching and doing the one thing that will end the MAGA movement's quest for power. Trump's populist movement will be stopped by the public because he does unpopular things. He is beginning to do them. 

Portland is ahead of the curve in being an example of resistance to Trump. DOGE, and MAGA, but the curve may catch up.

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Easy Sunday: I bought an electric vehicle yesterday to be my primary car.

It is a Chevy. A Chevy Blazer EV.

No. Not a Tesla.

I did not want to make a "statement" with my choice of car. It is just a car. I did not want to explain it or need to explain it away, as this Boston-area driver chose to do:

Hiding a Tesla in plain sight by disguising it.

The Chevy Blazer electric model has a small "EV" symbol in the back but it otherwise appears identical to the gas-powered Blazers. From a statement point of view, the car happens to be an EV, but it is not about it being an EV. 

A Tesla vehicle is now a political statement. Tesla is Musk. Musk is Tesla. Trump stood in front of the White House and urged people to buy Teslas. 

I have driven German-or-Japanese-branded cars for 25 years. My experience is that they deserved their reputation for reliability. In changing to an EV, I expected to stick with a Japanese brand, a Honda. Their Prologue model is nearly identical to the Chevy Blazer, which isn't surprising because Honda bought General Motors technology for the EV, and both cars are assembled in Mexico, based on the same GM platform and in the same GM factory at Ramos Arizpe. 

The Chevy model was less expensive than the Honda I considered. The Chevy lacked some of the Honda's optional features, ones I don't care about. I figure that air-conditioned car seats are just one more thing to go wrong, and I don't need special refrigeration for my rear end.

Both dealerships urged I get a three-year lease, not buy the cars, for reasons involving the various federal rebates, factory incentives, and other "bonus" deals. Those are included into the residual value after the lease ends. That three-year drop in value over the lease term determines the lease cost. Car buying has some unintuitive elements. I got $1,000 off because I have a Costco card, which seems crazy. I got another $300 bonus because I own a Toyota, and General Motors considers me a "captured" brand-switcher. Now maybe I will speak well of GM instead of praising Japanese cars. 

The Blazer is made mostly in North America from North American parts. The batteries are made in Ohio. The car sticker does not specify USA content, but by subtracting from Canadian and Mexican content it might be something over 40 percent USA content.

I have no need to be a cutting-edge early adopter of new technology, be it cars or computers. I prefer to let others grab the lead and the attention while the manufacturers work out the bugs. Electric vehicles have gone from new and exciting to routine. I suspect I now have reliable, unexciting transportation, which is what I wanted. 

This scene would have been avant-garde five years ago. Now it is happening in garages all across America. 

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Professors leave Yale. They are getting out while they can.

Professor Tim Snyder is the world's top expert on Ukraine and modern Eastern Europe.

He is leaving the U.S., for his own protection and to protect Yale. 

Snyder and two other professors are leaving Yale to join the Munk School of Global affairs at the University of Toronto in Canada.

Snyder said his warnings about Trump's authoritarian actions put him -- and Yale -- in Trump's crosshairs. Trump has been targeting attorneys whose work puts them at odds with Trump personally or with the MAGA agenda. He uses a blunt, but effective weapon: blackballing the entire firm that they work for, including forbidding any attorney working for that firm to enter a federal courthouse. Universities are at similar risk. Snyder said he saw what happened to Columbia University, and its threatened loss of $400 million in research grants. Columbia capitulated to Trump, as did the law firms Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps.

Also leaving Yale is Snyder's wife, Marci Shore, a specialist in European intellectual history, and colleague Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor and student of fascism. Shore is the author of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. Stanley's most recent book, published in 2024, is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.

Tim Snyder is likely a familiar name and face to readers of this blog. His academic specialty -- Ukraine, twentieth century authoritarianism under Hitler and Stalin, and the slide of democracies into tyranny -- is center stage in current public discourse. He is visible on Substack, on YouTube, and is a frequent guest on opinioin shows on television.

Lesson One: Do not obey in advance

Snyder's book, Bloodlands, described the process by which Hitler and Stalin carried out their own "Manifest Destiny" of mass murder in Ukraine. Snyder's newest books and public statements are warnings about the methods authoritarian leaders use to solidify power: undermining the media, the law, the universities, non-profit interest groups, and businesses. 

Readers of this blog may have observed Snyder giving practical instructions on how to stop an authoritarian strongman. Do not obey in advance. The social skill of picking up cues as to what is desired and expected is dangerous when dealing with an authoritarian leader. Instead, make the leader spell out exactly what he wants and is doing. Disagree, and make him win in court, if he can. If the leader wants to arrest and deport people based on vague rumors and mass dragnets, then make the ruler say explicitly that that is what he is doing. Let the courts and the public judge whether they think that kind of police power might be directed against themselves. Don't cover for him. 

Trump has put into the zeitgeist the fear that innocent and completely legitimate actions of a member of a large institution might jeopardize the entire institution's survival. Prudent leaders are surveying the landscape for potential risks to their own institutions. What have our people already done that might displease Trump, Elon Musk, or a MAGA-led federal agency? Trump's executive orders blackballing the entirety of giant law firms send a warning: Never let any employee displease Trump. Worse, it may already be too late.

Perhaps the judicial system will rule against Trump and prohibit the blackballing, but the damage is done and the message was sent. There are a thousand ways that a strongman can indicate pleasure and displeasure to subordinates -- a raised eyebrow, a smirk -- and favor and disfavor trickles down. Trump can get to you. You might not even know it, but the contract-not-awarded or the adverse administrative ruling may be Trump's way of punishing his enemies.

Snyder said he was "an embarrassment" to Yale. Not so. But he was unquestionably a risk to Yale. 

Yale is a research university dependent upon federal grants to carry out that mission. It has an endowment at risk of being confiscated by special-punishment taxes. Its law school graduates hope to get clerkships from judges who themselves may have ambitions of nominations to higher courts. The tiniest suggestion by Trump that Yale Law graduates should be avoided as punishment for Yale tolerating Snyder would be disastrous to Yale's position as a launchpad for career success. Yale is vulnerable. 

Snyder saw what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s to disfavored people. Snyder sees the early warnings and is getting out now, with all three becoming department heads at the Munk School of Public Affairs. He will continue his warnings, but from a safer place.

President Reagan said the U.S. was the world's "beacon of freedom." Not anymore.

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We are re-writing the Constitution

Historians may look back and write that this moment in America was a gigantic aberration, when the country lost its way.

Or they will look back and consider us a second "founders generation," like the Americans of 1787-1791. We would be the people who changed the USA from a republic into an empire led by a strongman.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and the other authors of the Constitution believed in a democratic government that could avoid tyranny and protect minority rights because it was protected by structure and process. We are in the midst of a constitutional revolution, replacing a constitutional presidency with a personal leader, in the manner of Vladimir Putin today, strongman dictatorships in Latin America or Africa, or the monarchs of prior centuries. We will keep the term "president" and pretend nothing has changed, but we have indeed changed. We have made Trump into a leader exercising personal power as state power.  Trump is the state. L'État, c'est moi, as Louis XIV put it. "He who saves his country violates no law," as Napoleon and Trump said it.

This current founding era started on election night in 2020 and has continued through the Mar-a-Lago exile, through Trump's inauguration, and is in the finishing stages now. Trump sold the idea of a new form of government. Only he can solve America's problems. Trump sold it first to Republican voters by convincing them that his assertion of a stolen 2020 election was more credible and dispositive than was the electoral process, audited and recounted and judged by the courts. That idea spread to Republican officeholders who voted not to count Pennsylvania's electoral votes. He got compliance and support from billionaire oligarchs and business leaders in the run-up to the 2024 election. The revolution operated throughout the Mar-a-Lago exile, with Project 2025 planning to complete the revolution after Trump won a return term. Trump denied their plans were his, but word leaked out. The premise that Trump argued and successfully sold was that America needed a dictator, perhaps for a day, maybe for much longer, because the problems of the country weren't being solved by people using the democratic process.  

The public is experiencing shock and awe at the speed and audacity of Trump's second term of office. Wow! The government can act!  Trump understands optics. Recipients of U.S. foreign aid are far away. He rounded up Venezuelans to send to an El Salvadorian hell-hole, where they are publicly abused. Trump had demonized them as a group, and they are other people. Musk orders arbitrary mass firings of government employees. There were probably some ineffective employees in the group. As long as it is someone else being hurt, Americans are on-balance okay with decisive lawlessness. The low public esteem of Congress makes decisive action by a president seem like a reasonable workaround. Someone has to be in charge.

Trump is effectively eliminating independent sources of potential opposition. Trump intimidated the news media (CBS, Disney, the NYTimes and Washington Post), law firms (Paul, Weiss), businesses (Meta, Amazon), universities (Columbia), and manufacturers (auto tariffs). 

Trump is destroying the procedural safeguards built into the Constitution and the legalistic bureaucracies of government. He suspended enforcement of the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act, he fired inspectors general, he flouts ethics rules against self dealing. He rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. Don't worry about obeying the law. Worry about angering Trump.

What will end this era? Monarchies can be a stable form of government. Oligarchies can be stable as well, although rampant corruption and erosion of the rule of law reduces their effectiveness. In a world where the leader can subject your business to a tariff or block its access to the mail, roads, or the courts, incentives for survival change. Efficiency and profitability become less important. More important is courting favor with the leader and securing a monopoly advantage. 

Strongman government can badly misjudge public sentiment. It can make enemies. At some point, arbitrary government doesn't just affect someone else. It affects you. Trump's strongman rule will end when he does something unpopular. The question is whether, in that moment, the U.S. can re-establish process-oriented constitutional government.

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Primary Source: Field notes on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Wokeness

Everyone has a DEI story.

Every story is different.

At some point in our childhoods we encountered people who were different from ourselves. Someone explained things. We looked around for ourselves. We put diversity into context.

My own story is short. As a Medford, Oregon boy and youth, I encountered no diversity at all. Because of my school district's "tracking" policy, people of similar interests and skills got assigned to a narrow set of the same classes. In my case that was college-bound students interested in debate and public affairs. My story, such as it is, was having my eyes opened when I entered college. I met a Black person, and a Jew. 

However this photo of my section of the Freshman Register -- a predecessor of Facebook -- indicates what diversity there was. It was mostly diversity within the subset of academically ambitious White males.

I am on the lower-left corner of the left page. Future senator Chuck Schumer is in the lower left corner of the right page. 

College classmate Tony Farrell encountered diversity and inclusion early. Tony is the guest-post author famous for having managed the Trump Steaks account at The Sharper Image. He also worked as a marketing executive for The Nature Company and The Gap. But before all that, he had a childhood and youth.

Farrell, 1967

Farrell, 2025

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

Random Notes from the Field: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Wokeness

By the summer of 1965, I’d completed 8th, 9th and 10th grade at Bremerhaven (West Germany) American Military Dependents High School. My father, a civilian, chose to move our family there, on the North Sea, because my three siblings and I could attend respectable American schools for next-to-no money, as he headed European sales for States Marine Lines.

At the end of our three-year European family adventure, we moved back to the States and Mom guided me into an impressive private school to complete my last two high-school years. Sidwell Friends is the elite Quaker school in Northwest D.C. where Obama’s girls graduated, as did Chelsea Clinton. (Julie Nixon had been in my class. Charles Lindbergh attended when his father was a congressman.) I graduated Sidwell Friends in June, 1967—its first year to ever graduate any student who was Black. Good grief!

Today, Sidwell Friends is about the most “woke” school in America. But they certainly have a history. When I entered in the fall of 1965, they were busily but painfully patting themselves on the back for having integrated. Before, they were yet one more Southern prep school in the Washington area; white as snow. But in the early 60s, incoming New Frontier parents shamed the Sidwell board into integrating. (The chair resigned in protest.) Sidwell handled it sort-of okay. Nonetheless, the only female classmate to join me at Harvard, one of the four Black pioneers, was lauded (quite infamously) in our yearbook as an “outstanding Negro girl.” You can’t make it up.

As a 16-year-old, I did not “get” all this. My Department of Defense (DOD) school in West Germany had been integrated since Truman’s order in 1946. (Bremerhaven HS was established in 1948; its predecessor had been established in nearby Bremen in 1946.) Heck, even my parents’ high-school yearbooks from the 1930s in Yonkers, New York (Gorton High, a Catholic institution, and Yonkers High) had many Black faces. 

Daily, I engage on Facebook with the “Bremerhaven American High School Alumni” group. From my long-ago era (1962 to 1965), fellow military “brats” celebrate the experience there as the best of their lives. Unlike States-based schools, overseas DOD schools turned-over the student body every two years or so. Therefore, no cliques! Newcomers were genuinely welcomed with open arms and sincere inquiries: “What sports can you play?” And “Do you sing?” And “Do you do theater?” It was a uniquely positive social experience. At Bremerhaven HS in 1964, I saw Southern crackers comfortably bond with Northern Blacks, easily and naturally. Why not?

The American military was 20 years ahead of American society—and certainly ahead of the closer-to-God-than-thee Quakers at Sidwell Friends. I didn’t know it; I just felt it. When I settled in at Sidwell, I had no idea what they were talking about—all that celebrating of integration as something notable. Hurrah for them, I thought to myself, with quiet cynicism.

Fast forward a few decades. Sidwell’s alumni magazine lauds a school-wide student protest that results in banning the wearing of any “Redskins” apparel at the school. The headmaster wrote that this showed so much awareness and courage and empathy. Sidwell students were doing such brave and righteous things, right? Oh, sure, there might be genocide somewhere, but this is so important! (“Redskins” was the long-established name of the local professional football team.) Hard to express, but I deeply loved the Redskins, and how my father and I bonded over them. When Dad was in hospice, my last words to him, literally, were, “Hail to the Redskins,” the fight-song lyrics which were shorthand for so many years of joy and sweet memories. I detected a faint smile in Dad’s stroke-frozen face, the last time I saw him.

I’m not here to debate anything. I’m just here to say the word “Redskins” did not mean anything but love and joy to me. I and no one I knew had ever said or heard it spoken pejoratively. (And why is “Yankees” still okay? Ask the citizens of any banana republic…or Boston.)

I’ve been married more than 45 years. Our first child was born in 1992. (I joke that I decided to have my own grandchildren—skip the middleman!) Around 2000, it was time to check out local Bay Area private schools, to see if any would be right for our young daughter. On the application for one particularly earnest institution, they asked (with glaring superficiality), “How will your family add to the diversity of our school?”. With perhaps too-visible spite, I responded, “We’re white; heterosexual; long married, once each to each other; never divorced; natural child; Republican; military veteran.” 

We did not get in. I guess there’s only so much diversity one can handle.…

For more than three decades, I’ve interviewed high-school seniors applying to Harvard College. It’s something the College has required for more than a century, and it’s good. It can also be frustrating, because Harvard admits fewer than 4 percent of applicants; we interviewers can go for many years without “getting anyone in,” (as we like to say). But one interviewing season, after 15 years of futility, I got in four applicants—in a row! I was famous for this. 

My applicant draw, I now realize, had given me an unfair advantage: Applicant #1 was an albino Black girl from Ethiopia, raised in Italy and now at Berkeley High. Applicant #2 was an forever-home-schooled boy with two moms, who also was close to his sperm-donating “uncle” dad. Applicant #3 was a girl who had transitioned to male (so, a trans-boy) who’d led a student protest, in “his” freshman year at an elite prep school, against various not-PC Halloween costumes at some random school event. Applicant #4…I can’t remember! (I’m sure they were equally unusual.) When I tell this story to my fellow interviewers, they go nuts.

Soon after the turn of this century, a friend from my Navy days in 1970s Norfolk, Virginia, invited my family to an outdoor play at the California Shakespeare Theater, in nearby Orinda. He was on their board and, for years, had donated significant money to support the company’s four plays each summer season. We loved it and became season ticket holders for 20 years, raising our daughters to appreciate live theater. 

At some point, Cal Shakes went crazily all woke. Just before Covid, they premiered a new play titled “Romeo Y Juliet,” a lesbian love story (of course)—half in untranslated Spanish (why not?). The following (and final) play was pitched as a “modern language” interpretation of “Macbeth”, based in San Francisco’s Fillmore, a Black neighborhood, before it was overrun by development. What does that even mean, Shakespeare but in "modern language”? (Even the 17-year-old high-schooler Orson Welles wrote to pay no attention to Shakespeare’s “plots” but only the language.) 

My Navy friend quit the board; I’ve since met other good-hearted supporters who also quit (protesting in the same way). Anyway, Cal Shakes is gone now. Decades of goodwill tossed aside for what I see as dimwitted wokeness.

All the foregoing had occurred when, two seasons ago, my daughter and I were attending a Stanford football game when, at halftime, the stadium announcer introduced the Stanford University’s Vice President of “DIVERSION, Equity & Inclusion.” 

He did not correct himself, and I loudly exclaimed, “Sign me up!”

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Canada again? Is that necessary? Yes.

If the United States is going to meddle in Canada's politics and trash its economy, then Americans need to know something about Canada.

Carney

Cheat sheet: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation in January. He and the Liberal Party he led had become unpopular. On March 9 a leadership election within the Liberal Party chose Mark Carney, the former head of the Bank of Canada, to replace Trudeau. But that did not solve the Liberal Party's general unpopularity. Polls indicated that Canadian voters would elect instead a Conservative Party government led by Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre had a populist, conservative Trump-adjacent reputation.

President Trump's call for a tariff war with Canada, combined with the love-hate, seduction-abuse courtship of Canada as either a hostile, cheating, freeloading neighbor or the 51st state, changed voter perception of the issues. It put onto center stage Canadian sovereignty, its trade relationship with the U.S., and Trump. That put the Liberal Party back in contention in the scheduled Canadian election on April 28.

College classmate Sandford Borins is Canadian. He is a professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career. He maintains his own website where he shares his thoughts on politics and life in Canada.  This was first published there yesterday. https://sandfordborins.com

Sandford Borins wearing the King Charles III Coronation Medal for public service, which he recently received

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

          Another free trade election

In the party leaders’ debate in the 1988 Canadian federal election – a single-issue election about whether to accept the Free Trade Agreement the Mulroney Government negotiated with the Reagan Administration – Liberal leader John Turner hurled an accusation at Mulroney that now seems prophetic: 

"With the signature of a pen, you’ve thrown us into the north-south influence of the U.S. and will reduce us to a colony of the United States because, when the economic levers go, the political independence is sure to follow.” 

(I discuss this debate in a post following Brian Mulroney’s passing a year ago.) 

John Turner would not have been surprised about the context of this year’s election. If the 1988 election was about whether to enter into a free trade agreement with the U.S., this year’s election – called for Monday April 28 – is about how to resist Trump’s threat that, if Canada wants to retain the benefits of economic integration with the U.S., it must accept a hostile political takeover.

Coping with Interference 

The Reagan Administration, including President-elect George H.W. Bush, recognizing that this was a decision for Canadians to make, said nothing. The contrast is obvious with the Trump Administration’s threatened tariffs on April 2, Trump’s constant “51st state” dissing, and his musing about whether he prefers Liberal leader Mark Carney or Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

In my view, Prime Minister Carney has created an appropriate distance between the Trump Administration’s actions and the election campaign by saying that the Canadian Government will not negotiate with the US “until we get the respect we deserve as a sovereign nation [which is] not a high bar.” Further, he promises “a comprehensive discussion, not a discussion of one-off tariffs or of the latest initiative.” Carney and Trump haven’t spoken, and such a conversation now seems unlikely. Carney’s position implies not immediately retaliating against whatever tariffs the US imposes on April 2 and not having ministers rushing to Washington to negotiate. Such actions should be taken by the government that will take office shortly after the April 28 election. During the election campaign, an important issue will be how party leaders respond to the Trump Administration’s evolving trade policies or threats.

A stronger Secretary of State than Marco Rubio would forcefully tell Trump to keep his mouth shut about the Canadian election, but Trump will say what he wants. How will this affect the election? I’m not a pollster, but this is my guess. It is well known that Trump constantly reverses himself, and he’ll make statements supportive of Carney one day and Poilievre the other. And he’ll know that, for many Canadians, his endorsement is the kiss of death. Voters may conclude that Trump wants a minority government because it would be forced to constantly negotiate with the opposition parties to retain power and it could be defeated in a confidence vote. Such instability projects weakness.

At the start of the campaign, the Liberals and Conservatives are close in terms of the popular vote, and support for the NDP [the New Democratic Party, positioned to the left of the Liberal Party], Bloc Quebecois, and Greens is tanking. The Liberals’ vote (small margins in urban seats) is more efficient than the Conservatives’ (large margins in western and rural seats). Strategic voting to produce a majority government would lead to a large Liberal majority in the House of Commons. But, if the Liberal campaign falters, I could imagine strategic votes shifting to produce a Conservative majority.

Undecided voters will be watching the media, the polls, and the leaders’ debates on April 16 (French) and 17 (English) to decide which of the two major parties is most likely to win and then shifting to that party. I also expect that, because of the importance of this election, the turnout will be considerably higher than in recent elections.

The Boycott Movement

Another factor relevant to the election campaign is the boycott movement. Imports from the U.S. are sitting on the store shelves.  American wine, beer, and liquor have disappeared. 

Canadians’ current and planned future travel to the U.S. is down to pandemic levels. Provincial and municipal governments are changing their procurement policies to favour Canadian over U.S. suppliers. For example, the Ontario Government has cancelled its $100 million contract with Starlink to provide rural internet. It will be up to the new federal government to decide whether to cancel the mother of all procurements, the purchase of 88 F-35 aircraft, and switch to the Swedish Saab Gripen.

There is a similar irony here. Just as Trump’s attempt to disrupt the election campaign will make it more likely that the new government has a strong mandate, his mercantilist trade policies and bellicose foreign policy are leading to a deterioration of billions of dollars in the U.S.’s trade balance with Canada.

This is not a fight we wanted but, in this election, we will choose both our strategy and our leadership for it.

 

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Why Trump won in 2024

Pollster David Shor has his reasons why Democrats lost in 2024.

I have mine.

Gifted article: no paywall

By now readers of this blog may have seen a version of this list of ten reasons for the November outcome. It has been published in The New York Times, Ezra Klein podcast about it, Axios republished the list without mentioning the source, and other commentators have summarized it. Here is the list:

Ten theories:

1. It's all Joe Biden's fault. For president, the party ran a deteriorating 81-year-old incumbent who had to drop out roughly 100 days before the election.
2. It's all Kamala Harris' fault. She was a bad candidate in 2019 and a weak choice in 2024.
3. Podcasts and social media. Harris and other Democrats should have gone on Joe Rogan's show, fully embraced TikTok, and met voters where they were.
4. Too "woke." Democrats struggled to defend their support for marginalized communities — transgender people, those who benefit from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, and others.
5. Elitist words. The party has become the party of the college-educated and for the college-educated.
6. Elitist policies. The working class has felt left behind by the Democratic Party as it's embraced free trade and other center-left technocratic policies. 
7. Testosterone. Many men, especially young men, feel Democrats don't have an agenda for them and don't seem to care about their problems. 
8. Inflation. Incumbents throughout the Western world have lost as voters vent about inflation. 
9. The border. Democrats mishandled the border under Biden and abandoned the tough-on-immigration policies the party had under Presidents Clinton and Obama, playing right into Trump's signature issue.
10. Trump is one-of-a-kind.  Many voters liked Trump and related to what he said.  

All these are accurate.

I would add that Democrats underestimate their own breach of faith with the American public. Trump lies so constantly and outrageously that it doesn't seem sneaky. Democrats lied and were sneaky about it, so -- incredibly enough --  Democrats came across as less trustworthy than Trump. Democrats need to face the fact that Biden and team covered up Biden's decline and then, even after the debate reveal, attempted to stick to the story that he was really okay. We could see with our own eyes that he wasn't capable, probably not now, certainly not for four more years. We saw it. 

Biden's team, which included Kamala Harris, asked Democrats to ignore what they saw at the debate. That was the Democrats' own "Big Lie." 

This lie was compounded by additional ones. Democrats pretended for three years that uncontrolled immigration wasn't a problem and hardship. They minimized it. I liken this to a physician telling someone with a painful hip or knee that they should live with it. Meanwhile another doctor was saying you need surgery. After three years in worsening pain, one loses faith in the first doctor. People lost faith in Biden's strength to notice and solve problems.

Democrats stuck to the story that the Covid virus was surely from a wet market, not a lab leak. Who knows how it really started? But the adamant way Democrats kept attacking the very idea of a Wuhan lab-leak seemed odd, like they were hiding something, just as they hid Biden's senility and the border mess. Why try to protect the Wuhan lab? It undermined the public's belief that Democrats were being honest about Covid. 

Democrats seemed to be bound and determined to defend their team -- even the most "out there" members of it -- on issues involving "woke" ideology.  One did not need to be transphobic to think that Lia Thomas winning NCAA swimming medals was unfair. 

Democrats insisted that decent, honorable people would ignore their own eyes. So, of course, Trump and the GOP made it an issue. 

Kamala Harris pivoted and dismissed hard questions. I watched her be asked if she was okay with abortions in the ninth month, two days before delivery. The answers she gave were evasive: That rarely comes up; that is just a GOP talking point; the question is nonsense; I support women and Roe v. Wade. The question gets posed again, asking for a direct answer whether she believed there is any limit whatever to abortion. Harris responds by saying she won't dignify that question by answering it. She had to dance around to keep from disturbing the abortion choice groups who want to hold the line that nobody but the woman has any say-so on abortion.

The net result was that there were two dishonest parties. Trump would lie to our faces, as part of his say-anything shtick. Harris would lie because she was hiding things Democrats could not admit because they were unpopular.

Icarus flew too close to the sun

I am not discouraged about the future. Trump is making the mistake common to gamblers on a winning streak, to lucky stock and options traders, and to Icarus of Greek myth. They overreach and leverage up. They forget the limits of the possible. They are winners and they think they are special. 

Democrats will probably wise up. The public wanted change, but Harris stuck to defending an unpopular status quo. Some Democrat will emerge, someone with the courage to criticize the errors of both the GOP and Democrats. A Democrat won't be a change agent if the candidate does not show they can criticize past Democratic errors. Voters will reward someone who doesn't defend the indefensible and who talks honestly with the American people.

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"How can people be so heartless? Easy to be hard. Easy to be cold."

     "What is a 10-year-old orphan boy going to do if they can't get anti-viral-drugs? The answer is they die. . . .The cost of the program was 12 cents per person per day."

          Nicholas Kristof, interviewed by Ali Velshi

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Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, as related by Luke: 

“A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest saw the man, but passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite. But a Samaritan came where the man was and took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he gave money to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

Jesus asked an expert on the law, 'Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

The expert replied, 'The one who had mercy on him.'

Jesus told him, 'Go and do likewise.'"

College classmate Peter Patch wrote me expressing dismay at the cruelty of Trump having ordered the sudden end to food and medical aid to people in need. Our aid programs are a projection of American "soft power," and they reduce the spread of diseases which would come to our shores. They serve our interests. The aid programs are also a matter of human decency. They reflect our supposed values. We claim to abhor genocide, yet we are allowing one to happen right in front of our faces.

Peter Patch served as a marketing strategy consultant for Citibank and other clients for over three decades. He has taught business classes at New York colleges over the past two decades. Currently, he serves on national nonprofit boards supporting youth at risk at the I Have a Dream Foundation in New York, and community transition for returning offenders at Community Resources for Justice in Boston.

Patch

Guest Post by Peter Patch

I watched Nicholas Kristof on Ali Velshi's show last weekend. By killing USAID, the Trump-Musk team is putting lives at risk in Africa. Nick Kristof showed four people - two mothers and two children - then alive - whom Kristof met in South Sudan on a recent trip. All four have since died due to the termination of the USAID programs. 

Kristof explained that, with the termination of USAID programs, many more will die. The breakdown of projected deaths within the next year is in the millions:

*** 1.6 million deaths without U.S. foreign aid for HIV prevention and treatment

*** 550,000 deaths without U.S. funding for food aid

*** 500,000 deaths without U.S. funding for vaccines

*** 290,000 deaths without U.S. funding for malaria prevention

*** 310,000 deaths without U.S. funding for tuberculosis prevention

A total of over three million lives are at risk – even likely to die in the next year -- with the termination of USAID funding. 

Coming down his golden escalator, Trump began his 2016 campaign with a rant about the threat of Mexican immigrants, saying they include "rapists and murderers." Since then he invited multiple credibly-alleged rapists to join him in his cabinet, including Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz. 

According to recent reports, the Bush II ‘PEPFAR program’ [the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] to prevent and treat AIDS in Africa has saved 22 million lives, a number that had been rising up until Trump's action to terminate USAID.

Now, by terminating USAID programs, Trump can take responsibility for thousands, even millions of deaths that could otherwise be prevented by those very USAID programs. When Trump condemns immigrants as being rapists and murderers, he should look in the mirror. With this single step, Trump is creating an avoidable tragedy on a scale comparable to the worst human tragedy of the last century.

So, the question is: Where are the voices standing up to Trump and Musk? 

Who is standing up for decency -- for democracy -- and for USAID?

Where is the outrage?

 

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