Lessons from Canada on how to stop Trump and win elections.

It wasn't enough to be anti-Trump.

You needed to be effective, popular, and patriotic. 

Plus anti-Trump.

Three months ago things looked bad for the Liberal Party in Canada. It had worn out its welcome under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The party's favorability rating was in the 20s.  People expected a landslide defeat for them.

Their situation was similar to that of the U.S.'s Democratic Party, but even worse. YouGov calculates Democratic favorability as underwater at 37 percent favorable and 59 percent unfavorable. Unhappy as people are with Trump, Americans don't translate that into thinking Democrats are the solution. The Democratic brand is as low as it has ever been.

Trump being an abusive, clueless, threatening jerk to Canada turned things around for the Canadian Liberal Party. The party replaced its leader -- a giant symbol of change -- with Mark Carney, an economist/banker with a reputation for effectiveness. Carney became a better representative of Canadian patriotism, Canadian pride, and Canadian sovereignty. He was the anti-Trump candidate. American headlines have a simple response: Trump is so toxic that he got Carney elected. 

It is more than that.  

     ***Mark Carney brought a reputation for effective governance. He has degrees from Harvard and Oxford. He was prominent as the former central banker who led Canada through the 2008-2013 mortgage crisis, and managed the UK's central bank, guiding it through Brexit. He wasn't just an anti-Trump spokesperson. 

     ***Carney immediately eliminated the carbon tax on Canadians. The tax had become unpopular. It was a tax-and-rebate system intended to be revenue neutral. It was a complicated market-based way to shape citizen behavior. It incentivized people to use less fossil fuel by raising its price, with the tax revenue redistributed to people who used less than average amounts of carbon. Clever, right?

A Guardian headline six months ago

Economists, political scientists, and government policy-makers liked it. The progressive Guardian headlined that it was popular with the public -- but it wasn't. It was intrusive and complicated. It raised energy prices, for the good cause of the climate, but people didn't trust it. Families would pay extra then get money back. People questioned whether they would. It came across as a do-gooder, liberal, intrusion of questionable value.

It was a symbol of the culture wars inside Canada. Carney's opponent, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, opposed the tax. It was a political albatross for Liberals. Mark Carney reversed the Liberal position on the carbon tax and ended it. 

It symbolized something about Carney. He wasn't going to push unpopular programs just because his liberal/progressive party members liked them.

     ****Carney was patriotic. He tweaked the brand of the Liberal Party from the global-friendly, world-of-nations, soft-edged brand under Justin Trudeau, into the party that was the superior defender of Canada. Officially, for the record, the Democratic Party is thoroughly patriotic. No Democrat would admit to the opposite. But in the reality of nuanced branding, the Republican Party has better seized that brand identity. They are the country music "God Bless the USA," flag-waving party. "America First" is something Republicans would say. Democrats would be the we-lead-the world party.

Democrats are the party more willing to acknowledge past injustices, some of which have long term effects that continue into the present. Meanwhile, Trump is whitewashing American history, with the support of his party. Trump said to forget Jackie Robinson. His entry into baseball was no milestone, because there wasn't anything in the prior condition to acknowledge. Same with the Tuskegee Airmen. There was no prior condition of segregation worthy of acknowledgement, and therefore nothing special about pilots of any color flying aircraft. In an America of glass-half-empty or glass-half-full, Democrats are the ones who acknowledge the empty parts. Republicans accuse Democrats who do so of shaming America and by implication its White majority. Republicans therefore focus on the glass-half-full. Or now, under Trump, totally full and it always has been, and don't imply otherwise or you will be fired or have your funding cut.

Carney brought aggressiveness to the Liberal Party brand. Carney is not positioning Canada as a country trying to wheedle back into Trump's good graces, pretty please with sugar on it. Instead, he puts Canada into the role of the woman scorned, the angry wife who walks out of the house of the abusive husband. 

“Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped deliver prosperity for our country for decades, is over."

Let the U.S. say "pretty please." 

American Democrats cannot duplicate the Carney formula, but they can learn from it. Carney was not just anti-Trump. Carney added three things: he had a reputation for effectiveness; he dropped an unpopular policy position over the objection of some in his party; and he seized the brand of being a strong, decisive patriotic leader.

That is the lesson to be learned. Democrats could do that.

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