election

Tuesday February 11, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 11, 2020

Bashing Buttigieg

Addressing a conference of African-American church congregations in this vote-rich city, Pete Buttigieg quoted scripture on Sunday morning and extolled his “Douglass Plan” to combat racial inequities  in America, one of several attempts this weekend to confront his strikingly low support among black voters.

Sketch from the CBS News Democratic Party Candidates Debate, Charleston, South Carolina, February 25, 2020.
Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer

But Mr. Buttigieg also undertook a delicate task before the African Methodist Episcopal worshipers. As a gay, married man addressing a denomination that does not allow same-sex marriage rites, he tried to seek common ground over being members of minority groups whose civil rights have come under attack. It was a nod to his sexuality, following the disclosure last week that the Buttigieg campaign held focus groups that found some black voters in South Carolina were uncomfortable with a gay man as president.

“All of us in different ways have been led to question whether we belong,” Mr. Buttigieg told the pews of black worshipers. “And I know what it is to look on the news and see your rights up for debate. All of us must extend a hand to one another. Because I also know what it is to find acceptance where you least expect it.”

As Mr. Buttigieg increasingly presents himself to Democrats as a younger, moderate alternative to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., he is struggling badly to compete against one of Mr. Biden’s strengths: deep connections to black voters. Nowhere is that problem greater than in South Carolina, which votes fourth in the Democratic nomination fight in February and is the first state where black voters are decisive — a critical test that could be a prologue for primaries in March where African-Americans will also be influential.

A Monmouth University poll of Democratic likely primary voters in South Carolina released last week found Mr. Buttigieg at 3 percent overall, with just 1 percent support from African Americans.

There are many reasons for Mr. Buttigieg’s low standing among black voters, the foremost being that he is little-known to many of them. He is the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., who still has a relatively low national profile — including on civil rights and issues of race — and focused much of this year building support among liberals, Democratic donors and voters in the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. (NYTimes) 

Meanwhile, ahead of the New Hampshire Primary day, Joe Biden Slashes Into Buttigieg: ‘This Guy’s Not a Barack Obama!’. (NYTimes) 

Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders fight for the number one position. (The Guardian) 

 

Friday February 7, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 7, 2020

Is Donald Trump America’s new normal?

November 16, 2019

The political fates are fickle. This was supposed to be Donald Trump’s worst week as America’s president, but it’s turned into his best.

This was supposed to be the week his impeachment trial exposed him as unfit to hold the highest office in the land, the week his abysmal record in the Oval office came back to haunt him and the week his Democratic opponents proved they’re ready to take him on in November’s presidential election.

None of it happened. The Democrats, who invested so much political capital into impeaching Trump, need to come up with Plan B. Their Plan A was a flop and the Democrats are stumbling just when they should be hitting their stride.

If you think Trump’s presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for the planet — and we know the vast majority of Canadians do — you should be worried by all this. Very worried.

October 10, 2019

Instead of signalling the death of his erratic presidency, Trump’s impeachment trial breathed new life into it. There was clear proof he pressured a foreign country — Ukraine — to discredit one of his potential political rivals — Joe Biden. We know he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last July. We know Trump was withholding $391 million (U.S.) in military aid to Ukraine, too.

Despite the damning evidence against him, it was always going to be an uphill struggle to convince two-thirds of the Senate, which is dominated by Trump’s own Republicans, to convict him. Trump’s acquittal was predicted. But because the Republicans blocked the testimony of key witnesses, the trial was a sham that discredited a once noble house of Congress.

As for the great American public, it largely tuned out from the televised tedium. No wonder Trump gloated. The latest Gallup poll gives him a 49 per cent approval rating from Americans, his highest score since being elected. And on Tuesday, the day before his Senate acquittal, Trump had the opportunity to sing his own praises in his annual State of the Union address, claiming undeserved responsibility for what he calls the “Great American comeback.”

November 2, 2019

Clearly the prevailing winds are at Trump’s back. What’s more troubling is they’re blowing in the faces of the Democrats. They were thoroughly embarrassed by the technical glitches that delayed the results from their Iowa caucuses Monday.

Far more seriously, the party is badly split, uncertain whether its path to victory runs through the moderate centre or the progressive left of the U.S. political spectrum. Nor would we recommend betting your house on an election win for any of the Democrats’ current crop of candidates, including the self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders or the leaden, former vice-president Biden.

As we look at an America and cherished American institutions that increasingly seem unrecognizable, we wonder if three years of Trump have succeeded in deadening the nation’s senses to the divisions and disruptions he has sewn at home and around the world. If you live with a clown long enough, maybe you’re comfortable in a circus.

Of course, we’re commenting partly on the events of one week. The election remains nine months away and Trump’s presidency could still end in a train-wreck. But Trump became president in 2016 with less than half of the popular vote and could do so again.

It will be up to American voters to rid their country and the world of this president. It will be up to the Democrats to choose a candidate who can convince the country to do this. Today, sadly, neither of these things is at all certain. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

Monday December 16, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday December 16, 2019

Boris Johnson and the Coming Trump Victory in 2020

July 24, 2019

Donald Trump, in his telling, could have shot somebody on Fifth Avenue and won. Boris Johnson could mislead the queen. He could break his promise to get Britain out of Europe by Oct. 31. He could lie about Turks invading Britain and the cost of European Union membership. He could make up stories about building 40 new hospitals. He could double down on the phantom $460 million a week that Brexit would deliver to the National Health Service — and still win a landslide Tory electoral victory not seen since Margaret Thatcher’s triumph in 1987.

The British, or at least the English, did not care. Truth is so 20th century. They wanted Brexit done; and, formally speaking, Johnson will now take Britain out of Europe by Jan. 31, 2020, even if all the tough decisions on relations with the union will remain. Johnson was lucky. In the pathetic, emetic Jeremy Corbyn, the soon-to-depart Labour Party leader, he faced perhaps the worst opposition candidate ever. In the Tory press, he had a ferocious friend prepared to overlook every failing. In Brexit-weary British subjects, whiplashed since the 2016 referendum, he had the perfect receptacle for his “get Brexit done.”

June 27, 2016

Johnson was also skillful, blunting Nigel Farage’s far-right Brexit Party, which stood down in many seats, took a lot of Labour votes in the seats where it did run, and ended up with nothing. The British working class, concentrated in the Midlands and the North, abandoned Labour and Corbyn’s socialism for the Tories and Johnson’s nationalism.

In the depressed provinces of institutionalized precariousness, workers embraced an old Etonian mouthing about unleashed British potential. Not a million miles from blue-collar heartland Democrats migrating to Trump the millionaire and America First demagogy.

That’s not the only parallel with American politics less than 11 months from the election. Johnson concentrated all the Brexit votes. By contrast, the pro-Remain vote was split between Corbyn’s internally divided Labour Party, the hapless Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish National Party. For anybody contemplating the divisions of the Democratic Party as compared with the Trump movement’s fanatical singleness of purpose, now reinforced by the impeachment proceedings, this can only be worrying.

June 22, 2016

The clear rejection of Labour’s big-government socialism also looks ominous for Democrats who believe the party can lurch left and win. The British working class did not buy nationalized railways, electricity distribution and water utilities when they could stick it to some faceless bureaucrat in Brussels and — in that phrase as immortal as it is meaningless — take back their country.

It’s a whole new world. To win, liberals have to touch people’s emotions rather than give earnest lessons. They have to cease being arid. They have to refresh and connect. It’s not easy. (Continued: NYTimes)

A song from my youth entered my mind as I drew this cartoon. Give it a listen, give it a watch…



 

Thursday September 26, 2019

September 26, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 26, 2019

Exclusive poll reveals ‘Doug Ford factor’ a big problem for Scheer’s Conservatives in Ontario

June 8, 2019

The “Doug Ford factor” that some federal Conservatives worried would hurt their chances in Ontario this election appears to be very real, and especially significant, suggests a new survey conducted in partnership between the Angus Reid Institute and Postmedia.

The poll shows that half of Ontario’s population sees their federal vote being swayed by the performance of Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in that province — and most are not being influenced in a way that will benefit the federal Tories.

Among those Ontarians who say their federal vote will be affected by their impressions of Ford’s government, a whopping 85 per cent say the “policies and actions” of the provincial PC government will make them less likely to support Andrew Scheer’s federal Conservative party.

July 17, 2019

The “Doug Ford factor” that some federal Conservatives worried would hurt their chances in Ontario this election appears to be very real, and especially significant, suggests a new survey conducted in partnership between the Angus Reid Institute and Postmedia.

The poll shows that half of Ontario’s population sees their federal vote being swayed by the performance of Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in that province — and most are not being influenced in a way that will benefit the federal Tories.

Among those Ontarians who say their federal vote will be affected by their impressions of Ford’s government, a whopping 85 per cent say the “policies and actions” of the provincial PC government will make them less likely to support Andrew Scheer’s federal Conservative party.

Twenty-eight per cent of those Ontarians who claim their vote will be impacted this way qualified the impact of the provincial PC government on their vote as “massive.” The next-highest “massive” impact reported was in Quebec, but with only 12 per cent describing it in such strong terms.

February 13, 2009

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party has clearly sensed an opportunity to exploit the impact Ford is having in Ontario on federal Conservative support. Liberals have tried throughout the campaign to link Scheer to Ford. This week the federal Liberal leader lambasted Ford, calling him “Exhibit A” in Trudeau’s grim description of what he says Canada would look like under Conservative rule. “Families here in Ontario have seen just how far they are willing to go to help the wealthiest few,” he said in Hamilton, Ont. “How quickly they will make cuts to public health and to the services people rely on most.”

Trudeau’s Liberals have been the biggest beneficiaries from the Ford factor: Among Ontarians whose federal voting decisions are being affected by Ford, 71 per cent say they’re likelier to vote Liberal on October 21. But the Liberals would be wrong to assume they have those votes sewn up: 66 per cent of those provincially impacted Ontarians also said they were likelier to vote for the NDP. (National Post) 

 

Friday September 12, 2019

September 12, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday September 12, 2019

Did Trudeau really give ‘the largest’ waiver of cabinet confidence in history?

Forced to address the SNC-Lavalin scandal on the first day of the federal election campaign, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau made a sweeping statement.

“We gave out the largest and most expansive waiver of cabinet confidence in Canada’s history,” he said in response to reporters’ questions about a Globe and Mail article that said the RCMP’s efforts to examine the SNC-Lavalin affair have been stymied by the government’s refusal to lift cabinet confidentiality.

But legal experts tell CTV News they’re not sure how Trudeau is measuring what he calls the most “expansive” waiver of cabinet confidence, let alone how true his claim is.

Some other examples from past years include former prime minister Stephen Harper approving confidence waivers for the RCMP investigation into the Senate spending scandal.

Harper’s predecessor Paul Martin gave the Gomery Commission cabinet documents linked to the Liberal sponsorship scandal that rocked Ottawa in the mid-2000s.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer also spoke about the SNC-Lavalin affair on the first day of electioneering.

“The RCMP is investigating into possible obstruction of justice charges in the prime minister’s office,” Scheer said Wednesday as he formally launched his campaign.

However, the Globe and Mail said Mounties want to thoroughly question witnesses as part of an “examination,” not a formal investigation.

The SNC-Lavalin affair has been trailing Trudeau for months, ever since former justice minister Jody-Wilson Raybould alleged that she was inappropriately pressured by the prime minister and his office to end the criminal prosecution of the Quebec engineering giant. (CTV News)