election

Tuesday November 3, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 3, 2020

Canadians await U.S. election in fear, as poll reveals anxieties about aftermath

Canadians absorbed the first trickle of results Tuesday as their American neighbours went to the polls, capping a campaign marked by voter intimidation, threats of postelection violence, and concern about the potential breakdown of democracy itself.

November 6, 2012

The first returns showed U.S. President Donald Trump ahead, as expected, in Indiana and winning Kentucky, while an early see-saw for the crucial state of Florida was underway. But it was going to be a long night that would likely not produce a definitive result, said Mark Feigenbaum, the Toronto tax lawyer who is the chairman of Republicans Overseas Canada.

“It’s really encouraging that a lot of people are out voting. Whomever they’re voting for, I think it’s good,” he said.

Bessma Momani, an international affairs specialist at the University of Waterloo, said it was too early to draw any definitive conclusions.

“People are just projecting their own hopes,” she said.

November 11, 2016

“The early voting is pretty spectacular. From the academic side of this, usually early voting does not indicate a vote for the incumbent.”

Earlier Tuesday, a new poll from Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies found a clear majority of Canadians surveyed worried that the United States will suffer a breakdown of its system marked by “social chaos” if no clear winner emerges.

That fear was driven by the assumption that Trump won’t accept defeat if he does in fact lose, or may prematurely declare victory on election night before all votes, including mail-in ballots, can be legally counted.

The Leger poll found that three-quarters of those surveyed in Canada are worried about the U.S. election, and 68 per cent worry that there will be a “complete breakdown of the political system in the U.S. leading to a period of social chaos.”

Four out of five respondents said they were concerned that increased racial tension would lead to protests and violence. (CTV News) 

 

Closing another chapter on Donald Trump

A review of the past 4 years with a look through 200 Trump cartoons and commentary by Graeme MacKay.

It’s the eve of another U.S. Presidential election and again the usual refrain of this being the most important vote in a generation is being loudly trumpeted. The Republican party is fighting for a second term for the White House whose champion opponents are decrying as a dangerous, lying, narcissistic clown, a man who sullies the prestige of the office he holds, whose re-election will further doom the USA. The Democrats are battling to regain the White House with a leader Republicans warn is senile, with an unremarkable 47-year-old political record that’ll hand the reins of power over to younger forces of socialism. Read this as my sequel to what I wrote on Inauguration day 2017.

Back then I asked a few questions of the coming Trump presidency. Reading what I wrote is like entering a time capsule of forgotten problems. ISIS? That’s all but vanished. Syria?  It simmers but it’s no where the top concern it was in 2017. Cuba? Most of the Obama pursuits to warm relations have been erased, but nobody really cares in the USA of 2020 because there are so many other gargantuan domestic U.S. problems. Does Trump have a plan to replace Obamacare? Answer, no, and no also to reversing affordable health care, but more about that later. Has he lived up to his promise of a rejuvenated American rust belt that he campaigned on in 2016? We’ll have a good idea once we find out how Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania votes in the next few hours. Is he as chummy with Vladimir Putin as we’ve been led to believe? That was the easiest question I don’t need to answer in 2020, since we all know. Has he bridged the racial divide as he said he’d do at the start of his Presidency? Well, is he, the greatest President since Abraham Lincoln for racial relations in the USA, as he boastfully declares himself?

Ronald Reagan’s recycled “Make America Great Again”, meets Ronald Reagan’s “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” in the Trump era. The first one we see and hear all the time rather exhaustingly, the latter phase, never. 

September 24, 2020

The overriding argument of truth against extending the Donald Trump golf cart presidency is his colossal failure to effectively respond with common sense by acting on health guidance to curtail the infection spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the eve of the 2020 U.S. election, the deaths attributed to Coronavirus infection stands at just under 240,000. It is the highest tally for any nation since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in mid March of this year. Trump himself contracted the virus, but instead of using the opportunity to advise Americans the basic preventative measure to wear face masks, he chose to side with those declaring them useless and signs of weakness. He has used his platform to spread misinformation, denigrate health scientists, calling them idiots, and accusing doctors of manipulating COVID-19 data for personal financial gain. Trump, who behind the scenes acknowledged with his own recorded voice the severity of the virus back in February when interviewed by veteran journalist Bob Woodward, has essentially surrendered controlling the spread of COVID-19, according to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Livelihoods are more important than lives in Trump’s America. The campaign rallies he’s held from September to election day showing maskless crowds not social distancing is loud pronouncement for the history books that huge swaths of reckless loyal supporters trusted the carnival barker more than the warnings of experts in science. 

July 21, 2020

It’s the same denial of science from the planet’s biggest throwaway society that leads in disavowing protecting the biodiversity of both the USA and the planet. Mishandling of responsibility for public health with no centralized strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is only the most recent example of denying science. The USA now leads the world in denial of climate change and environmental protections ie: the slashing of EPA budgets and a rollback on efforts to combat climate change with U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. As concerning as the President’s anti-science agenda is his embracing of conspiracy theories cooked up by QAnon and against public health measures and renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines.

January 13, 2018

Another argument against extending the Trump presidency is his abandonment of compassion and the American virtue of offering amnesty to refugees and migrants fleeing tyranny for a life of liberty in the U.S.A. Reducing entry to refugees to 18,000 per year from 95,000. Trump’s attempt to overturn DACA which protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented youths (dreamers) from deportation. A brutal policy to empower ICE to deport all undocumented migrants with a practice of family separation incarcerating parents and sending children to shelters, shelters that some of which have been identified as cages. Just two weeks before election day court documents reported parents of 545 of the migrant children still have not been reunited with detained children. Further to this, the US knowingly deported migrants infected with COVID-19.

August 15, 2017

Then there is the President’s misogyny, dog whistles, racism and support of white supremacy. “Very fine people on both sides”, he was quoted as saying following the white supremacy clashes in Charlottesville. He condemned football players for taking a knee in their protest against white supremacy. Trump discriminated against Mexicans in declaring them racists, and bad hombres, as he ran for President and continued an assault against Mexicans and Latin Americans in general for promising and pursuing to build a wall along the U.S-Mexican border. A travel ban on Muslims. Prejudice against Chinese by attempting to rename COVID-19 “Kung Flu” and “Chinese virus”.  Trump has defended Confederate symbols and has casted protesters marching in the name of Black Lives Matters as traitors. In the first Presidential debate he even went so far as to issue coded messages to the Proud Boys sowing fear over notions that Democrats are rigging election polling stations.

November 14, 2017

In summarizing the past 4 years of the Trump era one cannot count out the President’s trademark denigration of traditional U.S. allies, democratic institutions and cozying up to dictators and authoritarian regimes. Just a few months before the 2020 election and a month after signing the USMCA (formerly NAFTA) trade deal Trump slapped tariffs on Cdn aluminum imports, declaring with slander, “Canada tried to take advantage of us, as usual.” US/Canada relations have never been this bad, as in the case of ties with the UK, France, Germany, the G7, the EU, NATO, the UN, WHO etc. Meanwhile, Trump’s biggest diplomatic feat is cozying up with Kim Jong Un, leader of the most repressive nation on the planet. There’s cozying up with the ever increasingly repressive Saudis. Then there’s Russia, who Trump continues to deny intervened to assist him in the 2016 U.S. elections. The bizarre behaviour of Donald Trump’s fawning for the autocratic Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has divided observers between those scratching their heads, and the rest, his supporters shrugging their shoulders.

November 11, 2016

Donald Trump has polarized an already badly polarized United States. While political divisions have intensified over the last three decades, Trump has fuelled it by using his office to ingratiate his base and to denigrate his opponents and counterparts. He has not used the presidency to unite American citizens but has instead used it as a blow horn to belittle democratic states, mayors, and even federal officials like the respected long serving director of Infectious Diseases Institue, Dr. Anthony (FIRE) Fauci, have been misquoted and attacked for not cow towing to Trump’s livelihoods over lives policies. He has publicly insulted those from his own side of the bench, including Republican Senators, and a revolving door of cabinet secretaries who dared to challenge the boss’s wisdom. Then there’s a personal obsession of undoing the accomplishments of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, earnestly embarked upon for the past 4 years. This comes as little surprise given Trump’s years in his own pursuit of office pushing conspiracy theories asserting Obama’s foreign birth. Despite his efforts to drag down and bury the record of America’s first black President, Trump has been unable to strike down Obama’s landmark act expanding affordable care. Yet, even amidst a pandemic that has forced millions out of work and off private health insurance Trump, has led the Republican charge to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something unknown yet promised since 2016. Though his ardent supporters will privately loathe and then turn deaf ears on his bad behaviour, he has lived up to delivering on a key promise, like some useful idiot, to transform the highest court to conservative favour. Trump’s luck of appointing three Supreme Court justices, most recently Amy Coney Barrett, may be his most enduring legacy dialing back progressive laws for years to come, the soonest being health care for all.

July 22, 2016

“Drain the Swamp”, was and still is election mantra that only applies to corruption among those appointees and office holders predating the Trump era. With the blatant cronyism, enriching wealthy Trump donors with agency directorships, ambassadorships, and cabinet positions; with rampant nepotism, handing power over to a younger generation of dislikable Trumps; With the bending of rules, clogging up the courts with cases against him, keeping Trump’s Tax Returns secret, his private holdings and properties entangled as venues for government services the dirty dealings in D.C. are just as bad if not worse than ever.

October 15, 2016

On the eve of the 2020 election, the stakes have been planted sealing a Trump legacy for years to come whether he loses or not. The national polls give Biden a 10-point lead over Trump and have for weeks. Half the lead gap went to Hillary Clinton in 2016, which gave her a larger popular vote than Trump. Democrats who didn’t vote then are likely to show up for Biden, especially among African Americans, suburban women, and older and younger voters. Add to that the so-called ‘Never Trumper” Republicans, and those displaced in the economy due to the pandemic, as well as those friends and family whose loved ones died from an infectious disease the President failed to take seriously.  With this, one could, one should, easily predict these are the final days for Trump, Tweeter-in-Chief. The calculus matters the most in the electoral college, and observers are challenged knowing how numbers will turn out in the battleground states with huge advance poll voting and an unknown election day turnout for the most infectious country in the pandemic. Will we see Biden landslide? Will America side with Trump? Will right wing militias take to the streets in a Biden win? Will progressive protesters take to the streets in a Trump win? These are uneasy and worrisome hours, but a definitive Biden victory would be the best outcome, and permanently close down the Trump News Buffet.

 

Saturday October 31, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday October 31, 2020

Biden’s Call for ‘National Mask Mandate’ Gains Traction in Public Health Circles

October 10, 2020

As the nation heads into what public health experts are calling a “dark winter” of coronavirus illness and death, public health experts are coalescing around Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s call for a “national mask mandate,” even as they concede such an effort would require much more than the stroke of a presidential pen.

Over the past week, a string of prominent public health experts — notably Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist, and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Trump — have said it is time to seriously consider a national mandate to curb the spread of the virus.

Overseas this week, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia became the latest foreign leader to impose a national mandate for citizens to wear masks. Mr. Trump is opposed to a mandate, and Mr. Biden has conceded that a presidential order for all Americans to wear masks would almost certainly face — and most likely fall to — a legal challenge.

March 6, 2020

Mr. Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, echoed the “dark winter” language during the most recent presidential debate, and he is already using his bully pulpit to promote and reinforce a culture of mask wearing. If elected, he will almost certainly do more.

Mr. Biden has already said that, as president, he would mandate masks on all federal property, an executive order that could have wide reach. He could use his authority under federal transit law to require masks on public transportation. He could also prod governors who are resisting mask mandates to at least require masks in public buildings in their states.

But that is delicate terrain in the United States, where Mr. Trump has turned the act of wearing or not wearing a mask into a political statement. Public health and legal experts say it would be far better for Mr. Biden — or Mr. Trump, for that matter — to use his powers of persuasion to convince Americans that covering one’s face to curb the spread of the virus is a patriotic or civic-minded action.

“Instead of making it about the president’s coercive authority under law it should be about whether the president can support a norm that supports public health, which is in people’s self interest,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a law professor at Yale University and an expert in national security and human rights.

Mr. Trump, however, has shown little interest in supporting such norms. At a rally on Wednesday in Arizona, he mocked California’s mask mandate, saying, “You have to eat through the mask.” (New York Times) 

 

Thursday October 22, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 22, 2020

Canadians don’t need election melodrama

If not for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP and the three members of the Green caucus, Canada would be heading into a federal election today. We are not, and we should be thankful for that.

November 12, 2018

An election campaign, with the federal Parliament adjourned for campaigning, is the last thing the country wants, or needs. The second wave of this pandemic is sweeping across the nation. We need all hands on deck to manage the crisis, and no one needs to be distracted by an election campaign and everything that goes along with that.

But how did we get here? How did we end up on the brink of an election no one wants? 

There’s blame to be apportioned across the board, but the majority of it falls on the governing Liberals and Opposition Conservatives. They joined in a high stakes game of chicken that was not driven by anything other than partisan advantage. 

First, the Conservatives. They launched a motion on Opposition Day that called for establishing a new super-committee to investigate corruption, specifically the WE scandal. It would have had unprecedented power to call not only members of the government and civil service, but people such as friends and relatives. It could have compelled the release of private citizens’ financial records over a 12-year period. That is probably not even legal.

October 23, 2019

It was a massive overreach, especially considering Parliament already has multiple committees that can do that work. And given that this is a minority government, those committees are often dominated by opposition MPs, so the government doesn’t always get its way. 

Further, there is a central hypocrisy in what the Conservatives are saying. They want a committee specifically focused on government corruption, and they publicly declare they do not have confidence in the government. But they also say they don’t want an election. You cannot square that circle.

But the Liberals delivered a surprise — they chose a nuclear response to the Conservatives overreach, saying the motion amounted to a loss of confidence in the government, and therefore would trigger an election. They drew a line in the sand, and they dared opposition parties to cross.

October 28, 2016

There’s no doubt, from a political strategy perspective, that the government outplayed its opponents. But beyond that strategic victory, this brinksmanship isn’t a good look for anyone involved. The government is acting like it has a majority when it doesn’t. The Conservatives wanted to weaponize the committee process for partisan gain. Both were willing to force Canadians to endure an election campaign in a very dangerous time. For that, they should be ashamed.

Thankfully, Singh’s NDP sought middle ground. They proposed a committee that would oversee and investigate all spending and management during the pandemic, including in the WE affair. That is a reasonable mandate for a new committee. We don’t know what the Liberals agreed to in exchange for the NDP’s support against the Conservatives, but don’t be surprised if the end result of this drama fest is something like what the NDP proposed. 

So for now, this melodrama is over. Don’t be surprised when the next game of chicken breaks out, as happened frequently when Stephen Harper’s minority government was challenged repeatedly and dared opposition parties to trigger an election. 

That said, there was ample cynical political gamesmanship on display here. It’s wasn’t pretty. The Liberals and Conservatives should take a long look in the mirror and try to remember what Canadians are dealing with. That’s what matters, not an unnecessary election campaign. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday September 29, 2020

Sketch summary from the First debate of the 2020 Presidential Election.

These were the moments that defined President Trump’s first presidential debate against Joe Biden.

Joe Biden faced a barrage of attacks from President Trump, but he fired back several times in ways that drifted outside expectations.

A full display of sketches drawn during the 2020 campaign can be viewed in Special Features.

 

2020 RNC
2020 DNC