John Brewin on Politics

Thanks to everyone who offered best wishes on my 80 th  birthday last month. I am grateful for the cards, for those of you who lifted a glass to me in the University of Toronto Hart House Debates Room , and for those who ignored Pat’s directive and gave me a present. (I now have a lifetime supply of excellent scotch!)  Thank you so very much.  Getting to 80 in one piece does help to focus the mind more than any other birthday I have experienced, except perhaps when I was six and got a Royal Canadian Air Force uniform for my birthday. That was 1942, the year of the York South by-election, by the way.  My life with Pat, my work with committed colleagues in the practice of labour law, my great relationship with my kids, their spouses, my grandchildren, my sisters and their families, friends of long-standing as well as friendships with many people a generation or two younger than I am -- all this has, I think, kept me from obsessing about the passing years.  At 80, however

In two months, on November 8th, our American neighbours will elect their next President. All summer I have given my election addiction free rein. Here’s my sense of what's happening in this unusual campaign. As of today, there are two competing views of the state of the race. One is that Hillary Clinton maintains a solid lead and will almost certainly win, likely comfortably. The other is that the race is tightening to the point that the outcome is very uncertain. Perhaps this is obvious. This year nothing is obvious. We will only be able to tell once what has happened when it is over and the results are in. The "solid lead school" is supported by most of the polls, pollsters, aggregates of polls and aggregates of the aggregates. The latter are the most reliable. Single polls are the least reliable. There are about five, maybe six aggregators, including the betting sites, that pull together the polls and other information into predictions. These