John Brewin on Politics

Walking Balmy Beach with Zeus the Wonder Dog at sunset on December 31, 2020 (Toronto) Earlier this year, my sister Martha put us on to Dr. Heather Cox Richardson’s blog, Letters from an American . Like us, many of you have come to rely on Heather for a late night/early morning daily fix on the tumultuous U.S. political scene. Heather is an American historian residing in Maine. She teaches at Boston College and describes herself as a Lincoln Republican. In yesterday’s letter , she reviews the developments in the U.S. in the first 20 years of the new century. Her thesis is that going back to the 1980s the United States has been in a push back led by conservative/reactionary business interests against the New Deal activism of the previous 50 years. The counter revolution started with Ronald Reagan and has culminated in the anti-democratic government of Donald Trump. Thankfully that era, she argues, is coming to a close. The past 20 years have been the “end game of the Reagan Revolution,”

Wow, what a roller coaster ride! As I write, it isn’t over yet -- to say nothing of possible legal suits and/or extra-legal challenges. However, it is just about over.  With Wisconsin and Michigan declared for Biden, there are only 17 Electoral College votes to go. They could come from Arizona  or Georgia and Nevada, from North Carolina or from Pennsylvania. To squeak in, Trump could lose either Arizona or Nevada but would have to win everything else. Some will be decided tonight, Pennsylvania likely tomorrow or Friday. Those who have studied it think Biden could win any or all of the above – that is why they are deemed too close to call. Biden could well win them all. It would take winning a plausible number of the remaining ballots, most of which are from pro-Biden areas and are in the form of early mailed-in or dropped off ballots. Democrats used this way of voting more often than Republicans, so they have tended to break towards Biden. Biden has already begun the work of transition

On the night before the U.S. Presidential Election, this is what I see: First, Biden is very likely to win. Today, the polls tell the same story they have been telling throughout the year: Biden has a clear and stable lead in the national vote of at least seven to eight percentage points, more than enough to win the Electoral College. The many reputable and up-to-date state polls are generally and independently   consistent. Biden will likely win Pennsylvania and likely at least one of the other scenarios to put him over the top: Arizona plus the one seat needed and available in Nebraska, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida or Texas.  In addition, there are many other indicators that, experience over my lifetime, lead me to expect a strong victory across the board for the Democrats up and down the ballot. Most notable is the huge increase in turnout across the electorate. There are simply too many independent and unrelated indicators pointing in the same direction. Second, a certain outco

Fivethirtyeight.com is the best in the business of aggregating and analyzing election polls. So, what does the site tell us at this point in the campaign? A candidate needs 270 Electoral College votes to win. With just over two weeks to go to Election Day, 538.com shows Biden ahead substantially, i.e. by 6.8% points or more in states with 274 Electoral College votes, including the closest of the “battleground” or tipping point states, Minnesota (+9.1%), Michigan (+7.9), Wisconsin (+7.8%) and Pennsylvania (+6.8%). Fivethirtyeight.com gives Biden an 88% chance or better of winning in each of these states. With leads in New Hampshire of 11.6%), Florida (+4.0%), Arizona (+3.9%) and North Carolina (+3.2%) Biden is rated respectively at an 86%, 72%, 67% and 67% chance of winning those states. They provide backup if, for some reason, one of the battleground states falters (or is “stolen”). Georgia and Texas, both rated as toss-ups or leaning slightly for Trump, provide further backup. So here

Finally we're seeing signs that the long nightmare of the Trump presidency may be over soon. A majority of Americans are now recognizing Trump for who he is: completely unfit for this high office. They're telling pollsters that they will not re-elect him. His electoral support is melting at the edges. For a month and a half at least, Biden has consolidated a steady nine to 10% point lead nationally according to a wide variety of national and state polls. The lead is more than enough to overcome any possible Electoral College advantage Trump may have, and any slippage in the remaining months of the campaign. Biden is solidly ahead in all of the “tipping states” like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida, the ones that will make the difference in the Electoral College. He's also competitive in states like Texas, Iowa, Montana and Georgia that could well lead him to a big victory and control of the Senate. The underlying numbers explain why this is happening and what Trump is up

In the U.S. and here in Canada as well, political anxiety levels are off the charts. Outside of the Trump bubble, folks have no idea how Trump could possibly have won last time, though they did develop a few theories. No one has any idea how he has managed to stay in office, except that the U.S. system of governance is dysfunctional.  Now he is behind in the polls, we can only be certain either that the polls are wrong, that he will lie and cheat his way back and/or challenge his defeat and get it reversed by the Supreme Court, or otherwise refuse to leave the White House. I’m with James Carville on all of this. Bill Clinton’s strategist and now generally cranky old guy pundit has predicted that either Trump will lose or he’ll quit before the election even happens. I think he is right. One of the other will happen. He won’t be re-elected. We can relax, just a little bit. Here’s why he will lose if he doesn’t quit first. The current state of public opinion in the United States among li

At this start of this year,  I posted my expectations  for the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. I suggested Joe Biden would likely emerge as the Democratic nominee and the outcome would probably be very close. Any predictions made on January 1 were subject to a number of contingencies, I wrote, including the possibility that “some cataclysmic event occurs that changes everything”. Turns out that these conventional calls  were  on the mark, at least as of today. And even though I could never have predicted a pandemic, a cataclysmic event has occurred. Its electoral consequences are a matter of total speculation. So, let’s speculate. It's tempting to think the election will be a simple referendum on Trump. Is he to blame or can he offload the blame onto Biden, the Democrats, the Governors, China, the WHO, the media or even Dr. Fauci? The early signs are that Americans are less than satisfied  with  the job Trump is doing .   His  overall approval ratings are more or less wh

Since February 20th, share values on the Toronto Stock Exchange have fallen by one-third -- even greater than the stock market crash in October 1929. The global pandemic has caused a rapid economic shut down . Unemployment is soaring. There is no likelihood of a quick recovery. Stock market values took two decades to recover from the 1929 crash during which the world experienced the resulting decade-long economic depression and the Second World War. The economic recovery was painfully slow and really only ended with the start of the war. Deep and pervasive unemployment and inadequate safety nets devastated the lives of millions. The ’29 Crash, the ensuing Depression, and the experience of the war fundamentally changed the political landscape across the world. In Canada, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was formed in 1933. It aimed at ending the two-party Liberal and Conservative hegemony. While the CCF and its successor, the NDP, didn’t subsequently

It's 2020 – another election year! Looming large is the U.S. Presidential Election. BC voters are likely to go the polls this year too. This is the third day of my retirement from the practice of law after nearly 54 years. While I'm building a new routine, there is one habit that will not change: obsessing over the polls. During the holiday season, I noticed that liberal and progressive Americans (and their Canadian friends) are genuinely pessimistic about their ability to defeat Trump. They're convinced that Trump will triumph in November. He will, once again, bamboozle a sufficient number of voters to steal another win. They believe none of the Democratic candidates will be able to head him off. They can't imagine that Democrats will nominate the candidate least likely to defeat him. At the start of this year, we have to reassure them that all manner of things can happen between now and November 3: removal from office by the Senate (highly unlikely), new and