Don't Count Your Chickens
It was a remarkable turn of events. Joe Biden stepped down right after the Republican National Convention paving the way for Kamala Harris to be named Democratic Candidate at this week’s Democratic National Convention. There are many calls for Trudeau to do the same and step aside for the good of the party.
Biden’s move and the overwhelming acceptance of the VP as the new candidate completely changed the math in the American election, greatly exceeding my expectations. I felt that Kamala had not defined herself in her four years in the vice presidency, and that she would be starting from untenably far behind, handing an already difficult election over to the Republican.
However Trump’s narrative about Biden being too old to run, in an instant, flipped on himself, and the momentum is suddenly overwhelmingly in Harris’s favour. Trump is, now, the old candidate. And he’s not happy about it, leading me to wonder if the bullet that hit his ear — but did not leave any kind of mark — is still circulating through his head like a pinball causing interminably more damage as every speech he makes becomes more deranged than the last, showing even some of his supporters that the emperor has no clothes.
Harris has been doing everything right. She’s effectively avoided letting the media control her narrative, and she picked what is probably the best possible choice as her own running mate, thereby telling the progressive wing that she hears them.
It is all adding up to a high confidence in the left that Kamala Harris will win this election, out of the ashes of the hopelessness that existed just weeks ago.
It is, though, important to temper the mood. Tolerance for mistakes on the left is far lower than it is for mistakes on the right, as I have written before, and, no matter how many gaffes Trump or Vance make, it would only take one significant gaffe by either Harris or Tim Walz to completely derail their campaign and hand the narrative and momentum back to Trump. And there’s three months left to get through, a whole lifetime — or two — in politics.
I have been asked many times by many people if Trudeau will do the same as Biden and step down at the last second, and switch to someone who can steal the narrative and spotlight from Pierre Poilievre.
The Canadian context, in spite of superficial similarity with the drama south of the border, is very different. There is no Kamala Harris waiting in the wings. It’s too early for Mark Carney to jump in, if there ever even is a time for him. Chrystia Freeland, often touted as the heir apparent to Trudeau, is no Kamala. While brighter and more accomplished than most, if not all, other potential contenders, she has what I feel to be a disdain for the political side of politics that will show through quickly in the limelight. Neither Carney nor Freeland is in an especially strong position to establish control over the party establishment and command the loyalty of the base overnight in the way Harris has, nor is there anyone else well positioned to do so.
While I share the sentiment of former colleagues like Wayne Long that Trudeau’s time has probably come, he also, in completely practical terms, remains the best chance the party has of avoiding a comprehensive wipe-out. People are not only mad at Trudeau for still being there, but in large part because he made the Liberal brand so completely intertwined with his own brand through the “Team Trudeau” slogan and marketing. People are fed up with Liberals writ large, blaming them for all the ills in the world, most of which are international issues affecting provincial jurisdictions beyond their control. Replacing him as leader at this stage in his premiership and in the electoral cycle is far more likely to repeat the fate of Kim Campbell than Kamala Harris.
Trudeau’s departure would be seen as more of a surrender rather than a succession or recovery plan. Trudeau has few illusions as to where the Canadian electorate is at, and both thinks he may find an opening to turn it around, and, failing that, feels a responsibility to take his own term to its conclusion, even if it means falling on his own sword in October, 2025.
It is worth considering that, on one side, Trudeau is a very strong campaigner, and on the other, that Poilievre’s comments and views would have already completely ended his candidacy if Canadian media weren’t widely giving him the completely free ride he is getting. Take, for instance, this week’s Conservative ad called Poilievre’s “Canadian Dream”, which used unresearched stock photos and videos from all over the world — except Canada. If a Liberal ad featured a Russian-built Su-25 attack aircraft with a Russian-built Mig-29 fighter jet flying over a Ukrainian university while suggesting they are the height of Canadian achievement, every media outlet in the country would be decrying the incompetent tone-deafness of it all. Where is the outcry when the Conservatives do exactly that?
Reclaiming the narrative is not as unrealistic as it sounds, though; Poilievre’s entire case is that Canada is broken, yet Canada is doing better in almost every metric than it was when the Conservatives were last in power. But facts and narratives often contradict.
The lessons that Trudeau — and those who hope he can pull it out of the fire — can take from the US come from Harris, not from Biden. First, that the election is not over until it is over, and second, that Biden tried to play by the old rules. Harris has bypassed the right wing media altogether and taken her message and her campaign directly to the people in an unprecedented way.
Poilievre needs to take his lessons from Trump. He is right where Trump was before Harris took the political field by storm; counting his chickens long before they’ve hatched. Harris’s biggest accomplishment may be reminding us that the fight isn’t yet over.
Harris and her supports have to remember now, and Trudeau and his will have to remember if he is able to reclaim the narrative, that the chickens won’t hatch until election day.