There’s an old saying in politics that “the voter is never wrong,” but I don’t think that’s been true for a long time.
It definitely wasn’t the case with the recent U.S. election, where voters cast ballots against facts, reason, integrity, and their own self-interest in a way I’m sure will haunt the world for decades.
I do think it was true once upon a time when voters subscribed to a daily paper and watched reputable anchors present the evening news. Everybody had more or less the same information to go by when casting ballots. There also was a core of beliefs and values underlying everything that all voters and parties shared that minimized the consequences of voting one way or another. Politicians had different ideas but the same ideals.
These fraught days, people live in their own realities and echo chambers furnished with their own selective facts and beliefs, pretending it all adds up to “common sense.” It turns out there is no truth people won’t deny, rationalize or ignore.
Case in point: all the people who have claimed the economy was better under Trump when it objectively was not by any metric—GDP, markets, wages and employment were all up under Biden, and manufacturing and exports were increasing.
Inflation was and still is painful, there’s no question there, but it was also globalized and had more to do with events like Russia’s war on Ukraine and price gouging by corporations than any one government’s economic policies. Meanwhile, not two weeks before the election, both Trump and Elon Musk admitted their economic policies—including tariffs, austerity, layoffs and mass deportations—would probably hurt the economy on at least a temporary basis, but none of the “it’s the economy stupid!” voters seemed to notice.
People are going to lose their jobs. The cost of living is about to go way up with migrant labourers being deported and new punitive tariffs on goods. That’s not my opinion either, that’s what economists are saying—and Musk agreed with them. Apparently Trump and Musk feel it’s a necessary pain (that they won’t feel in the slightest) to “fix” the most successful economy in the world.
I’m not suggesting voters were wrong because they didn’t understand who and what they were voting for. The terrifying reality is a lot of people knew exactly what was being proposed for America and voted for Trump anyway. I will admit it made a bit of sense in 2016—Trump was an outsider and former Democrat who promised to bring manufacturing back to America—but I have yet to see a compelling intellectual defence for voting for Trump in 2020 or 2024.
What I am suggesting is voters were wrong in the sense they are blind to the actual consequences for them when it comes to the economy, women’s health, Ukraine and the Middle East, NATO, America’s traditional allies (including Canada), Russia’s attempts to reshape the world order in favour of authoritarians, climate change, equality, and human rights. Going backwards has never worked.
Looking forward, there will be stories for years about shocked people who voted Republican but never imagined these predictable consequences would happen to them. Shrugging and saying “Trump says stuff,” doesn’t change the fact that Trump also sometimes does stuff as well. They were warned.
I might hope some of those voters might feel some regret for their choice once the consequences are clear, but at this point I don’t think so. They’re all in, whatever happens.
I don’t know if there’s a lesson here for Canada we’re not already learning the hard way. We have our own growing extreme right movement at the national and provincial levels, which seems happy to provide a home for hardcore evangelicals, anti-abortion factions, white nationalists, racists, misogynists, fascists, climate change deniers, antivaxxers, isolationists, and other once-fringe-but-increasingly-mainstream provocateurs.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, a career politician, should know better but has not been shy at breaking out accusations of communism and Marxism when referring to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. To my knowledge Trudeau has not seized the means of production, banned other political parties, redistributed wealth, denied private ownership of businesses or property, or done anything else that goes beyond mundane socialism.
At best, Trudeau is a weak democratic socialist compared to European standards, which isn’t a bad thing—all the world’s most livable and successful countries are socialist democrat, balancing free markets and capitalism with strong governments and social safety nets.
Words have meanings. We ignore those meanings at our peril.
I wish I could say everything is going to be fine. That Ukraine will survive four years of Trump. That this is a minor setback for progressive politics and global efforts to reverse climate change. That Canada won’t be hit with damaging tariffs on resource exports or overwhelmed by refugees afraid of deportation. That instead of dedicating his time in office to punishing rivals and critics, Trump will instead set out to prove everybody wrong about him by being a decent president. That he really doesn’t support Project 2025. That he’ll protect women like he said he would. That there won’t be a global spillover effect of emboldened rightwing extremism. That science and truth and reason and justice will eventually win out.
But I’d probably be lying. Dark days are ahead.
