Weekend reads: Kamala's sunny ways

Canadians learned this the hard way: Vibes don't pay the rent

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I was back in my hometown this week and even in that West Coast Canadian outpost, all anyone wanted to talk about was Kamala Harris. She officially accepted the presidential nomination during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, an emotional gathering that swept up the Obamas, Oprah, and running mate Tim Walz’s endearingly tearful son (even Ben Shapiro tweeted about the sweetness of the moment) into one upbeat, glamorous spectacle.

Harris’s transformation from an obvious political liability to the saviour of the Democrats is now seemingly complete. She has united the party, energized the base, turned the polls around, attracted fawning media coverage, and changed the tone of the political discourse from one of outrage to one of ecstatic celebration. With her pick of “Coach” Walz as VP, apparently she’s even revolutionized gender norms by ushering in a new era of masculinity.

“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” Harris proclaimed on stage. “A president who leads and listens.”

“We know a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success,” she added, later in her speech. “Building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”

DNC co-chair Cory Booker declared that Harris and Walz “bring the joy” — and many Canadians are now looking south for inspiration. But in reality, Americans should be looking north for a warning.

The Kamala moment feels eerily familiar to Canadians, who saw a similar tidal wave of enthusiasm for Justin Trudeau back in 2015. Much like Harris, Trudeau was initially considered a political lightweight. He too became an overnight sensation, campaigning on uplifting the middle class and uniting the country with “sunny ways.” When he became Prime Minister, much was made of his musings about feminism, and his own upending of gender norms, insisting on a cabinet that was 50 percent female.

But almost a decade later, after summarily throwing one of his most celebrated female ministers, Jody Wilson-Raybould, under the bus — after she declined to offer a favoured corporation, SNC-Lavalin, a deferred prosecution agreement in a corruption and fraud case — nobody seriously believes that Trudeau is a feminist.

The country is deeply polarized in the wake of divisive vaccine mandates and Trudeau’s demeaning comments about those who resisted them. Our Federal Court has ruled that the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, in response to the trucker protests, was illegal. The Liberal Party has been embroiled in scandal after scandal, including over ethics violations and foreign interference in our elections. Our decades-long bipartisan pro-immigration consensus has sadly collapsed. A censorious Online Harms Bill is on the table. We’re now home to the world’s fastest-growing medical assistance in dying program, with MAID the fifth leading cause of death in this country. We are in the grips of serious housing, healthcare, and opioid crises, and evidence of human suffering is visible on streets from coast to coast. Almost a quarter of Canadians expect to access a food bank this fall.

As the author, and former Trudeau advisor, Omer Aziz recently wrote in The Globe and Mail, the Canadian Dream is on life support.

According to the latest data from Abacus, just 14 percent of Canadians believe Trudeau and the Liberals deserve to be re-elected. Significantly, the Liberal Party has lost support with young adults, dropping from 41 percent in 2015 to 22 percent. As the Liberals head to a cabinet retreat today in Halifax, it’s unclear whether Trudeau will still be leader when Parliament resumes in September.

One hopes that Americans will think a little more critically about their newly anointed political star than we did. And indeed, there are signs that some Americans are not buying what the Democrats are selling. In her latest essay “Let Them Eat Joy,” Lean Out guest and author of Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women Batya Ungar-Sargon notes that polling suggests the Harris excitement is mainly within a certain demographic: the college-educated. Referring to data from Where Have All the Democrats Gone? author (and Lean Out guest) Ruy Teixeira, Ungar-Sargon writes that “Harris is doing even better than Biden with the college-educated, and even worse with the working class — of all races.”

Our neighbours to the south, of all incomes and political persuasions, might want to keep Canada’s example in mind and maintain a healthy skepticism about Harris. Who, after all, has yet to outline any concrete policy plans or sit for a single serious media interview.

If you’re interested in Canadian politics, you might be interested in Lean Out’s podcast interview with Stephen Maher, author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau, or our episode with Paul Wells, author of Justin Trudeau on the Ropes: Governing in Troubled Times.