As a rule, Canadians do not pay close attention to the biennial midterm elections in the United States, when all 535 members of the House of Representatives and one-third of senators and state governors come up for re-election or replacement.
The midterms back in 1970 were an exception to the rule. Like people everywhere, Canadians were transfixed as huge Vietnam War protests during those elections shook American democracy to its core and tore the fabric of the nation’s political system.
The 2022 midterms, on Nov. 8, look to be another exception. The results may well affect Canada’s interests, access and ability to deal with Washington, if they undermine the authority and reduce the negotiating room of the friendly Biden administration.
The results should also signal answers to questions of keen interest.
Is the end nigh for Donald Trump, the cancer on American politics? Or will the results “vindicate” his bootless claim, the “big lie” that the White House was stolen from him in 2020, and recharge his quixotic crusade to recapture it in 2024. And if he succeeds? “I think it would be the end of the republic,” says Princeton University historianSean Wilentz. “It would be a kind of overthrow from within. … It would be a coup.”
What will Nov. 8 mean for President Joe Biden? The stakes are high, the challenge great. He has been a fixture in Washington since his first election 50 years ago; he will turn 80 next month, and is showing his age. He has no political coattails. At a minimum, he has to emerge from the midterms no weaker than he is going into them. If the Democrats are unable hold at least one chamber – the Senate appears to be their better bet – Biden will almost certainly forfeit his re-election option. The party will want to look elsewhere for 2024, and it probably won’t look in the direction of Vice-President Kamala Harris. Will the midterms raise up a bright new star – a congressman or perhaps an impressive young governor – as a future presidential nominee?
More important, what will the midterms reveal about the state of democracy in the United States? It’s under unrelenting attack from within – from destructive forces unleashed by Trump, from elected politicians at the federal and state levels who feel no compunction about ignoring the law or twisting it out of shape for partisan ends, and from courts corrupted by judges chosen for their political reliability and ideological predictability – the overturning of Roe v Ward being an outstanding illustration of justice as injustice.
Simultaneously, democracy is being challenged, denigrated, diminished and undermined from without, from the hard right, from that witch’s brew of extremists with their QAnon conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine views, and election denialism, supported by religious zealots opposed to abortion and gay rights (including same-sex marriage) and even public funding of birth control, along with the same motley assortment of paramilitary thugs, neo-fascists, racists, anti-Semites and simple-minded thrill seekers that laid siege to the U.S. Capitol and overran it in January 2021.
A half-century ago, at time of the 1970 midterms, the established political order, from the Gaullists who controlled France to the Nixon Republicans in power in Washington, was shaken to its foundation by a worldwide wave of demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. That challenge came from the opposite direction, from the left, from students, socialists, communists, writers and artists, and radical reformers from the halls of academe and the jobsites of labour. Millions upon millions of them marched in world capitals and cities across North America and around the globe, demanding that the war be ended and the politicians and generals responsible for it be prosecuted as war criminals.
(Footnote: my wife and I lived in Europe in the winter of 1969-70. In London, we watched, astonished, as a crowd, one million strong, surged down The Strand toward Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square. In Paris, anti-war riots broke out virtually every weekend on the left bank. The demonstrators, including a more than a few young Canadians studying in the French capital, would hurl paving stones at barricades of police in battle gear who retaliated with batons and tear gas. The smell of the gas lingering over the Boulevard Raspail or the “Boul Miche” in the morning was evidence of the previous night’s activity, when the enforcers of law and order, acting with practiced brutality, had broken up protests, hauling away as many participants as they could in their big black buses. The students we got to know related stories of protesters who had disappeared in police custody; carted off, they never reappeared in court, jail, classroom, or anywhere else.)
Today, democracy in Canada is not in the same imminent danger as it is south of the border, where talk of “civil war” has become commonplace in political discussions, but it is under attack from a similar mix of right-wing extremists who, spewing hate and preaching insurrection, took over the truckers’ “Freedom Convoy” in February.
Extreme right-wing organizations span the border. Some of the most militant U.S. groups are known to function here and have been outlawed as illegal terrorist organizations by the federal government. To name a few: Atomwaffen Division, Blood & Honour (or B&H), Proud Boys (born in Canada, exported to the U.S.), The Base, and Three Percenters.
Abortion is an obvious flashpoint this fall. Demonstrations provoked by the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade continue across the United States and into Canada. They are bound to increase in frequency and intensity in the U.S. as the midterms come closer and political rhetoric grows more heated.
A vaccine to protect Canadians from political viruses originating south of the border hasn’t been discovered yet, but until it is, we can take a measure of comfort from one bit of good fortune. It’s this: no matter how dysfunctional our political system may be, we are blessed not to have a Donald Trump obsessively pouring gasoline on the flames of bigotry and intolerance.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com