Joe Biden was 52 minutes into his marathon press conference last Wednesday, on the one-year anniversary of his presidency, when he was asked whether he thought the United States is more unified now than it was when he took office.
The answer ought to be No. By any reckoning, 2021 was a disaster, a frightening portend of what seems to lie ahead as the country moves through its mid-term elections this fall, then on to the presidential primaries in the early months of 2024, the nominating conventions that summer and in November 2024, the election itself. Each stage of the process will have implications, perhaps nasty ones, for Canada.
The storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year, as Washington was gussying itself up for Biden’s inauguration, was unprecedented in North American history, a violent attempt to block the transfer of power to the legal winner of a legitimate election – a ragtag attempt at a coup, inspired and encouraged by a defeated incumbent.
More trouble followed. Donald Trump refused to fade away. In multiple courts and public rallies, he peddled his fraudulent claim that Biden and the Democrats had stolen the 2020 election; as he did so, he tightened his grip on his party so successfully that 70 per cent of Republicans told pollsters this month that they believe Trump truly won that election.
The ex-president has cowed Republicans in both houses of Congress who fear for political careers if they displease him. Although Republicans have often stood with the Democrats on similar laws in the past, not one GOP senator could be persuaded to support Biden’s voting rights legislation last week – not after Trump had denounced it. “Republicans will never be elected again if that happens, if that passes,” he told Fox News.
Back at the press conference, Biden neither denied nor conceded that the country is less unified than it had been. He’s an intelligent man with a half-century of political experience behind him, but concision of expression is not his forte.
By nature more a thinker than a doer, he did what he often does when he is uncomfortable with an answer he is giving – he interrupted himself and let his mind stray. His mental meandering at minute 52 was interesting: “Look, I still contend that unless you can reach consensus in a democracy, you cannot sustain the democracy.”
Then this: “I believe we’re going through one of those inflection points in history that occurs every several generations or even more than that. … Can we maintain the democratic institutions that we have … to be able to generate democratic consensus of how to proceed?”
And this: “It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard, but it requires leadership to do it. And I’m not giving up on the prospect of being able to do that.”
Are we at an inflection (or turning) point of history? I think he’s right. And if he is also right about the need for a public consensus to sustain democracy, and about the hard work and leadership required to achieve that consensus, then we are indeed at dangerous inflection point. Meaning Canada, too? Well, as the durable old saw puts it, when America sneezes, Canada catches a cold. So, yes, our democracy could also be approaching an inflection point.
According to recent surveys, a majority of U.S. voters – about 60 per cent – believe that democracy is under attack in their country. That, essentially, is what Biden was saying at the press conference. He could have stopped there, but he didn’t. He went on to warn, in his own fashion, that American democracy no longer commands the broad public support (the consensus) needed to sustain it. He was not predicting the death of democracy. He’s an optimist. What he was saying to the journalists and, through them, to American voters, who will get their own say in the midterms, was that it will take a real struggle to save the democratic system, a struggle that calls for leadership (meaning his).
He didn’t need to cite specific enemies of democracy. Some of them were on display in the storming of the Capitol, while others – insidious and more dangerous – serve Trump and his ilk as they beaver away in Congress, state legislatures and the court system to weaken democracy’s protections. Without those protections and public support for such basic democratic principles as truth and decency, conspiracy theories will continue to spread like wildfire on social media. Vote suppression will become more blatant. Organized attempts to intimidate Black and Brown voters will increase. More electoral districts will be gerrymandered. Legal challenges to honest ballot counts will proliferate.
The political barometer in Washington is forecasting that Trump will run, or try to run, for president – and, as he sees it, for vindication – in 2024. If he is unavailable – by virtue being in jail? – he would anoint a candidate cut from similar cloth, the leading prospect being Ron DeSantis, the hard-right, anti-mask governor of Florida; he’s said to be smarter, tougher and meaner than Trump.
Whichever way, the next U.S. election looks to be another ugly one, even worse than the last, and it won’t take any time at all for despicable tactics so readily adopted by some politicians there to find a welcome in Canada.
Canadians saw anti-vaxxers, anti-abortionists and other extremists force cancellation of election gatherings in last year’s federal election. We have learned about the proliferations of death threats being made against elected politicians and candidates and the extra security necessary to protect them and their families. We have witnessed the arrest of an alt-right nutcase with enough weapons to start a mini-war as he tried to reach the home of the prime minister. Some of us are old enough to remember the days when a lone protester would occasionally throw a rotten tomato at party leader (or a cream pie in the case of John Diefenbaker); these days, it’s angry crowds throwing stones at the PM. We keep hearing about political misinformation and outright lies being routinely spread on social media during elections here.
None of this is to suggest that anything remotely approaching civil war, as is being predicted in some quarters in the United States, is on the horizon for Canada. Not at all. The point is simply that democracy is under attack here, too, and it needs protecting here, too.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is a former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. He is the co-author of Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com