Progressive-leaning voters are going to be looking for some kind of silver lining in Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States.
Here is one: all those people whose faith in democracy was shaken by Trump’s loss four years ago, braced to declare this 2024 election corrupt too, can no longer complain that the system is rigged against them.
Democracy, in other words, has prevailed, even with a leader who is poised to shake it to its foundations and even with Trump’s declared promise to be a dictator on day one of his presidency.
Trump had been carefully laying the groundwork to declare any victory by Kamala Harris as proof that Democrats cheat.
“The only thing that can stop us is the cheating. It’s the only thing that can stop us,” Trump told supporters late last week in Arizona. Judging by the person-in-the-street interviews being broadcast on the news in recent days, that allegation was being swallowed whole by Trump’s base.
So had Harris won, it was almost inevitable that Trump supporters would rebel, perhaps in larger and more violent ways than the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of Capitol Hill. Trump’s victory, then, has at least spared the world that kind of spectacle.
But there will be a different kind of chaos. Trump himself forecast it during his flurry of end-of-campaign appearances over the weekend. “You watch. It’s going to be so good. It’s going to be so much fun. It’ll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning, in particular,” Trump said in Georgia, one of the many states that helped send him back to office. “But it’s going to be something.”
Here in Canada, there will be reverberations for Justin Trudeau’s government, on the policy and political front.
Trudeau and his cabinet have been preparing for a possible Trump victory. Immigration Minister Marc Miller delivered a flat “yes” when asked in the Commons last week whether he was braced for a post-Trump flood of asylum seekers to this country.
Trudeau’s team has also kept its lines of communication open with Trump’s circle, even with him out of power, and those conversations will intensify in the days and weeks ahead.
There’s an assumption that there’s personal antagonism between Trump and Trudeau, but in fact, the two men had many cordial conversations after the 2018 blowup, when the former president called Trudeau “weak” and “dishonest.” This summer, they had a friendly chat when Trudeau reached out to convey sympathy for the assassination attempt on Trump.
The prime minister was prepared this week, naturally, with two sets of remarks to make in the wake of Tuesday’s election. Had Harris won, Trudeau probably would have been more expansive on the progressive alliance between Democrats and Liberals.
His statement on Trump’s victory, though, was also convivial. “The friendship between Canada and the U.S. is the envy of the world,” the prime minister posted on X early Wednesday morning. “I know President Trump and I will work together to create more opportunity, prosperity, and security for both of our nations.”
They’re going to need all the friendliness they can muster — Trump’s promises for sweeping tariffs could hit Canada hard.
The hard-won, renegotiated free-trade deal between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico is also up for review in 2026, halfway through Trump’s next presidency, and that could prompt another existential crisis in the Canada-U.S. trading relationship.
But if the current polls hold in Canada, it won’t be Trudeau overseeing that review, but Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Poilievre is going to be facing a lot of questions in the coming days about how he would deal with Trump, and why Canadians should expect him to handle a disruptive president with minimal damage to this country.
Conservatives will, of course, be taking heart from the fact that the United States was ready for a rightward turn and hoping Canada is in the same mood. They will also realize it is a bit more politically awkward for Trudeau and his team to cast Conservatives as the northern branch of Trump Republicanism, given that Canada has to maintain civil ties with the re-elected president.
On the other hand, if Trump’s return to power does unleash the chaos that seems likely, Canadians could be looking for the kind of stability that an incumbent government, experienced at dealing with Trump, could provide. That will be a faint hope that Liberals will cling to in the days ahead.
Someone recently offered me this metaphor for how Canada might react to a Trump victory. “It will be like seeing your neighbour go off the wagon again,” he said. For progressive voters, that feels about right. At least there won’t be another storm-the-Capitol party.
