Humility

If anyone tells you what is going to happen, don’t believe them. That’s what we have been saying for weeks and what were saying on US election night.

We were told it would be close. It was not.

We were told the race was moving towards the Democrats. It was not.

We were told the Democrats had a formidable turnout machine, formidable ad buys and a formidable message. They did not.

We were told Americans would never elect a man who fomented an insurrection and is a convicted felon. They did.

We could go on. What was in short supply on US election night, and what risks being in short supply in its aftermath is a good dose of humility. It is easy to see why the argument for a Democratic victory made some sense. We admit we fell into that ourselves, because there was data to support it, even if that data was flawed or more uncertain than it was treated (Democrat win in Iowa, anyone?)

There are many other questions about the recent campaign for which answers are far from certain. Was Joe Rogan more important to the Republican victory than millions spent on ads? We don’t know. Does spending hundreds of millions identifying vote and then getting out that vote work better than relying on anger and dissatisfaction to drive people to the polls? We don’t know. What’s the best way to communicate with voters, to connect with voters in 2024? We don’t know.

There is an old political joke that the job of the successful political strategist is to string together a series of coincidences as a brilliant strategic plan. We expect to read a lot of analysis stringing together a series of convenient facts to tell a story of how Trump won. They will be interesting. They may even be helpful. That will not make them true.

The point of this post is not just to urge humility in interpreting the events that led to the result last night. It is also to urge humility looking forward. Now is not the time for hot takes, catastrophizing or sweeping conclusions.

Now is a time for sober reflection and humility.

The US election was a cataclysmic event. Over (barely) half of America elected a president that much of the other half, and much of the world, considers unfit for that office. What that elected president has promised to do, if you take him at his word, is deeply worrying. Cataclysmic even.

Will it be cataclysmic? We don’t know. We worry, and not without reason, but we don’t know. More importantly, this is something for the United States – with its faults and resilience – to work through. America has survived worse, just not for a long time.

We know even less the impact this will have on Canadian politics. Will this be good for Trudeau? Will it be good for Poilievre? We could make either argument. The United States plunging into chaos is certainly among the possible, even plausible, outcomes. That might cause Canadians to prefer the devil they know to alternatives. That might be good for Trudeau. But we just don’t know.

A repeat of Trump’s first term in office – not without serious deficiencies, but on policy, at least up and until January 6, 2021, not beyond the bounds of what we would expect from a Republican term in office – might boost the US economy. Maybe the voters want a “strong man” to make real changes. That might give Canadians even more permission to vote for change in the form of Pierre Poilievre as a strong man for change. But we just don’t know.

Will this mean an earlier or later Canadian election? Again, we could make the argument for either. But we just don’t know.

So we return to our theme. Now is a time for humility. For sober reflection. To watch and to wait. And to prepare. And to take into account different, even conflicting perspectives. A multi-partisan point of view.

To repeat: if anyone tells you what is going to happen, don’t believe them.