The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is This The Most Unprecedented Election In U.S. History?

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

As the U.S. prepares for a showdown between vice-president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, The Agenda looks at the historic nature of the race. For more on this, we're joined by: Vivian Salama (National Politics Reporter, The Wall Street Journal), Andrew Coyne (Columnist for The Globe and Mail), and Kim Nossal (Professor emeritus in the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen's University) and author of "Canada Alone: Navigating the Post-American World." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The battle between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is unlike any other race in U.S. history. And before their showdown at tomorrow night's debate, we thought we'd take a look at what is making this particular election so unprecedented. Here to give us their insights, we welcome in Washington, D.C., Vivian Salama, National Politics Reporter for the Wall Street Journal. And with us here in studio, Kim Nossel, professor emeritus at the Center for International and Defense Policy at Queens University. He's also the author of Canada Alone, Navigating the Post-American World.

And Andrew Coyne is here, columnist, of course, for the Globe and Mail, and it's great to have you two back here in our studio. And Vivian, nice to have you on our program and let's put you to work right away. My goodness, the last couple of months, an assassination attempt, the head of the Secret Service steps down, the president stands down from running for a second term, a new candidate seamlessly takes over.

Is this the most unprecedented election in American history? Every election, Steve, feels like the most unprecedented election in American history. I was watching a documentary about 1968 over the weekend, and that seemed pretty unprecedented at the time. And even looking back, it was pretty extraordinary. So obviously, we have a set of circumstances here that are quite extraordinary. We have an incumbent president who stepped down from running for re-election. A former president turned GOP nominee that was shot,

albeit just kind of grazed on the ear, thankfully, survived that, but still quite extraordinary. And a vice president who stepped up and in no time at all has really garnered enormous support and enthusiasm from her party. All that is to say that it is a definite, vice president who stepped up and in no time at all has really garnered enormous support and enthusiasm from her party. All that is to say that it is definitely one that we are going to remember. And certainly we are 56 days from election day, but who's counting? We're really going to see how it goes. You know, there's something that we talk about here in Washington, the October surprise.

We're all holding our breath for everything that's happened this year. If there's still an October surprise to come, God help us all. But you know, it's definitely been a pretty extraordinary year. Andrew, we've already had the July surprise, the August surprise. I'm sure there's going to be a September surprise. Can you recall an election in your lifetime with these kinds of circumstances? None, and I don't think any in American history, partly because of the singular figure of Trump. You've never had a president who's not only a career criminal but a convicted criminal

candidate I should say, who's been a convicted criminal, a serial fraud artist, a serial abuser of women, essentially a malignant narcissist who is attempted to bring down the system of government, who's attempted to undermine the system of law. Get off the things and tell me what you really think. All those qualities of him in particular and then of course the stakes in this election I think are certainly since Lincoln perhaps I think are the largest that I think it is very clear that if Trump is re-elected, the democratic system of government and the rule of law in America will be under serious threat.

You agree with that, Kim? Absolutely. This is an unprecedented election because of the stakes involved. And the stakes aren't only, as Andrew has said, in the domestic politics of the United States, but also in foreign policy too. If Trump is elected in November,

the impact on the global system is going to be just immense. And so from that point of view it's absolutely unprecedented. Vivian, based on what you have seen since the new players were put in place, meaning Harrison Walls, and based on your understanding of what you expect to see over the next 56 days, do you think this election is going to be decided on policy differences among the candidates, or more on all-out character attacks, which are also happening in abundance? There are definitely are people out there who do want to hear about policy, you know, and at the end of the day, that day, those are the issues that are going

to really impact, you know, anyone's view on either candidate. It's really, the burden is on Harris at this point to really establish herself, to help the American people understand what she stands for. Is she a continuation of Biden? Does she break with him on certain policies? And if so, what? Also, something that we are going to be hearing a lot about on Tuesday night at the debate is whether, how she switched her position on certain key issues in this election, particularly fracking, which is huge in places like Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, and on Medicare for all where she has flip-flopped on that as well. You know, we saw a CNN interview a couple of weeks ago where she said that her values

haven't changed, but she really hadn't explained fully how that evolution took place. And so a lot of people really anxious to hear about that. But ultimately, a lot of this is about personality. There are very few Americans who don't have a pre-established view of Donald Trump at this point. They either love him or hate him. They might vote for him, but not really care for his rhetoric. You know, everybody has an opinion about Donald Trump here in the United States and probably around the world. So, you know, for him, it's really about just not saying anything to blow it with key demographics that he needs most

specifically, women, suburban white women especially. And that's where the Democrats start pushing the issue of abortion or reproductive rights in general, a very contentious issue where they want to highlight him as someone who's going to essentially rob them of those rights. And so that is, those are the, that's when the issues come in. And Harris, especially on Tuesday night, is going to be looking to poke the bear a little bit on some of those issues so that she can provoke some sort of erratic response from him,

where you could kind of highlight these policy differences. All right, let's pursue that. Andrew, let's get away from the mudslinging for a second and just look at the policy differences. Which are those that you believe are the most germane that could result in the win or loss either way? Well, we have to understand first of all how few voters will actually decide this election.

It comes down to seven swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia. And it'll be a small number of voters within those states. What is striking about this campaign is how few people are actually changing their minds. Look at the conventions. Typically, conventions in the past, if you got a really good convention, you could get a bump of five, six, seven points in the polls. In recent elections, it's been more like one or two percent. This election doesn't seem like there was any bump at all.

So people, there's so many people are so decided. So the small number of people who can actually be persuaded to change their minds on this, who are undecided between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, are a very strange beast. Maybe some of them can be turned on the issues, things like abortion, things like immigration, things like inflation, things like foreign policy. Maybe. I think a lot of it's going to come down to more things like, oh I'm tired of this, this is boring, let's see what else is on. You can see them attempting in their rhetoric, the Democrats in particular, trying to figure out what's the psychographic profile of somebody

who could actually be undecided between these two candidates. So we can have all these discussions about the issues and they matter to some voters somewhere, I don't think they're gonna be decisive, frankly. Well, clearly China is something that the former President Trump has put on the agenda as an important thing that has garnered a lot of enthusiasm. The border is another one. You know, COVID might be another one.

He's got his list. Do you think at the end of the day that's dispositive for the outcome? I think that what will determine the outcome is whether or not the parties are able to get those tens of millions of Americans who are generally speaking don't bother to go out and vote. And because the election will ride on so few votes, just as Andrew has said, it makes a huge difference whether or not the on theground games of both the Republicans and the Democrats are able to generate that voter turnout, in particular in those battleground states. We should just say, you know, you mentioned seven states, it's a country of 330 million people,

it will come down to fewer than a hundred thousand votes. That's right. Out of 330 million. In fact, it's exactly 75,000. 75,000 according to the Trump campaign. They need 75,000 votes to win. Is he looking for them the same way he looked for the 16,000 votes in Georgia? No, no, never mind that.

Never mind. Vivian, let me try this with you. Normally a candidate has a year or two to introduce themselves to the electorate when they are at the top of a ticket for a major party. Kamala Harris basically has three months. Is that an asset or a liability? Both, really. You know, it could play in her favor in the sense that, you know, she has less time to make gaffes and less time to really, you know, put herself out there in a way that kind of turns

people off. They get tired of seeing these people on TV campaigning, begging for votes for years at a time. At the same time, we are still at a stage, even though she is the vice president of the United States, we are still at a stage again, 56 days before the election, where there are a lot of voters who still just don't really know what she stands for, what her policies are. And there are some people who may see her

and just like her better than Donald Trump. Anyone is better than Donald Trump. And there is a sense of relief among Democrats that Joe Biden stepped down because there was a growing realization that he probably could not have taken Donald Trump on successfully. And so there is that bit of relief. But she does still remain an enigma to a lot of people in this country. And when I travel around, that's the one thing that I hear from people over and over again is, you know, not really clear where she stands on policy X. Well, that's really where

the short time that she has to campaign works against her. And that's really the opportunity that she has on Tuesday night to put her policies out there and really help American people understand how she will improve their lives if she is elected as president. We'll talk debate strategy in a moment, but on that issue of asset or liability to be better or lesser known, Andrew, what do you think? Well, she benefited in the early going when she first took over from low expectations. She was not regarded as being a great success as vice president. I'm not sure who is regarded as such a non It's such a non-innocent of a job.

But it was striking when people were talking about, should Biden step down, and the speculation about who should replace him. People looked right past her initially. They talked about Gavin Newsom. They talked about Gretchen Whitmer. But once she took over, and Biden, of course, helped a great deal with his blessing upon her,

but hasn't put a foot wrong, in my view. She's looked presidential. She's looked in charge, she's made a series of good decisions, including her choice of VP pick. So I think she got a bump out of that. Making further yards, I agree, there's still, for those voters who can be reached, there are still some who aren't sure what to make of her, have heard she's too far left, she's a San Francisco liberal, etc. You can see she's been working hard to overcome that impression, including renouncing some of her previous positions

from four years ago. You know, things change in four years. But she's been working hard to go after those centrist voters and those moderate Republicans, or even conservative Republicans, now got Dick Cheney's endorsements who are reachable because they're so appalled by Trump in personal terms. As you look at the changes she's made, I mean there's the old expression, where you stand depends on where you sit. At the moment she sits in a different job than she had just a couple of months ago. Do you think voters indulge that kind of change of position on something as important as fracking in Pennsylvania?

I think so. I mean I would put the policy issues relatively lower in importance than her ability to articulate a particular vision for the future of the United States. And in that sense it seems to me that she has done a great job in putting out a vision that is substantially different than Mr. Trump's vision, which is a highly negative vision of the United States. Vivian, one of the reasons that we're very glad to have you on the program tonight is because we need somebody who's at the heart of things in the States

to explain to a Canadian audience how it is, and Andrew gave a bit of a checklist earlier, how it is a guy who's a narcissistic, sociopathic, sexual assailant with authoritarian tendencies, how he has such a massively loyal following in the United States, people who will absolutely go to that wall with Mexico for him, who even has his former vice president saying he's not fit to be president.

How has he managed to remain such a popular option? One of Donald Trump's superpowers is his ability to stay on message with regard to election interferences and his claims that the election was rigged. He was in fact all weekend on Twitter and on Truth Social, his own social media website, insisting that he was going to incarcerate those who participated in, quote, cheating in the 2020 election. And he has, because of the repetition and because of the fact that he has adamantly and devotedly stuck to this message, he has managed to convince his base, his loyal followers, that the system is rigged against him and that the elections were essentially stolen from him. And you go to his rallies, and this is the first thing that you hear from people all over the

country who are Trump loyalists, is that he had the election stolen from him and Biden is an illegitimate president. And so that has basically been, I mean, to many of us who cover him day and night, it is a bit of an enigma. But that is really the biggest takeaway is that he's been so on message on this and insisted and been adamant about it so much. And he has rallied his supporters and he has rallied the party behind this. Now there are a lot of Republicans who are very skittish about the whole entire claim that Biden didn't legitimately win the election, but there are enough who have said that, that, that they support him in this.

And so it's, it's a hard thing then to come and try to convince people. Otherwise we, you know, whether or not it's through the courts or through top officials in these states, you mentioned Georgia a few minutes ago, you know, we have consistently pointed to that as evidence that the election was not stolen from him, but his followers choose to believe him. And so that is really the biggest takeaway. Andrew, that's the thing. He went to court 60 times trying to get the election results overthrown, lost every case,

and yet he's kept his coalition intact. How? The facts don't matter either to him or to his followers, I think would be the shorthand. You've got two things. One is, I'll differ slightly with our guest here, that I think his superpower is an absence of shame. It makes it impossible for us in the media to cover him, for one thing.

There's a script to these things. If you behave as badly as he has every single day in so many ways, things that any one of which would have ended any previous career, if you just simply shrug it off and don't care, we don't know how to respond to that. There's a script you're supposed to follow where you look ashamed and we chase you down

and then you stutter and then you drop out of the race. He doesn't do that. So that's on the one hand him. On the other hand, you've got a base of followers who are so alienated from mainstream America, from the institutions and, you know, conducts and norms of normal politics, of normal institutional governance of the country, who feel themselves so shut out from it for good reasons and bad, who feel they're being looked down upon, who feel they don't have social capital, etc., who think the eastern elites are looking down the noses at them, that he's able to tap into that.

And that predates Trump. That's been a problem for decades in America. But he has seized upon that and exploited that to a greater extent than any previous candidate. Kim, I should set up my, I guess, follow-up question to you on this by saying I spent a bit of time in Northern Ontario over the summer. There were a lot of guests from the states that came through the place I was hanging out, talked to a lot of them about why they supported Trump, as almost every single one

of them did. An answer that they frequently come back to is, we can't stand how woke the Democratic Party is. They look down at us. They don't like the fact that we're religious. They want to take our guns away. Can people ignore all they don't like about Trump? Well, I guess they are if they think

the Democratic Party's no better. Absolutely. And I mean, I think that one of the difficulties with the election at this point is the fact that there aren't many minds to be changed. And when one looks at Trump and his so-called superpowers, I think that there are a couple of things that we need to keep in mind. One of the superpowers, apart from those powers that Vivian and Andrew have talked about,

one of the superpowers is the ability to subvert the Republican Party and to change it and to keep all of those elected Republicans absolutely along with the base. Because let's face it, if you think about the Republican Party and think about the possibility that every one of them would be like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinsinger, would Donald Trump be anywhere at this point? Because his base, no matter how loyal, isn't that big.

And so that had the Republican Party elected officials eliminated him, as they absolutely could have, where would he be? A third party independent candidate at the best. eliminated him as they absolutely could have, where would he be? A third party independent candidate is the best. Well this Republican Party wouldn't be good enough for Ronald Reagan. I mean he would not have a place in this Republican Party, fair to say. I think it's entirely fair to say, certainly in terms of the... both in terms of policies and in terms of his persona.

I mean Reagan was sunny optimism morning in America, there's nothing America can't do. You'll notice the Democrats have been appropriating that message because the Republicans have given it to them on freedom, on patriotism, on optimism, all those kind of Reaganite themes. You saw a lot more of that at the Democratic convention than you did at the Republican. Vivian, I want to circle back with you to, and apologies for doing this, I'm going to quote the New York Times, which is a bit cheeky to a journalist from the Wall Street Journal. But here we go.

You know, Nicholas Christophs, a great columnist, and here's what he had to say in the New York Times last week when he said, too often since 2016, the liberal impulse has been to demonize anyone at all sympathetic to Donald Trump as a racist and bigot. This has been politically foolish for its difficult to win votes from people you're disparaging. It has also seemed to me morally offensive, particularly when well-educated and successful elites are scorning disadvantaged working-class Americans who have been left behind economically and socially and, in many cases, are dying young.

They deserve empathy, not insults. By all means, denounce Trump, but don't stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him. Okay. Do you think there's some good advice in that column? Of course. You know, after the 2016 election where, you know, many people had presumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win, and many of the polls were suggesting as much, and Donald Trump pulled off his win. There was really a come to Jesus moment for the media, for the American society as a whole, to understand how his victory happened. And a lot of it was exactly what Christoph explains there, that it is this sense that there's a large

segment of the American population that is forgotten. And the Democrats are associated with this coastal elitism that many working class sort of in the middle of the country feel completely disconnected from, and they feel like they've been forgotten. An example being, you know, I was just with Trump in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, an old industrial town that is quite charming. And if anyone's ever passing through Pennsylvania, I highly recommend that you stop there.

It is geographically gorgeous. The buildings are, you know, Victorian style and beautiful, but many of them are abandoned. The city is overrun by crime. And it's in a sad state. And Trump went out there and gave a rally, a boisterous rally, where he talked about essentially how Democrats had forgotten them. And whether or not it's a Democrat problem or a Republican

problem, the fact of the matter is politics. Washington has forgotten segments of the country that, you know that 20, 30 years ago were still sort of in their heyday and today are largely abandoned. And so Trump has spoken to those people because he wanted to be the outsider. And of course, ironically, he's no longer really an outsider. He runs the RNC, the Republican National Committee, but he put himself out there as an outsider who understands the needs of these people. Ironic, again, because he's a wealthy New Yorker who was born into wealth. But his sort of dismissal of

Washington politics and the politicians who have traditionally run this country, his ability to kind of shake things up, his completely apolitical, or sorry, unapologetic attacks on people in Washington, that really resonated with people across the country. And it continues to resonate with them because they feel like he is fighting for them. And so for us to ignore that is a mistake. And I hope and I believe that we go into this cycle a lot more aware of those issues than

we were certainly in 2016. Andrew, your reaction to that Christophe Kohl? I differ with him on two major respects. One is the data on this is pretty clear. It's not the disadvantaged and the dispossessed that are predominantly supporting Trump. When you look through the data, it's the Trump supporter may be less wealthy than your average Republican,

but they're more wealthy than your average American. When you even when you look into the disadvantaged areas that are supporting him, it tends to be the wealthier people in those communities who tend to support him. So it's not about the economy, it's about culture, it's about respect. So in that respect, I agree, people looking down the noses, etc. That is true, but it's not so much economically based as it is culturally based.

The other thing is, no, you don't have to be a racist or a sexist or etc., etc., to support Donald Trump. You sure have to be willing to look the other way at his racism and sexism. You have to be okay with that because you rationalize it in some way, that you can have a serial sexual abuser, not just a misogynist, but somebody who physically mistreats women in the Oval Office. You have to be prepared to look the other way at a lot of these things. And it's not as if he's a surprise to you or an unknown quantity to you.

You've seen him displaying these tendencies every day now for eight years. At some point, an error of that kind becomes a couple-boy error, becomes a moral error, in my opinion. How did we get to a point in the United States, though, Kim, where character doesn't matter anymore? At least it certainly doesn't matter for this candidate who heads the Republican Party. It may matter for a lot of other people running for office,

but not for him. Absolutely, and that indeed is one of his superpowers the Republican Party. It may matter for a lot of other people running for office, but not for him. Absolutely, and that indeed is one of his superpowers connected to the shamelessness, but it also is very much connected to his celebrity. And we need, I think, to think about the way in which Americans have tended to look at celebrity and how they're willing to overlook a number of things. I think also in the case of Trump, what we see is a nice example of cognitive dissonance. People who supported him in 2016 for a variety of reasons can't literally bring themselves to admit that they were wrong in 2020 and in 2024. Even though I'm sure, I am sure that in their heart of hearts, many, many Trump voters understand

what they're doing when they're voting for someone like this. Well, tomorrow night is the big debate and we need to spend a few minutes here just talking about what the two main candidates need to get done in that debate. Amazingly enough, Vivian, these two have never met before. Harris and Trump have never met. They will meet on the debate stage for the first time tomorrow. Let's do a primer. What does Kamala Harris need to do tomorrow night to be successful?

Well, first of all, she needs to define herself. We were talking about that earlier. She really needs to help the American people understand who she is, sort of independent of Joe Biden. And that's something that, by the way, Trump is going to be trying to do as well. And something he's been trying to do since she entered the race is define her before she had the chance to do so. And so there's going to be that effort where he's going to be calling her a Marxist and she's going to be pushing back and trying to tell people what she really stands for, things like that. But then, of course, you know, it's television. And at the end of the day, when it comes to these debates, a lot of these a lot of these

issues just boil down to having that moment, that sort of viral moment where you have, you know, someone says something that that that's catchy and that gets replayed over and over again. She had one of those moments in the vice presidential debates in 2020 when she told then vice president Mike Pence, you know, I'm speaking, Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking. And she really, you know, garnered a lot of support and enthusiasm from that moment. And so those tend to, to be something that is that that stands out and helps the candidate. Just like a moment that goes the opposite way

and kind of hurts a candidate, and Joe Biden had a few of those moments in June, those could also really work against a candidate. And so I'm sure a lot of your audience has been following. There's been a lot of drama with the rules of this debate. But we have finally settled, but we have finally settled, both campaigns have finally settled, albeit reluctantly, on mics being off when the person is speaking, the same, when the other person is speaking, the same rules that applied in

the June debate. The Harris campaign was not happy with this and tried to reverse that, hoping that perhaps they could kind of poke Trump to act erratically and start going on the attack. They were not successful in that. So we're going to have the same rules with the mics off. So that kind of sets the mood a little bit for a little bit more discipline. And Andrew, the Trump challenge for tomorrow night. How do you see it? Well, I imagine he will be trying to, I mean, his handlers will have a playbook they would like him to follow, which is, look cheerful, look like a uniter rather than a divider, all kinds of things that you would give to a conventional presidential candidate.

He won't follow any of that. The question will be what degree does he ignore them. He will be, what he will want to do, I'm not even sure if it would be a deliberate strategy, but just the way he is is, annihilate all rules or standards by which you are normally judged. So a torrent of lies, a torrent of falsehoods, insults, et cetera, all the things that you're usually coached not to do, but if you do them sufficiently, it blows past any record keeping, any standard keeping.

If you just show you don't care, then you're gonna cheer up your audience, you're gonna get your guys thinking, yeah, he's our guy. She's got to try and depress those people. She's got to play to his psychological insecurities. Make him look foolish, make him look ridiculous, make him look old, make him look boring. That's the kind of thing that if it affects anything, if this debate has any effect, it can maybe depress some of his turnout.

With just a couple of minutes left here, Kim, let me try this with you. To the outside world, I think it's fair to say, including to many people here in Canada, there is a tendency to look at what's happening south of the border as frankly a kind of a reality freak show. It does get kind of crazy from time to time. Can you speak to the perils of viewing it that way? Absolutely, given the fact that if American voters in November don't vote for Kamala Harris, if they give the Republicans not only the White House

but also the Senate and the House of Representatives. The impact on the United States, on the Republic, on the rule of law, on American politics will be huge. The impact on the globe, and in particular the impact on American foreign policy, is going to be absolutely huge. And if we sit back here and just simply dismiss this as sort of you know a reality show we're going to lose sight of the huge impact that this election is going to have on lives not only in the United States but outside the US as well. I have heard the analogy, it's like a train wreck.

You can't look away even though you know it's not good. Anyways, I want to thank all three of you for coming on a TVO tonight and sharing your views on what is just an astonishing time in US presidential history. Vivian Salaman, National Politics Reporter at the Wall Street Journal, we thank you for joining us from the American capital city. Kim Nossel and Andrew Coyne here in our studio in the big smoke. Thanks everybody.