The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Follow The Money -- The Race Next Door #6

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Bruce Anderson joins me again for a wide ranging edition of TRND - the podcast within a podcast.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of the Bridge Daily. It's hump day, hump day, Wednesday of week 27. And hump days, Wednesdays, means the race next door. So you've got Bruce Anderson, the chair of Abacus Data, warming up in the bullpen in Ottawa, getting ready for the start of the podcast within a podcast. And it's just moments away, just a couple of minutes, because I want to tell you one thing before we get there. And it's the latest vaccine story that I've got for you today. And it's really context, background to the whole vaccine

issue. I hadn't realized, I knew there were tests going on, as there are in many places in the country, of what appear to be hopeful vaccines. But there are tests going on in China of quite a significant nature. Now, we've always got to be careful, as we've said since day one of the Bridge Daily back in March, you got to be really careful of the numbers that China puts out on anything. There's a trust factor there. But it seems like a lot of people believe these numbers in the research community, that China is currently inoculating thousands, tens of thousands of people with their couple of different vaccines that they have developed, which they believe could very well be vaccines that are going to work against COVID-19. So they're inoculating all these people, tens of thousands of them in China. And they're inoculating frontline workers, members of the army, CEOs of all the companies involved.

They're all bellowing up to the bar right away saying, I believe in this vaccine. Inoculate me. Here's my arm. Or whatever other part of their body they're using to stick the needle into. So that's happening in big numbers in China. So China, we always knew, and they're partnered with a number of Canadian firms and universities, as they are with numbers all over the world. We always knew they were heavy into this, hoping to get the vaccine.

And, you know, the cynics are saying that they're trying to reframe their position on the whole COVID-19 story as the originator of the virus coming out of Wuhan, China. They're now trying to be, say, the cynics, they're trying to be the savior. Well, obviously, they got a problem health-wise. They're trying to be the savior. Well, obviously, they've got a problem health-wise. They're trying to be the savior for their own country, but they're sharing, which is an interesting position for China to be in because they are partnering

with other research outfits around the world, and they're offering up, in some cases, this test vaccine. It's going on in the United Arab Emirates, which was in the news yesterday for its peace deal with Israel. They started testing about six weeks ago, and they say they haven't had any issues. China says that in all the testing they've done,

they have not had any issues. They have not, in one case, had a situation where somebody got sick. We don't know whether that's true, but that's what they say. But the UAE, it says in the testing it's been doing over the past few weeks, more than testing, they're giving the vaccine to people. They have not had any issues where people have got sick

or suffered setbacks of some kind. So that's an interesting new development. And I'll close out this little bit of news on this before we get to the place next door. With this, the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, he's not a good guy. Right-wing strong man, loves the death penalty. Tough guy on the drug dealers. He said this week that he was going to prioritize both China and Russia in his country's global shopping

for a vaccine, saying his government had already had talks with both China and Russia. And he said China was unlike other countries seeking a reservation fee or advanced payment. The one good thing about China, he said, is you do not have to beg. You do not have to plead. One thing wrong about the Western countries, it's all about profit, profit, profit. Okay. There's your vaccine story for today. Time now for the race next door.

All right, 48 days. That's what it is now, 48 days until Americans vote. And this tune then either plays continuously for Donald Trump, Hail to the Chief, or the band starts practicing to play Hail to the Chief for Joe Biden. One way or the other, 48 days. So one assumes that at 48 days to go in a race like this, given the personalities especially of the president,

that people have made up their mind you're either for him or you're against him. But oh no, the pollsters say there's still a chunk of voters who haven't made up their mind. They're undecided. Could be anywhere between five and ten percent of the U.S. electorate. Well, if it's that much, that's a real potential deciding factor in what could happen on voting day. Now, I heard a theory the other day, and I'm looking forward to hear what Bruce, the numbers guy, the expert on all this stuff, thinks. But a theory the other day that I was hearing was that there really are no more undecideds, that people have all made up their mind. And when you think about it, how could they not have made up their mind about Donald Trump?

But anyway, no more undecideds. What that 5% or 10% actually reflects are people who haven't decided whether they're even going to vote. They know who they would vote for, but they don't really know whether they want to vote, can vote, want to go through the hassle of voting. That's the indecision factor. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not, but it's an interesting theory. So, Bruce Anderson in Ottawa, you know numbers.

You're the expert on this kind of stuff. You've done polling and research for years. Where are you on this issue of the undecided? Well, you know, Peter, I can't stop thinking about how what's going on in the United States compares to how our elections are. And I pulled during election campaigns here in Canada for many years, and it's not unusual for us to have as many as 20% of voters say that they will make up their mind on election day as they stand in our ballot booths or on their way to the polling stations. That's a massive, massive number. Now, of course, in our system, people make an X beside a local candidate that represents a party and that party that gets the largest number of seats typically forms the

government. So it's one choice that people are making. And they take into account factors like the local candidate and the party platform and what kind of government that they want and maybe some strategic voting instinct. Whereas in the U.S., they can vote for a whole bunch of different things, including a single vote choice between, in this case, Biden and Trump. When I look at the U.S. numbers, and I was looking at them this morning so that we could talk about it today, I'm seeing numbers of undecideds that are more like three and five percent in some of the most recent polls. That's an extraordinarily small number of people. between now and election day and more about the motivation levels of Democratic voters and Republican voters and the efforts to suppress vote on the part of the Republicans,

principally aimed at, I think, Black Americans. And on the motivation side, this is the last thing I'll say, is I do think it's instructive to look back at 2016, where people didn't have four years of experience with Trump. He was a kind of a new combustible voice in American politics. And some people found it quite interesting and maybe even appealing that he was so disruptive as a voice. And at the same time, they were looking at Hillary Clinton, a name that they had known for a long time. There was a feeling of fatigue for some voters with the Clinton name. There were a lot of Democratic voters that were not necessarily enthusiastic about supporting her. Whereas this time, I think there's a lot of voters who are animated by a dislike of Trump and whether they love Biden or like Biden or willing to go along with Biden

look like they're going to turn out for the Democrats, which is why the Republicans are putting so much emphasis on what can they do to try to suppress the Democratic vote. So that's where I see things today. I do think you're onto something with there are not very many people that don't know how they feel about Donald Trump right now. You know, it's interesting you use the Canadian example because you're right. I mean, for years we used to, you know, look at an undecided number right up until election day of, you know, 15, 20%. But one of the things that they used to tell us, the they being, you know, the so-called experts, they used to tell us being the journalists, is that the way you deal with the undecided, at least in Canada in the old days, I don't know

whether it still applies anymore, is that you take that undecided number, whatever it is, and you basically split it along the lines of the way the decideds are breaking, and then just factor that into the overall number, then that's usually the way it plays out, that the undecideds break the way the decideds had already broken. Yeah, that generally is what's done here as a way of sort of making the numbers more understandable for people. And it's a reasonably reliable surrogate for what actually happens in our elections. I think what's interesting with these small,

small numbers of undecideds in the US, three to 5%, as I was saying, that if you just, even if one side won all of those, which very unlikely to happen, it's still probably not going to change the contest. So I'm looking at these numbers. I'm going 3% to 5% in six to seven states, and we've still got hundreds of millions of dollars

that is going to chase that small number of votes in that small number of states, and that's what I'm going to be watching going forward. All right. Well, let's talk about money, because it's been an interesting news item in the last couple of states. And that's what I'm going to be watching going forward. All right. Well, let's talk about money because it's been an interesting, you know, news item in the last couple of weeks that the Trump campaign, which had raised hundreds of millions of dollars, more than a billion dollars for its campaign, has seemed to have spent an enormous amount of it. You know, three quarters, 80 percent of the money they've already spent,

leaving them as they head into really the most critical part of the campaign, the final, you know, 48 days, with not as much money as they could have had if they'd been a little more appropriate, perhaps, in the way they were spending money in those first or last six, eight months. So the issue becomes not only the amount of money they've got, but like you're doing, following the money, where they're spending what they do have, and how they're going about trying to add to their bank totals in terms of money for the campaigns. Because if there's an advantage for Trump, I assume it is that, you know, he does represent the government. So the things that he can do that really don't come out of the Trump campaign pile,

and he can argue are really part of governing. Like, I don't know who paid for the trip to California this week on the fires, who paid for the trip to Wisconsin last week or the week before last in terms of the riots that have been taking place there. But there is an advantage as government in terms of the amount of money you're spending, where you're going, and what you're doing, and how much of it's coming out of your campaign pot versus the government pot. Joe Biden does not have that available to him

on any level. So follow the money, your thoughts on following the money. Yeah. Well, I do think your, you know, your point about he spent $800 million of the billion that he had raised and it didn't improve his performance in the polls, by most accounts, by even a single point, suggests something about the management of the campaign, but also about the kind of resiliency of the views of Trump. He would have spent that money in part to shore up people who already supported him, but more importantly, because he's been behind in the polls since the beginning of the year and before that too, he would have been trying to win back some of the people who supported him in 2016 and now look like they're not going to. And he's not. That $800 million hasn't put a dent in that problem. And what seems to be happening now is he's having more trouble raising

money. And I think there are lots of reasons why that could be. But Biden isn't having trouble raising money. He's awash in money. And I think I read that in the last month, month of August, for which there was reporting that Biden raised one hundred and sixty five million dollars more than Trump. and wealthy people to be struggling with the financial aspect of this campaign is telling us something about that motivation level within Republican ranks. And the amount of money that's flowing to Biden is telling us something about the amount of motivation there is to replace Trump. So I think that's really important. Now, the other thing that happened recently, I think just in the last week, that's a potentially important development is Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, has announced that he was going to spend $100 million in Florida alone to help Biden over Trump. And that's a lot of money pumped into advertising in one crucial state. Now, I know that the Democrats are hoping that Bloomberg will open

his wallet even further and put money into other places as well. And he had indicated at some point that he was willing to spend a big chunk of his fortune to make sure that Trump is defeated this November. And so we may want to look for more of that in the weeks ahead. But it certainly is the case that while Trump has speculated that he might have to spend some of his own money in this race, I don't think he's done it yet. And that Biden, who I think has some $62 billion in wealth compared to three or so for Trump, Bloomberg has a lot of firepower that he can add to this money race. I'll say, you know, I think you know the rules better than I do.

Could something like that happen in Canada? Let's say we go into an election campaign in the spring and some billionaire says, I want to help Erin O'Toole. I'm going to put $100 million or $10 million or whatever into Manitoba because that's critical for an overall win somehow for Aaron O'Toole. Can they do that? Could that happen? No, no. I mean, we are like every country in the Internet age.

We are constantly having to look at what can people do on the Internet that's hard to measure, that's hard to understand the financing of, and therefore could fall between the cracks of our existing laws. I think that's a challenge. But from the standpoint of the ethos and the intent and the spirit of the laws that we do have on spending, we actually have a pretty good system. It's very hard to imagine that somebody can simply buy an election by spending more money than somebody else in Canada. Our rules are pretty sturdy about that. I wanted to pick up on one other thought, Peter, because of something you said about Trump being able to kind of travel around and use the Air Force One as a backdrop and that sort of thing and the advantages of incumbency for him. One of the things that I'm struck with now, and I was watching this town hall that Trump did with George Stephanopoulos last night, is that in 2016, Trump had this unique ability to draw huge crowds to outdoor rallies. And they made for great pictures, as you would say in your TV days, of lots of enthusiastic people hearing a really disruptive, caustic message from a kind of a political leader that was unlike anything that

we'd seen before. And so that became an advantage, I think, because the media covered this syndrome of Trump drawing huge crowds that were in love with his message. This year, he's not really doing that. I think there's been two rallies. They both come fully loaded with negative coverage about how few masks there are. Why is he putting these people at risk? And so he's not able to do very many of those. And the alternative, like the one that he got into last night, puts him in a situation where he says a lot of things that make people wonder whether he's really knowledgeable about the issues or what exactly his plan is for the future. So they're not good events for him. And I don't think that his campaign has an idea what to do

other than the things that they're doing. But what they're doing doesn't seem to be working. Yeah. Well, you know, whenever he gets into some of those situations and he starts winging it with his version of history, he can look pretty stupid pretty quick. And he did last night on Churchill. He obviously has no knowledge or understanding of Churchill

as a political figure, the pros and cons, and there were cons, but the big pros obviously were during the Second World War and the things that he did and the way he rallied his people by being honest with them about exactly what the situation was and that the overwhelming odds against them in May 40 when he took over as prime minister. Anyway, I digress. Let me just make one last point on the donation front. You know, obviously big money people contributed an awful lot to the Trump campaign to get them up to that billion dollar mark over the last year or so.

But donations, no matter who they're going to, whether they're going to Biden or Trump, the big donators want to think there's a potential that their person's going to win before they pony up to the bar initially, and then again if asked again. And, you know, the situation with Bloomberg would seem to indicate that at least he thinks potentially Biden could win, and one of the ways he could win is by winning Florida, and so he's pushing his money there. The trouble that the Trump people seem to be having

is they're going back to the big donators now and they're saying, we need more money. And the big donators are saying, I gave you lots of money. What did you do with it? Why are you still, you know, eight or 10 points behind? When I gave you the money, you were only five points behind. So what is it going to be doing any good for me giving you more money? And that seems to be a wall they're up against.

And other political figures in the past, as I said on all sides, can attest to that problem of trying to get money when you're not doing well in the polls. And he certainly isn't right now. Yeah, that's for sure. Okay, let's move it in our time remaining to a couple of short snappers, if you wish, although don't feel pressured too much by time. The overwhelming issues, the dominant issues in this campaign, the U.S. campaign,

watching from the other side of the fence here, have been the pandemic and the social justice issues. But there's a third issue which comes up and down every once in a while. It is on the minds of an awful lot of Americans, especially younger Americans, and that is the issue surrounding climate change. And right now you've got three things intersecting, which force that into the front page of the story in terms of the election. You've got the fires in California and Oregon and Washington. You've got hurricanes battering the Gulf Coast, the U.S. And you've got the fact that one of the biggest ice packs in the world, in Antarctica, is broken in two places in the last week,

which further suggests climate change, further suggests rising waters and rising oceans and the problems that can cause for all east and west coast ports. So you've got these three things impacting potentially the campaign. And in terms of climate change, another issue that you follow very closely, what is the impact that you're sensing on the campaign now and how could it have an impact? Well, I think it is a, I think it, I wouldn't call it a sleeper issue. I think it's a prominent issue. It's on the minds of a lot of voters. And it's remarkable how unwilling Trump has been to do anything to attract that broad swath of people who aren't necessarily hardcore environmentalists, but who see and smell and exist in a world where there are threats to their well-being, to their homes,

to their livelihoods that they really do believe are caused by climate change. And so they don't know if we can solve it and they don't know what it would take to attenuate it. But they do think that political leadership should do more, not ignore the problem. And Trump, and I think it's because it kind of goes back to what you were saying, he doesn't appear to really kind of consume a lot of knowledge about these issues or to think in terms of anything other than almost a kind of a blunt, what would an ignorant person want to hear kind of idea. And I think he's making a big mistake about that. And I think that in part because it isn't just younger people or people on the far left who are concerned about this issue.

It isn't just people who live on the coast. It's people in the heartland of America as well. And maybe more importantly, from the standpoint of his Republican support base, there are a lot of businesses now who say you can't be in business for the long term unless you're thinking about climate change and you're trying to do something about it. You need to adapt your businesses, but you also have investors that are deeply concerned with where they put their money, and they don't want to invest in enterprises that are indifferent to the climate issue. I read something the other day about $40 trillion worth of money that is managed by funds that now look for companies to set targets for emissions reduction to participate in goal

setting and policymaking conversations about climate change. And so I think the business community is there. I think all business community is there. I think all generations are there, not all voters for sure, but there's a much larger proportion of them than in the past. And what is it that really motivates them more than anything else? So we've done research on this. I saw another poll out of the States this morning, a YouGov poll, nothing is more motivating than people seeing fires, people seeing floods, people sensing that last year it was Greenland melting, this year it's Antarctica. You know, it's one thing to read about an issue, it's another thing to see it, to smell it, to choke on it,

and that's what's going on right now. Final topic for today. And it's interesting because the way the news cycle travels these days, it's so quick. Stories that you thought were incredibly important a week ago are suddenly nobody's even talking about them anymore. But if this was happening in any other year, you look at Trump's week and you would have said, man, he got an agreement between Israel and one, if not two, of the Arab nations to recognize Israel. Now, that's a big deal on any way you cut it. You can argue that the real issue here is Israel and the Palestinians,

and that is the real issue. That has not been resolved. But you've got to start from somewhere, just like they started with Israel and Egypt all those years ago with the Camp David Accords. But here he's got Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, agreeing that Israel exists, and they're going to recognize Israel in terms of the UAE and Bahrain. Now, you could argue and some would that if placed with a blank map in

front of him, Donald Trump couldn't tell you where the United Arab Emirates is. Or you could say, listen, he achieved this goal, and it is a worthy goal. But it's hardly been mentioned at all anywhere. Any other year, it would have been a big deal this year. But it's not a big deal this year, partly because the selection campaign going on, there is a pandemic, and this week the news cycle has been dominated by bob woodward for 50 years one of the top journalists in the united states if not the top journalist and his new book rage which paints this incredible picture of trump as a person who you know was downplaying what he knew to be the case with COVID-19 to the American people

and basically lying to them. So you've got that going on, and it's daily coverage. And again today I watched Woodward was on MSNBC for about an hour this morning on the Morning Joe show. And Woodward, having interviewed him a number of times, is not the easiest guy to interview because he can be kind of, well, boring at times, even with a hot topic. But he was actually pretty good this morning. And I learned new things about his book,

even though I've got a copy of the book and was going through it on the weekend because the publisher sent me one, but he told me things I didn't know, including nothing to do with this story. But he told me that, that it, during Watergate, when him, when he and Carl Bernstein broke the story, that Carl Bernstein was a year ahead of him in terms of thinking what the eventual outcome was going to be, that Nixon was going to have to resign. I didn't realize that. Maybe he said that before, but I hadn't heard it before. Anyway, it was a pretty good interview. But my point is, it's dominated,

even over and above some really big issues. You know, the Mideast one, it's dominated really over and above the West Coast fires. And to a degree, the pandemic, although it's related in terms of the book. But it has been a remarkable week on that front. But in terms of the book and the fallout from it, what are you seeing? Well, I think it's been important, not necessarily in the sense of there were a whole bunch of undecided voters who now said, oh, gee, I didn't know he was so indifferent to the suffering that he knew was going to happen. found yourself in September of 2020 and you still thought Donald Trump was empathetic to people who were suffering, then you hadn't been paying very much attention at all. And you probably didn't even notice this book had happened. But I do think it was important in the sense of if you were running his campaign, you want the number of these combustible incidents to stop. You know, you can't stop

all of the books from coming out, the Cohen book, the Woodward book, and so on. And the one by the friend of Melania Trump, those things are going to happen. But you have to try to husband resources and time and energy for when you do have a positive announcement like the one that you mentioned. And you need to try to stay on that message and build something more than a kind of a 20-minute Oval Office session out of it. day by sitting down with George Stephanopoulos and making up stories about Winston Churchill giving speeches from the roofs of buildings in London. So from the standpoint of his ability to ever develop and stick with a message, he's horrible at it. It must drive his campaign crazy. And then I think if you wanted to build something around his foreign policy expertise, as evidenced by this Middle East deal, there's still a different problem, which is I kind of think if you came into my house, Peter, and my dog Theo said a word, you would go, well, that's pretty cool. He said a word. You wouldn't say, why isn't he speaking in full sentences? And I think the problem that Trump has is that people look at this and they go, I don't believe he knows, as you put it, where these countries are on a map. So it's hard for me to believe that he really accomplished that. Some combination of circumstances

or other people's efforts probably put this together, but it isn't going to make me convinced that he's now a statesman who's capable of kind of bringing together all of these complicated, disparate points of view and interests and pursuing some version of world peace that nobody else has been able to get to. So I think he's got a problem on a number of levels, not the least of which is that voters are unwilling to believe that he really kind of understands those issues and that he's, who's taken a beating for so many things that he's basically screwed up over time. But he has got a couple of things right, Jared Kushner.

I mean, he was involved somehow in the free trade thing with Canada, and it suggested that he had an impact on those talks. And he's been circulating around in terms of uh of trying to find some arrangement on the uh on the middle east front and this is what he's come up with i think they were hoping for a much bigger kind of signing ceremony with the um with the head of the palestinians and the uh and the israeli prime minister on the White House lawn. That's not what they got. But they got something. But as you said, it's almost like it didn't happen because it's been overpowered by all these other stories,

and especially this week by the Woodward book. All right, we're going to leave it at that for this week on The Race Next Door. And as always, Bruce, thank you so much for your insight. Lots of things to think about there. we'll uh we will join together once again in seven days great peter good to talk to you again that's our sixth episode of the race next door hope you're enjoying it i know i'm getting a lot of mail on it, so don't be shy about sending in your questions

or your letters about The Race Next Door. And you can send them to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Thanks to Bruce Anderson, as always. And thanks to you for listening to The Bridge Daily and the podcast within a podcast. We'll be back in 24 hours. Thanks to you for listening to the Bridge Daily and the podcast within a podcast. We'll be back in 24 hours.