The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Race Next Door (#13) With Bruce Anderson And Special Guest Lisa Raitt

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

A great conversation post final debate as the US election enters its final days.

All right, then. So who is going to be receiving the big hail, the hail to the chief? Well, no, January 20th. No one way or another, there will be a president inaugurated. Will it be Donald Trump? Will it be Joe Biden? Who knows? Maybe we know as a result of what happened last night, the final debate.

That's our topic today on the Race Next Door, which is just part of the worldwide empire of the Bridge Daily. That's us. And Bruce Anderson is with us, as he always is, for the Race Next Door. He's in Ottawa, but we've got a special guest today with us as well. You heard two nights ago, we had Jerry Butts with us. Tonight, it's Lisa Raitt. Lisa Raitt is, of course, former Conservative MP,

former Conservative Cabinet Minister, former Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party. Enough. Enough already. The list goes on. She's got all the credits and put them all together. She's got more than Anderson and I put together. So it's going to be very interesting to hear her thoughts. And why don't we start, Lisa, with first of all, welcoming you. It's great to have you with us. Thank you very much. And second is last night. I mean,

you're no stranger to debates. You've been in them as an MP. You were an official of the debate process in the recent Conservative Leadership Convention. So you kind of know the ins and outs of what could happen, what's supposed to happen, and how these things are run. So we all know what happened on the first one between Biden and Trump. Last night, what was your take on last night? I have three things that I took away. The first was Trump appeared to do better only because he was so bad in the first one that the bar was set so low for

expectations that coming in the way he did without running over the moderator or over talking Biden consistently, actually appearing on screen to be listening to the moderator or listening to Joe Biden, did him very well in the eyes of a lot of people saying, well, look, he wasn't as bad as last time. Doesn't mean he was good. It just means he wasn't as bad as last time. Doesn't mean he was good. It just means he wasn't as bad as last time. Second piece, I felt that last night was all about getting soundbites for ads for the next 10 days. And in both cases, Joe Biden's going to provide on specifically on the oil comments about how we're going to transition out of oil. We talk about that in Canada all the time. It's actually acceptable.

It's verboten. I don't know whether or not it's verboten in the United States, and we're about to find out how far Trump's campaign is going to push it. And then for the Biden campaign, for sure, his comments about people dying is definitely going to be something to show the empathy of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party and what they care about. And then the third thing I would say is the first 10 minutes of the debate is always the most important, how people come out

swinging because you lose viewers, you lose people's interest, something happens, you go make yourself a drink, and you're not glued into this debate any longer. And what Trump did was he came out and he defended his record, but on COVID-19, or the coronavirus as they call it, he was optimistic. We are going to beat this. We're going to be better. The vaccine is coming. Now, it may all be complete BS, but the reality is he showed optimism that people were going to get through this together. That was a positive thing to hear. Joe Biden, on the other hand, very negative. People are dying. More people are dying. We've got to cut this off. We've got to have a plan.

And it's a little bit scary for people. So those are the three things that I took away overall. And whether or not that's going to move the needle in the election, well, remains to be seen. That's an interesting analysis. And, you know, if we start with the coronavirus, with COVID-19, I guess it boils down to who they believe is telling the truth, you know, who's being, whether it's optimistic or pessimistic, who's being realistic about what the situation is. I mean, I thought one of the lines, and you're right, I totally buy into your argument about the,

it was all about finding clips, but one of the pretty good clips initially on that very subject was uh trump doing the we're living with it uh answer in terms of uh of the virus and biden immediately responded with the we're dying with it now you know a lot of people can really can relate to that in terms of what biden said not so sure that they can relate to with what Trump said. But that's an interesting take, and that opening 10 minutes or so can really make such a difference. I got to tell you, I might have been alone on this, but I kind of thought, and first of all, you got to separate the lying because there's, I mean, Trump's a liar. He lies a lot. But if you take that out, and I'm not sure that anybody can, but they can probably eliminate lying in terms of what they're thinking more now than they've ever done before in any other presidential debate. But if you take that out, and watching Trump, I was thinking,

he's actually not doing bad here because he doesn't look wingnutty as he did the last time. And I'm just talking about the first kind of 10 to 20 minutes that he was performing at a much better level. Now, I know Bruce doesn't agree with that. Bruce was on the gun right away on Trump. So enter the discussion, Mr. Anderson. Well, Peter, I think at least it's so good to see you again. Thanks for joining us today.

I think that both campaigns, almost all the way from where they were probably all in Washington up to here where I am in Ottawa, you could almost hear the exhalation, the sigh of relief at the end of the debate for similar reasons, in the sense that both worried that their candidate might really louse it up. And both felt that their candidate didn't. And I think there are campaigns that in the closing days of a really long, grueling, difficult, hyper kind of focused campaign are entitled to feel that relief. But I'm not sure that the Trump campaign really can feel the same level of relief based on what happened last night that the Biden campaign can. I think that when we last talked about this a couple of days ago, I was talking about the fact that I thought that Trump

really had a choice of going into the debate and playing himself or trying to play the role of somebody different than himself. And I think what he did is for the first 10 or 20 minutes, he tried to be somebody he wasn't. And I felt like I was watching an actor who was kind of putting on an accent, you know, maybe one of those Australian actors in a movie. It's about something in North America. And all of a sudden the accent starts to wear off about 20 minutes in and it starts to fall apart. I feel like he lost the thread of the character that he was trying to play because it just took too much brainpower for him to stay focused and to stay in the character and to apply that discipline to himself that he never, ever, ever seems to apply. And so in continuing with the movie metaphors, I found myself thinking

about those three characters in The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. And I felt like he was a little bit the tin man, no heart. He was a little bit the scarecrow, bad brain or no brain. I think on a lot of issues, it was really remarkable. The kinds of things that come out of his mouth should still shock us. And a lot of times, I guess they don't. And he's not a cowardly lion. He's got courage, but it's kind of dumb courage.

And he continued to show it last night when he says things like, well, OK, you know, the kids are in cages, but you built the cages and I just made sure that the cages were clean. I don't get why that is an acceptable thing for us to think about, except when we go, well, Trump wasn't as bad. And I agree with Lisa a lot on that. Trump wasn't as bad. And so people are like, OK, but how could anybody have been as bad after they failed so miserably the first time? They had to correct some of those kinds of things.

So I would just sort of say, look, for me, who does not want to see Trump reelected, watching Biden every day is like watching a toddler on a unicycle, riding it on a tightrope. I'm terrified that something is going to go wrong, that if he doesn't finish the sentence, if a thought tails off that Trump is going to be president for four more years. So that's an irrational level of fear, maybe. And I thought actually Biden stayed on the unicycle and stayed on the tightrope last night, pretty much. And I do think that Lisa's right to raise this issue of oil

and whether or not you can say transition and whether or not people are going to go, aha, that's a gap. Or because we kind of move away from these things pretty quickly to say, what was that a gap? Because that's really been his position all along. And maybe he articulated a little bit poorly.

He also does have probably now five or six times the amount of money available to advertise if he needs to advertise in Pennsylvania or Texas about this. And I would add one last thing on that, which is that Texas is the leader in the U.S. in wind and solar energy. It's a thing there. And Biden's deal with Bernie Sanders and AOC and that part of the Democratic Party was we'll motivate you to support this candidacy because we believe in fighting climate change. So all in all, a good night, I thought, for Biden and not as good a night for Trump as Sean Hannity and others want to say. But it wasn't as bad as that first. Yeah. It's funny. Go ahead. Yeah, Bruce, you say that.

You could see that at some point he was fighting within himself, meaning Mr. Trump. I noted last night at 9.53 p.m., you could almost see the conversation inside Trump's brain of, I really want to go after this guy, but I know Kellyanne told me not to do it, and he's fighting himself. So it did start to slip.

He started to slip more and more and that's when he started throwing in these weird things about laptops and and you know letting people coyotes i had to google what a coyote was to be honest i'm sure a lot of us did but it's uh it was interesting and i would add one fourth point that i didn't say and it has to do with um who is listening to this at the time One of the biggest takeaways I took from the 2016 election was the analysis afterwards about this concept of a shy Trump voter, right? Where there's Trump voters out there who were polled, who were embarrassed to say they were. And I was caught up in this description from a reporter who went into a bar in New Jersey. This is not a joke. It's real.

Reporter goes into a bar in New Jersey, and he says to the bartender, you know, how are people voting in these areas? What are people saying? And the guy said, well, you know, we got a leaner, got a lot of leaners here. And he said, well, what's a leaner? And he said, a leaner is somebody who when you ask them, how are you voting? They lean in and they whisper to you, I'm voting for Trump. And then they lean back and they don't say anything else. So some folks figure that was 16% of the vote last time. And if that shy Trump voter exists, he may have done enough last night to give them some comfort to going in and casting the ballot his way. And, you know, I'm not going to disclose where I sit, but I wouldn't be disappointed if Mr. Biden were successful.

Okay. Wipes and non-disclosures. There's a number of points to pick up on in what we've just heard in the last few minutes from both Lisa and Bruce. I mean, if I had my way, I'd start off with some soothing music and ask ask bruce to read us some more you know daddy's stories like like uh the wizard of oz i thought that was that was a wonderful entry into the discussion um let me i don't want to leave this oil thing yet because as lisa mentioned in the beginning they were looking for clips they're desperately in need of clips they need something and they need something to make a big deal out of um the laptop thing i don't know i i agree with you lisa i don't think most people

knew what the heck he was talking about uh when he was bringing it up because it has been basically a fox story and then if you if you watch fox you know what he was talking about if you don't watch fox which was probably the majority of the people who were watching last night, they didn't know what he was talking about. And so the oil thing does, and it was clear who he was targeting, right? He was targeting the battleground states, you know, like Pennsylvania, like Texas, Trump, when he went on the attack. I hear Bruce on what the polling data shows, but if you're looking for an opening, one of some substance that everybody can somehow relate to,

then that stuff on oil may be it, especially if the belief is, oh, I never heard him ever say that before. I didn't know he was saying that. I mean, we'll get to fracking in a minute because that's a whole different issue. But on oil, I'm not sure that that's done yet.

I mean, and the way this campaign goes is a different issue every day. But it did at least give them an opening to try something because at this point, all they care about is those battleground states. They've got to stop the bleeding there. And if this stops the bleeding by a couple of percentage points, it could make a difference. Well, it could make a difference. But I think if I were sitting in the Biden campaign HQ tonight

or today and thinking about this, I would say, well, look, if they're going to come at us over this, then is the right thing to do to try to ignore the issue and deflect and talk about other things, or is it maybe to to do to try to ignore the issue and deflect and talk about other things, or is it maybe to tackle it and tackle it in a clever way? And I guess when I think about those battleground states, I say really there are three groups of voters that both campaigns know are kind of in play. There's suburban women, there's older voters who didn't used to be in play and

who are now, and there are younger voters who often the turnout isn't everything that people would hope that it would be. And so for the Democratic campaign this year, one of the challenges relative to last election cycle that they've been doing pretty well at is motivating turnout. And Trump is the main reason why they're able to motivate turnout. It isn't Biden. I think that's pretty clear. But Hillary Clinton wasn't doing a great job at motivating turnout in the last election, and it looks better for Biden now. We see that in the evidence of the number of votes, more than 40 million, I guess, that have been cast already. And so when Trump said what he said about the virus, which was effectively, you can't let

the cure be worse than the disease. If you're an older voter, you're hearing that a different way. That sounds pretty much like we don't really have the economic wherewithal to care about you. And we know that that's a takeaway that's been in the polling. We've seen evidence of how it's playing itself out a little bit in Florida. The second is the suburban women. I think that his campaign, Trump's campaign has been trying for a long time to get him to find a way to connect with that group. And I remember one day he said, you call them suburban housewives. And he's just been stumbling around that cohort, looking for a message that might work and not finding one. And when he said these kids in the cages are living in absolutely beautiful conditions, I don't think that really works for them.

I think that's motivating for the other side. And if I was Biden, I'd be advertising the hell out of that. But with young voters who looked like they weren't sure that Biden was going to be green enough or clean enough or Bernie enough for their taste and might sit on their hands on election day. If I was Biden, I'd double down on this message of the world is changing. Our automotive sector is going to lead the world in clean vehicles. Texas is leading the world, or at least leading in America, in solar and wind power. New jobs are being created there.

You can either look at that as a sword or a shield moment. And if I'm Biden, I'm not accepting that there's a mistake that was made, maybe just in the articulation of it. And I'm going to put the pedal to the metal and say, this is giant opportunity. And remember, four years ago, Trump said coal was going to come roaring back on his watch. And we know that's not true. Want to take a run at that, Lisa? Sure. That's definitely one of the options that the campaign has in front of it. And the nice part about if Biden were to do that is we'll definitely get to see what the result is at the

end of the day instead of this kind of halfway world look i've read biden's platform on renewables and what he would do and quite frankly it's it's not outrageous it's not outlandish it's a lot of stuff that even conservatives in canada talk about doing quite frankly um so it's it's a good platform to take a look at but it's just that scare tactic, right? We're going to transition out of oil and no time frame. He didn't put the time frame in. So maybe, Bruce, where he does have to go back in is to explain now where he's going. But the problem is when you're explaining, what happens? You're losing. When you're explaining, you're losing. I think that's a good point. And I think that, you know, when we think about this, we can think about it either in terms of what's he going to say on this on in the news interview, or we can say it's all going to be delivered by advertising, which I think is increasingly the case there.

And of course, given all of the financial ordinance that they've got, if you're really saying this is about 250,000 voters in Pennsylvania and the same number in Texas, to pick a number. If you're Biden and you're sitting on $300 million, you can find a way to get that targeted, like that timing message in, along with a very rousing and rallying promise of the future, clean energy vehicle leadership, which is really, I think, a message that's worked for him in Michigan, where that idea of transition could have fallen more flat because people say, well, how are our car manufacturers in the world are already planning to completely swap out their combustion engine vehicles sometime in the next 20 to 30 years. So if I was him, I would use advertising to correct the unsaid part and to push that positive message and to really characterize Trump as, yeah, he loves oil like he loves coal and he

doesn't love the future because he doesn't understand it. That's a really good point on the future too, because, sorry, Peter, just one of the things that I noted in Trump's opening was he defended his record and looked to the past, whereas Biden talked about the future. And it's a very different approach in how they decided to set themselves up. And Biden continues to talk about the future. But as the adage in politics is, don't present a solution until people know they have a problem. So perhaps Biden's got to go back to defining what the problem is as well for Americans. That's a good point.

We think a lot about climate change here, and it's not so common in the U.S. No, that's okay. Let me bring in the fracking thing for a moment. And here's how I bring it in. It's not really about the art of fracking. It's about the art of the lie. Trump, in many ways, has defined the art of the lie in modern day American politics, at least. Hopefully it doesn't go spread beyond that, but it's definitely there. I mean, before Trump, if you lied in a campaign, the odds were you were going to be on the spotlight right away

and certainly for a number of days afterwards trying to explain why you lied about something. Now, Trump, since day one of his presidency, way and certainly for a number of days afterwards trying to explain why he lied about something. Now, Trump, since day one of his presidency, has been lying about almost everything that comes up. And in the debate last night, I mean, I lost track after the first 10 minutes of the number of falsehoods that he was telling. If you don't like the lie word word we'll switch it to falsehoods but they were certainly not true now but we live in an era now after almost four years of trump of kind of expecting it and not only expecting it in a way through expecting it you're kind of accepting it now biden get down to the near the end the end of the debate last night, I can't remember whether it was before the oil comment or after the oil comment,

it was in that same general area, Trump accuses him of flip-flopping on fracking, that Biden used to say he was against fracking. And would end fracking. And now Biden is saying, you know, I'm kind of for fracking. We've got to talk about it. Now, in the thing last night, Trump accuses him of lying and accuses him and says that I've got the tape to prove it.

Well, in fact, it didn't take long for the networks to find the tape because, in fact, Biden had said it. Now, it's one thing to change your position. It's another thing to say I never said it. That becomes the lie. So are we living in an era now where Biden can get away with the fracking line because Trump gets away with a falsehood on almost everything he says. Because normally, we would be looking at the day after and the fracking untruth would be the dominant story.

But we don't live in that era anymore. It's almost like, okay, so he, you know, he shouldn't have said it, or he's, it goes against what he used to say. Does it matter anymore? Does the lie matter anymore in politics, in American politics? Lisa, why don't you start? Well, if you put yourself out as being truthful all the time, then it does matter. And I don't think even Trump pretends that he's truthful all the time. I think he injects enough of, well, I heard from this guy where people are saying, so he's just repeating gossip in his mind and he's not telling untruths, but they are untruths. But for Biden, you know, I'm sad to say, Peter, I don't believe truth matters anymore. You know, the whole notion of a flip-flop

is something that would kill you in elections in the past. I don't think it matters one whit at the end of the day. Although I did see the Facebook ad already that the Trump campaign has put out. And you do see Biden in various interviews and with individuals and on caught on tape talking about these issues and then going against it last night. But I don't think it's going to have any kind of any legs. It's not going to switch a voter. It's not going to switch a voter. Yeah, I think that's probably, you know, right. I think that we've gone from a world where people would say, how big is the lie? And then how good say, I think Trump has kind of turned it into the normal currency of politics. And sad to see so many Republican politicians who should know better, who should conduct themselves better over the last four years, standing by really outrageous mistruths that now people are kind of saturated with big lies,

bad or good lies in the sense of the quality. Does it even hold up to any scrutiny? We heard stuff last night about the Bidens were selling. Biden and Obama were only sending sheets and pillows to Ukraine. And so anybody could understand what that meant, even if it was true, which it wasn't true. And now it's kind of the relevance of the lie is the only test that matters is that does it really matter to me? And so fracking will matter to some people in Pennsylvania. It will matter to some people in Texas, no question about it. But if we remind ourselves that about seven to nine percent of voters were still undecided heading into this, we can either say, well, that debate and that issue or the way that Biden handled it is going to enlarge the number

of undecided voters significantly, which it's kind of hard for me to believe that, to be honest, or it's going to take some Biden voters and they're going to go, you know what? I don't know whether Biden was for fracking or against fracking, but it so annoys me that he might have said two things about this, that I'm going to vote for Trump. I kind of have to suspend a certain amount of what I understand about logic to believe that. Now, I have to do that every day when I think about American voters, because as we were talking about with Jerry Butts the other day, he was saying, I believe that voters are smart. And I was like, wow, Jerry, he's so kind about that. Like, there are some voters who just aren't smart about this in the

U.S. and they're voting for something that's manifestly against their interests when they side with Trump. And we've seen that in a lot of the heartland states where the farmers have really been undermined by this guy who they thought who told them that he was going to be their big defender. So I don't know. I can understand why the Biden supporters and maybe just people who don't want Trump back are kind of anxious about that fracking comment, that fracking situation and the oil comment. But I don't know. I still look at it and I go, Trump said, I'm going to repeal and replace Obamacare. And he repealed it and he didn't replace it. And last night he was still talking about, well, I'm going to come up with a plan and you're going to see it soon. Just like two weeks ago, I'm going to get a nuclear arms deal with Putin before Election Day. I really have to suspend disbelief to think Trump can say all of that and Biden can kind of muddy the waters on this fracking thing and Biden's going to pay this giant price where Trump doesn't pay any price for the line. Is the is the this I mean, I don't want to sound naive.

Listen, politics has always been certainly it's certainly around campaign time, no matter which side of the political fence one is on, has often seen people stretching the truth. But this is different. This is so different, what we've witnessed in the U.S. over the last four years. Is there, you know, is it contagious? Is it moving beyond U.S. borders? Do we see anything, Lisa, like this in Canada developing? It's obviously not at this extent, but can you see on the horizon that we've got to be really careful here or this is going to invade our politics?

If it's becoming to the point in the States where it doesn't matter anymore, could it get that way here? God, I hope not, Peter. I mean, that would be atrocious. I don't like seeing what's happening in the United States, and I think the majority of Canadians feel that way. But I do believe that there has to be noted a difference of somebody who is putting forth their position in a very passionate kind of way, either left, right, whatever. And maybe omitting some of the counter arguments as they put forth their own arguments. Is that lying? No, I don't think that's lying at all. And I think that's what you're going to see more of.

It's going to be more people being polarized on issues, not lying, they're telling the truth, and they're citing their sources. But they're not giving the other side any kind of any kind of credit for for being a good counterpoint to what their point is. And that I find to be bad as well. And it actually does sadden me because I like the concept that Canadians are thoughtful and pragmatic and think about all sides of the issues before they make a decision. And now with this polarization of thought and ideas, a lot of it driven by, I have to say, social media, that I think that is likely. But whether or not you're going to have a leader who comes out

and just lies his face off all the time, I highly doubt that. Bruce? I think Lisa's right about that. I think that there is something more fundamental in the Canadian DNA that resists the encroachment of that hyper-partisanship that we see in the U.S. And I can look at it and say, well, you know, the longer social media plants its roots, the deeper those roots go, the more it fuels the fundraising and advertising strategies of politicians, we're going to end up more like the US. And so I probably do have the odd sleepless night where I imagine that that's the scenario. But I can usually pretty easily convince myself that that's not how this is going to turn

out and there's a few reasons for that one is i really believe that in ways that a lot of canadians probably don't understand the american system is so corrupted by money and ours is so not corrupted by money that these are like uh two different planets in terms of the political system. There's so much money in the U.S. that goes into finding out what makes people mad, angry, hostile, and just want to kind of rise up. And if you have all of the social media tools at your disposal and all the money in the world, you're going to find out ways to make a lot of people really angry. And we don't have that here. I sometimes see campaigns come onto the landscape and try to do that here, and I understand why that happens. Because on some very technical, not moral level, it does work.

But it usually doesn't take root and it doesn't spread and it's in some cases I think that's because we're better people than that in some cases I think it's because there's not enough money to allow it to become an industry that then self perpetuates like a military industrial complex kind of scenario but I think that the other thing is that the Americans have this kind of, it's like a least-haves-enduring two-team rivalry in politics, right? And we don't have that. We have people who in the last, the run-up to the last election campaign,

in our polling, we saw an unprecedented number of people saying that they would consider voting for four different parties. And they don't always do that. But it's instructive that they say that you made. I disagree with it. And here's why. I know from my work, and Lisa, I'm sure you've experienced this in the various campaigns that you've been involved in, that almost nothing brings you closer to the audience in a room than saying something like that in Canada. In the United States, all of the training and all of the mindset goes in a completely different way that you should almost never say anything that sounds like that. Your side will come down on you. And the last thing I'll say is I read somewhere the other day that the weaponization of this has reached a level where every time a Democrat gets mad anywhere in America, they hit a button that said $5 to the Biden campaign. And every time anywhere

in America, a Republican gets mad, they write a Facebook post. And I kind of feel like that's the world that we're living in. And I don't like it much. It's funny. Yeah, I noticed that Diane Feinstein, a senator from California, is getting a lot of grief because she had the audacity of hugging Senator Lindsey Graham after they had a Senate hearing. And I'm thinking, really, a senator from California is getting a lot of grief because she had the audacity of hugging Senator Lindsey Graham after they had a Senate hearing and I'm thinking really that's a big deal wow we we have I guess I'll have to supply the list of all NDP and Liberals I have drinks with and reporters heaven forbid yeah really that's totally unacceptable um You know, it's funny on the Feinstein thing because, you know, that seat is really a hotly contested seat,

the South Carolina seat where Lindsey Graham's going. And the Democrats have a chance to win it. Something like this, that image, I don't know, may have an impact, I'm not sure. But it is something about our times that you can't get away with hugging your opponent, at least in that situation. You've probably seen on Twitter and Instagram this week, I'm assuming it's true, although that's perhaps a bad assumption to make,

but there's two guys running for governor of a state. Is it a western state? Utah. Utah? That's right utah uh and they did this joint ad uh where they basically said look you know we have different beliefs we stand for different things but we respect each other and they're there together in the ad and it's like in this day and age you you see that and you go, good grief, like what happened there? I mean, Utah has, you know, certain beliefs ingrained in that state

and the people of that state. But still, it was quite something to see. I can't recall anything quite like that. Whether that sets the table for a new era or not, I don't know. But it's been very interesting to watch. Look, I want to turn this in the direction of kind of wrapping up here. I've got two things. In a minute, I'm going to ask you for your favorite line from last night's debate.

So think about that in the background. But first of all, I want a sense from each of you as to where this goes. We've got like roughly 10 days left. The final debate has happened. We'll never see these two guys on the same stage again unless Donald Trump agrees to be at the U.S. Congress if Biden wins and stands there on inauguration day. I wouldn't bet on that. But that was it, certainly in terms of this election campaign. We won't see them together debating, arguing back and forth again.

But in the last 10 days, you know, the Biden campaign, if they truly believe all these polls and if they truly believe that they didn't make the gaffe, which will change everything around last night, their temptation, one assumes, is to be very careful over the next 10 days, go to the right places, say the right things, but not get too worried. There is also a belief within the Democratic Party that you've got to, as they say, run through the tape. If you're like a runner, you don't slow down in the last 100 metres, you keep going, and you run through that tape as fast as you were running at the first of the 100 metres.

And then there's Trump. And do you now let Trump be Trump and just go wacko, rally to rally? You know, he is what he is, as he likes to say, and as a lot of people say about him. So your advice, Lisa, based on having been in these races before, on the approach you think each side should take, and Bruce from watching them and being involved in them at a different level, your advice.

Why don't we start with Lisa? I would say that my advice to the Trump campaign would be to continue to go rally to rally. And we've seen this, I saw this firsthand in the 2050 campaign when the prime minister started just putting up these massive, massive crowds at hockey arenas in the GTA. And you look and you know how tough it is to get people to come out and they're putting, you know, 7000 people in a room, perhaps. That's a big deal. And that drives motivation of your volunteers on E-Day to get the vote out. And it also drives people to want to be

part of the winning team. There's a psychology, right? There may be a lot of voters out there, especially in Canada. It may not be in the United States, but there's a whole block of voters out there who sit there and wait and wait and wait. And they're either conservative or they're liberal, and they're going to go with the winner. And that happens in the GTA. And they wait to see who is best placed to win because they want to be there for the winner. And boom, those rallies send the signal that, yeah, this is the guy who's going to win. And then you have the people who jump over to that side of the fence.

So I think that you'll see these rallies with Trump. What he's going to say, I have no idea. In terms of Biden, my advice to Biden would be, I would go, I would suggest he needs to be a little bit more positive on the power of American ingenuity to get you out of the COVID-19 crisis. Because he's a little too much doom and gloom and scary when it comes to that stuff. Okay, Bruce. Yeah, that's interesting. And I hadn't thought about the doom and gloom, scary aspect of Biden until Lisa brought it up earlier. And I think it's an interesting point because

I have seen over the years that given a choice between optimism and doom speaking, people will gravitate towards optimism. And it is normally the, you know, an easier place for progressive politicians to get to, I think. Not necessarily automatically, but I think that is kind of how it turns out sometimes. And and so it's kind of unique to this campaign and this moment in time, maybe that Biden is letting himself fall into that trap of sounding like, you know always wanted to be about Donald Trump. Trump wants it to be about Trump. Biden should want it to be about Trump. He should let that cake bake and it should still be about Trump on Election Day. And so he shouldn't get in the way of that.

Having said that, there are ways to be more positive about the future and to put the emphasis on a brighter future post-Trump. And that's probably a good way for him to kind of finish the race. I think that the plan and the policies really do matter to some audiences, but not from the standpoint of people saying, I've been meaning to get around to going to the websites and consuming the policy material, but rather just a reinforcement of what things matter to these individuals because ultimately this is a choice between a decent man with a better plan and a bad person with no plan and i think that's the way that this race has

was probably always going to be that's the way that it's evolved. And if I were Biden, I would be happy at the prospect that Trump is going to do these rallies. I agree with Lisa that these rallies are the best thing that Trump can do to try to get his base motivated, to keep them thinking that they should turn out because there is a real risk for them right now, down in the polls, down with money, that they kind of go, you know what, this is over, and the other side is going to win, and do I really need to go to the polls if I feel like it's going to be a wasted effort? So that whole motivation question is triggered by those rallies. I think that's absolutely right. But having said that, if I'm Biden, I want those rallies because

Trump is going to say crazy things. And he is not capable of not doing that when he gets in front of a crowd of people who go, give me the crazy. And that's what those crowds do. They go, give me the crazy. I came here for the crazy. I took off my mask for the crazy. I'll give you money for the crazy. I want the last 10 days of the crazy. That's true. Oh, boy. Okay.

Lines. There were, as Lisa suggested, there were more than a few lines last night. So I don't want to hear your top three. I just want to hear your top one in terms of what you thought was the best line of the night. I've got one, but I'm not going to say it in case it's one of yours. That would be unfair. So, Lisa, you go ahead. I'm going to tell you what the line is. And I'm going to be honest,

I don't know which candidates said it, to be honest, because both of them could have said it at any given time. But I think picking up on the anxiety that Americans feel about their health and their prospects of a job, the quote was, I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country. I thought that was very simple. People can understand it, rally behind it, and they want to believe it. They want to believe they can have both. Yeah, that was a good line. And that was a Biden line. And it was, I thought, a really excellent counterpoint to Trump's assertion that we can't fight the virus without killing the economy. I think that that is basically what he was saying.

And I think that people know that that's a death sentence for maybe hundreds of thousands of people if that becomes policy of the land. So it was a really great retort. And, you know, I thought like for the whole whole he's a toddler on a tricycle or on a unicycle on a tightrope crowd he delivered it well and it was a good moment it wasn't my um i don't know if i would say favorite moment but the moment that really stuck with me as a kind of a low and defining point in American politics was the kids' cages are clean line that Trump uttered.

You know, he would have been schooled so much that you have to show some more empathy about this. And he kind of meandered around we're trying to find the parents to you built the cages to the bad people came here and they shouldn't have come here and their vermin and coyotes. And you couldn't tell what version of lying and bad hearted was going to come out of his mouth from one minute to the next, but he kind of delivered the be-all and end-all when he said the cages are really clean because I don't know anybody who would say, well, that's really the most important thing or true or a reasonable answer

to this question of what did we do and why did we do this? Okay, here's my line. First of all, I know you were both too young, but back in 1992, when Ross Perot was in the debates and was a factor in that election campaign. He had a running mate whose name was James Stockwell. He was a retired rear admiral. I mean, he was a man of some significance in the U.S. military. There's no question about it. But in the vice presidential debate, there was a moment when the cameras cut to him

because there were three vice presidential candidates in the debate that night because the parole numbers were somewhere around 15 or 20 percent he was showing. It was quite significant. Anyway, they cut to Admiral Stockwell who looked a bit bewildered in the moment when the cameras came to him and he said, who am I am i here and it just seemed like it's it sounded like a skit out of saturday night live it was like crazy so last night last night we have in one moment where trump was under attack from biden on kind of the accountability front and not taking responsibility for anything. And Trump turned to him and said, I accept responsibility, but it wasn't my fault. Really?

That's quite a line. That one should live in infamy the same way Stockwell's did. The other line didn't happen in the debate. It was actually on Twitter, and that was our friend Andrew Coyne, who had a great line on the Abraham Lincoln stuff, that Trump was mumbling about how he was the best in terms of supporting black Americans, perhaps better than Abraham Lincoln. What?

I'm the least racist person here. Yeah. So, so Andrew coins. Didn't you tell us that you couldn't do two? Well, this, this is really just, this is just a way of getting coin into the show. You know, your old colleague from the old ad and mine from the ad issue days.

All right, let's hear it. But he said on that, he said that Biden should have said, I knew Abraham Lincoln. I worked with Abraham Lincoln. And Donald, you are no Abraham Lincoln. And I thought that was pretty funny. Anyway. That is very funny.

Lisa, it's been great to have you with us really. And you've, you know, you, you've made us think a lot about a number of different issues that are involved in this campaign and about politics in general. And it's been a treat for us to have you with us. And it's been great Lisa. Thank you for doing it. And hopefully, you know, there'll be another time in the not too distant future where you'll, you'll join us again from Moff great, Lisa. Thank you for doing it. And hopefully, you know, there'll be another time in the not-too-distant future where you'll join us again from Moffitt, Ontario, which is not far from Milton, Ontario.

Anyway, Lisa, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. It was a lot of fun. Yes, it was. And as always, Bruce, thank you for joining us. We're going to wrap this up now.

Those who were expecting, because it's Friday, the weekend special, your letters and thoughts and comments and questions, we'll package all the ones you've got from this week and put them into next week at some point. But special shows all next week as well, and the week before the U.S. presidential election. So I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening so much, and we'll talk to you again on Monday.