The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Race Next Door #2

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Bruce Anderson joins the "podcast within a podcast" again for this week's look at the unfolding US election. Plus more.

and hello again peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it's hump day hump day wednesday of week 23. And as promised, we'll be doing what we call the podcast within a podcast today. Here on the Bridge Daily, we're going to, within the next minute or so, have the latest episode of The Race Next Door, our look at the U.S. election race, which, let's face it, it's going to be interesting over these next couple of months. Along with everything else that's going on in our world, that is going to be something to watch.

And each week, Bruce Anderson and I, Bruce is the chairman of Abacus Data, based in Ottawa, and Abacus Data does all kinds of research and polls on any number of different things, and we've talked about some of them over the past few months of the Bridge Daily. But Bruce is going to help me on this because, hey, Bruce loves politics. He's been involved in Canadian politics in a number of different ways over the years. But his polls and the polls of Abacus data have always been of interest to those who cover politics. But he loves politics beyond Canada as well, and so he's an ardent observer of what's been happening in the United States over the years, and he has all kinds of interesting thoughts

and ideas on the way the campaign is unfolding there right now. So we're going to get to that. But before we do, I just want to mention that after the race next door, the podcast within a podcast, I've got a couple of other comments to make, a couple of other developments on the COVID-19 front, which was the main reason we started this podcast, this daily version of The Bridge, back in the middle of March. But let's get started today with The Race Next Door. Love that music. Feel like I'm in an old John Wayne movie or something.

Hail to the Chief brings us back to our podcast within a podcast, The Race Next Door. And all this week we were watching, or maybe some of you were watching, the conventions for the Democratic Party. Now, what I find interesting about this night when the real candidate for president speaks, sometimes the night before the vice presidential candidate. But overall, I found it kind of dragged out the week, and it wasn't that interesting. And the worst part was always the parade of different states with their nominations for whoever was running and sort of drag it out over and over again.

It takes forever to do. So I was intrigued to watch this week to see how first the Democrats, next week we'll see how the Republicans deal with this issue of a virtual convention. And I've got to say I've been a little bit surprised. I've found it more I've been a little bit surprised. I've found it more interesting and faster-paced than I watched before.

Even the rollout of the states last night wasn't that bad. I didn't watch it all, but I watched quite a bit of it. And the fact that they were actually in the states and you saw a bit of background was interesting, at least for one year. We'll see what happens in the future. But I did hear a number of people talking about the possibility that this has been better than they thought it was going to be and it could lead to some kind of changes

in the way conventions are done in the future. Now, we're only halfway through. The big two nights are tonight, the Wednesday night, when Kamala Harris and Barack Obama will speak, and then tomorrow night, of course, is Joe Biden's night. But what is your sense, what's your take in a general way, first of all, on what you've witnessed this week? Yeah, I think I agree with you, Peter.

I agree with those who think that this is a better way to reach people who have a marginal interest in politics and give them something that might make them want to pay attention. I think, you know, overall as a society, especially during the pandemic, people have become, you know, trained on their screens and they're looking for things that have polish, have energy, have drama, somebody who's a little bit stilted or maybe a little bit nervous and faces in the crowd that are kind of looking around for somebody to talk to. That's not exciting. That kind of TV wouldn't probably make the grade today, even if it were

possible to have that kind of convention. And I'm reminded of, I think it was Paul Begala, the Democratic consultant who first used the line that Washington politics is Hollywood for ugly people. And it occurred to me again this week as I was watching this because the production values were so good, relatively speaking. actors and actresses involved. You had really great shots from across the country, from different parts of the United States. The production values were really, really good. And it kind of took politics to a different level, I thought. You know, ratings always determine some of this in terms of whether it's been successful or not. I think most people assumed, because there wasn't going to be the traditional hoopla

of a convention, that ratings would be considerably down. Well, they're down, but they're not down a lot. I think in conventional means of watching something like this, they're down about 25%. But that doesn't include the way a lot of people watch stuff now, which is, you know, on Twitter, different forms of social media, different live streaming services. So the Democrats are arguing the numbers are actually up somewhat from the last convention year. You know, this will be determined, one assumes, in the weeks ahead. We'll get a better sense of all that.

But I think going going in most people thought they would be down uh down maybe a little bit in the conventional way of looking at ratings but not a lot um now aside from eyeballs you know parties are trying to do something else so they're trying to attract voters so in terms of that what is what do you think doing it virtually like this has, you know, for the Democrats, which are the only ones we can go with so far, what do you think that they've been trying to accomplish through this week in trying to attract voters? Well, I think they've been trying to do a few things. And I think that the control over this heavily produced TV version is really a great asset. I think it allows them to

intersperse in the evening, different things that they know will be very clippable, very shareable, and watched by lots and lots and lots of people in the ensuing days and maybe even in the ensuing weeks and months leading up to the election and I think also you know as I'm kind of watching this stuff I'm aware of the fact that I'm not getting a lot of instant analysis by people who might be critical of what's being produced and shared. And that would have been a feature, I think, of coverage of the conventions in the past. And so it's kind of unfiltered and it's well organized. From a messaging standpoint, I think the Democrats have been saying a couple of things. They've been saying this is a choice between a better man and Donald Trump. And this is a choice between a united States of America or a

divided States of America vision. I think that's very simple. I think it's crisp. I think it comes through over and over and over again in the different components of the broadcast that they're putting together. And I think so far anyway, they've kind of solved this other dilemma that I talked about last week when we got together and talked about this race, which was that if you're Joe Biden, you want this election to be about Donald Trump. So as you head into this week, how can you not have it become about you, even though this is a Democratic convention? Because this is a Democratic convention and you're being nominated, how do you still have it be about Trump? And I think the couple of things that stood out for me were really the Michelle Obama speech, for sure, who put the boots to Donald Trump in a pretty eloquent way. It's only she can do it and really kind of kick the week off saying there is a real problem in the country and we need to do something about it.

Bernie Sanders followed that up with a message that couldn't have been clearer about whatever you think about Joe Biden or anybody who's not me on the Democratic side of things. You need to think more about how we need to get rid of Donald Trump. So I think that's been very clear. And I think also the third parties, the individual citizens whose testimony, if you like, about losing a parent to COVID that didn't need to lose their lives, but because Donald Trump didn't do enough as president. I think that's very powerful. So I feel like they've managed to keep this about Donald Trump fairly well so far. Well, you know, it is a fine line, though. It's one thing to trash the other guys, and they've certainly done a job on Trump this week, all of them.

At a certain point, voters, one assumes, are going to want to know what you'll do for them. How are you going to make it different than it is right now? Everybody agrees it's an awful situation right now. The landscape looks bad on health care. It looks bad as a result of the pandemic. It looks bad in terms of the economy. It looks bad in terms of international relations.

But what are you going to do, Joe Biden, to change those things? Now, you know, I get it when you say keep the focus on Trump. Don't let the focus become you. But at some point, do you not have to tell them what you're going to do? Well, I guess there's two answers to that. One is, yes, you do on some level. But to the extent that people are going to look for a platform, there is a platform. It's very detailed. It has some pretty explicit information in it about a greener, cleaner economy in the future, about health care. It's a lot of material that's been worked through by the different factions within the Democratic Party so that the party

is more united than it otherwise might have been. So I think that platform is there for people who want to consume it. But I suppose that, from my standpoint, this election, you know, it's been playing out like a dramatic political TV show every day for the last four years. People are really energized by that. On the one hand, the people who love Donald Trump by the idea that, you know, if he wasn't the president, terrible things would happen to the country. And everybody else who says, well, I don't almost care what Joe Biden is for. I can't imagine another four years with such a chaotic presidency as

Donald Trump has brought. So I don't think you could make it become about issues for most people, even if you wanted to. And I think simply from the standpoint of how do you stay focused on those swing votes in those swing states, it still feels like it wants to be an election about whether this man should have another four years in office. You can imagine the old Reagan line from 80 that he used, which was, you know, are you better off than you were four years ago? Given the situation right now, that's a devastating line because there are not many people who are going to say, you know, with the exception perhaps of the super rich, that they're not,

most people will say, hey, I'm in a tough situation compared with four years ago, very tough on every front that I look at. So let's assume for a moment that Joe Biden gives you a call tonight, Bruce, and says, tomorrow night, this is my big chance. What's the messaging line that I've got to take? Do I tell them about me? Do I trash Trump? Do I talk about policy?

What has he got to do tomorrow night? I mean, so far in this week, they seem to be coming along pretty well, the Democrats. And as you say, he wants to stay on that train. How does he make sure he does? Well, I think that, you know, probably the most important thing for him to do is to deliver a speech that reassures people who've been hearing that he's kind of lost his step, that his thinking isn't all that clear, that he might, you know, he might be kind of too old or too old-fashioned or too kind of confused about some of the issues that are at stake for the country. So I think you mean like Trump is. Yeah, I do mean like Trump. But I feel like it's ironic that we've got Donald Trump, you know, making that criticism

of Biden and of course holding up the fact that he answered these five questions successfully, we understand, as evidence of his ability to judge Joe Biden's mental acuity. Anyway, we are where we are, to paraphrase Donald Trump, with his, it is what it is. But if I'm Joe Biden, I want to do that. I want to make sure that people come away going, I don't care what anybody else says, I saw enough in what he did that made me think he's cogent, he's smart, he's articulate. And then beyond that, I guess I feel like the only challenge that he's got is that he wants to win by being seen as a decent person, a more decent occupant of that office, somebody who embodies those kind of higher values that people expect the office holder to event. And in doing that, he has to be careful, I think, about how brutal he is on Donald Trump,

because there's a lot of people who are going to be wanting to hear the worst things said about Donald Trump that could be said, and there's a lot to work with there. But that having been said, if Joe Biden goes too far along that road, it does erode to some degree his basic premise of a better man, a more united America. And so I expect he's going to be more on the high road. I expect he's going to let others do some of the wet work basically on Donald Trump. And there's plenty who seem willing to do that. And if I was him, that's what I would do. Last question.

The Republicans are next week. They're obviously watching this week to see what the Democrats did with this new kind of virtual convention. So if they take from watching this, I mean, they've got to come up with something better, obviously. First of all, the pressure is on them. They're not doing well in most of the polling data that you see.

And so this is their big opportunity, perhaps their last big opportunity, as a party to put forward a position and a look next week that could, you know, stop the drop in the numbers and try to reverse them. So if they've watched this week, which I'm sure they have, what do they take away both as something to steal and something to avoid? Well, I think the question in my mind that that poses, Peter, is really about who's the they in this case. There are, you know, there's obviously the Trump campaign, which by some accounts is no less chaotic, even if it's bigger and has plenty of money,

no less chaotic than the 2016 version of the Trump campaign. And they will want to rock them, sock them TV show. They'll want to be able to give Donald Trump the opportunity to say he got bigger numbers. I don't know how they're going to do that. I don't know that they've it doesn't look to me like they've been putting much time into thinking about how they're going to program against what the Democrats have done this week. They spent a lot of time trying to figure out where they could hold an in-person convention. And so there may be a real challenge from the standpoint of creating a production that looks competitive with that. But the other dimension is really, there are senators who are worried about losing their seats. And they're worried about the kind

of message that Donald Trump wants to run on being a problem for them as they head into the final weeks of this campaign. And will the Republican Party put on a show that's a little bit more, I guess, careful about Donald Trump's successes, particularly on issues like where he talks about suburban housewives, some of the comments that he an effort to try to make sure that those senators aren't sad think it's anybody's bet as to what kind of Republican Party we're going to see between now and whatever it is, 79 or so days until the election. Well, that gives us a number of things to think about, not only on the next couple of nights, but all through next week. We should remind listeners to The Race Next Door that we are seeing your emails and your ideas about things that you want Bruce and I to discuss. There are a lot of good ones that came in last week, and they're still coming in this week.

Once we get through the conventions, we'll be picking those off sort of one a week as we go into the final home stretch of the campaign, the last couple of months of it, Labor Day and forward into early November. So keep those ideas coming. We really appreciate them, and we will talk about them. So, Bruce, thanks for doing this again this week. We'll talk to you again next week. Yeah, Peter, have a good week. Let's talk again soon. Well, there you go, Bruce Anderson, chairman of Abacostata in Ottawa,

joining us as he will each week between now and the election in the U.S. in early November. As mentioned, I do want to comment on a couple of things that have a kind of relationship to the COVID-19 story. If you were with us at the beginning of March when we started this, the hottest spot in North America was New York State. It was in dire straits. Very high death totals, extremely high case totals every day because of the coronavirus.

But at the same time, we were, as many people were, impressed with the leadership shown in New York State by the governor, Andrew Cuomo, son of the late governor, Mario Cuomo. But Andrew Cuomo was praised for his handling of things at a very difficult time in New York. Well, things are much better now. New York's one of the states in the U.S. that has the lowest rates of infection, the lowest positivity rate in the U.S. Well, Andrew Cuomo is writing a book. He's still governor. You may have seen him two nights ago.

He was one of the speakers at the Democratic Convention. He's written a book. His publisher, Crown, announced that American Crisis, that's the name of the book, will be released October 13th, three weeks before Election Day, when Donald Trump is expected to face presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Well, he is the nominee now. The news comes the day after Cuomo addressed... See, this was yesterday's news, right? The news comes two days after Cuomo addressed

the Democratic National Convention and called the virus spread a metaphor for a country weakened by division. I'm reading from an AP report, Associated Press. New York State now has one of the lowest infection rates in the U.S., welcome contrast to the spring when it had one of the highest. The book is an unusual and risky case of reflecting on a crisis that's still ongoing and could intensify in the fall. That's true. It is a gamble. We've watched things go up and down in the states in terms of numbers and in other countries around the world where it looked like they were ahead of the game

on dealing with COVID-19 and yet suddenly things spiked. So Andrew Cuomo's taking a bit of a gamble here, that the hard work that he and his officials and health care authorities in New York State have done to bring the virus down to manageable levels, it's not going to suddenly spike up right around the time his book comes out about how they did the job they did. Over the past few months, Cuomo has been praised for his calm but forceful demeanor,

reading again from AP, while also being accused of waiting too long to close schools and other indoor facilities and criticized for the high number of deaths at New York nursing homes. Part of the issue there was he put COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes and long-term care facilities to free up beds in the hospitals when they were being overrun by new COVID-19 patients. Well, that didn't turn out to be a very good idea. They released one quote from the book that's coming out, and I think it's one of those quotes that may live for some time.

It's about fear. Remember FDR, there's nothing to fear but fear itself. He was talking about the recession in the early 1930s when he made that remark. But here's a different one that Mario Cuomo said was one of the lessons he learned in dealing with COVID-19. The question is, what do you do with the fear, and would you succumb to it? He wrote, I would not allow the fear to control me. The fear kept my adrenaline high, and that was a positive.

But I would not let the fear be a negative, and I would not spread it. Fear is a virus also. Well, that is true. That's true what he writes. It's hard to imagine that in the midst of all that and trying to lead that there was no point at which he had fear. Being a negative. But he said that's what he did. The fear kept my adrenaline high and that was a positive. Fear is a virus. Andrew Cuomo's book comes out middle of October.

What will we be talking about then? Now here's the other one. The other story, and I find, I like this one. This tells us again something about us and how we've been handling this situation for the last whatever number of months it is now. Did you start bicycling again during the pandemic? Are you one of those people?

I see lots of them here in Stratford where I didn't used to see them five months ago. Well, it was winter then, but let's say, compared with last summer, there are a lot more people bicycling now than there were then. Because gyms are closed and we could all use a little more exercise, because we're avoiding buses and trains, because we're in need of outdoor group activities, or perhaps just because the pandemic has made us crave simple pleasures like the wind against our faces. All those reasons bicycle sales are soaring around the world. This is a piece in the New York Times. The result has been an international bike shortage, and the world's largest bike maker, you know who that is?

It's a bike maker by the name of Giant. Expects its supplies to remain tight for some time to come. So where do you think Giant is based? You got it, China. Well, they've had all kinds of issues trying to deal with this demand, high demand for bicycles. And some of those are because of the trade wars between the U.S. and China. So as a result of the trade war, Giant moved some of its manufacturing for the American market from China to the company's home base in Taiwan

to avoid the added tariffs that Trump had placed on them. The European Union has imposed anti-dumping duties on electric bikes from China, so Giant began making those in Taiwan, too. So they're dealing with this. They're producing hundreds of thousands, millions of bikes, and have been for the last five months. And so the question becomes expansion.

Are they going to keep expanding? Are they going to build a facility in the U.S.? Well, the head of Giant, their leader, Bonnie Too, Giant's chairwoman, she says, Every boom ends someday. It's just a question of whether it ends quickly or slowly. Mrs. Tu is a pretty good business person. Her careful ways are belied by her carefree manner in person. She's 70 years old. She exudes energy and high spirits. She cycles three times a week, has completed four loops around the island of Taiwan. She says proudly that she completed her first triathlon in her 60s. Now, you're probably a little bit confused. You know, China, Taiwan? I thought they didn't, like, get along.

Well, business ties are strong between Taiwan and China, even if much else about their relationship is tense. China claims the self-governing democracy is part of its territory, and it has not ruled out using force to bring the island to heel. But, says the New York Times, Giant recently opened a factory in Taiwan to take some of that load off China. And everybody encouraged them to do that.

Now they're looking at Europe, where they've recently opened a factory in Hungary. And Giant aims to produce 300,000 bikes there next year. All this under the leadership of Bonnie Too, Giant's chairwoman. She's not yet convinced, though, that the world's newfound love for bikes will outlast the pandemic. You know, I've got a bike.

I've got a bike in the garage. I haven't taken it out. Maybe I should. After reading that, maybe I should. I'm swimming. Swimming more than I've swum, swam in years. And I love swimming. I have great ideas when I'm swimming.

You know, there's something about the kind of the loneliness of the swimmer. And it, you know, while you're swimming, you get your mind working. I've come up with lots of interesting ideas when I'm swimming. All right. Enough is enough. Your thoughts, always welcome at the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Any and all thoughts you may have,

they all contribute to our Friday edition of the weekend special. Got a special for you tomorrow that you may find interesting. It's once again, it's some of these myths and realities about dealing with the coronavirus. There's about 15 or 20 of them.

We're going to go through them. And I think you might find it, as I like to say, very interesting. All right, that's enough for this day, hump day, as we start to crash through yet another week in all this. So enjoy your evening tonight. As we said, we've got Kamala Harris. I've been pretty good on Kamala this week. Remember, Kamala, not Kamala, not Kamala.

Kamala, like the punctuation mark, Kamala, Kamala. And Barack Obama. If you get a chance, you may want to watch those speeches tonight. Okay. That's the Bridge Daily and the race next door for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. You know it. We'll be back again in 24 hours. Thank you.