The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Trump Wins - Again

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

What happens next? Keith Boag and Bruce Anderson join us for a comeback of the ages.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. He's back, Donald Trump, back in the White House. Republicans in control of the Senate and quite possibly will end up in control of the House as well. That means unchecked power for Donald Trump. What does it all mean? How did it all happen? That's coming right up. And hello again, Peter Mansbridge here. Wednesdays are normally our encore edition, but not today. Not with what happened last night. We've gathered the gang and we're going to have a little chat. On hand with us, Keith Bogue, who's guided us through the U.S. election process throughout this year. Keith, the former Washington correspondent for the CBC, former chief political

correspondent for the CBC in Ottawa. And Bruce Anderson, of course, of Good Talk fame. Bruce is with us and Bruce has covered the U.S. story for us and has written about it for the last few years. So it's good to have you both together on this day to try and figure out what happened last night. Obviously there's a lot of strong feelings about Donald Trump. There have been, as evidenced last night in the United States, but elsewhere as well, and those include here in Canada.

So let me get a sense, first of all, on your kind of snapshot of what the hell happened last night. Keith, you start. Well, there's so many things to look at that were unusual about the campaign itself, and in particular, how Joe Biden got out of it and Kamala Harris got into it and then what happened next and how well did people know her and how ready was she for the campaign? And I think all along while we've talked about that, we've thought that they have done really, really well.

But the headwind was always going to be the same headwind that Joe Biden was facing. And that had a large element of the economy in it. And, you know, for too long, the Biden administration had been trying to sell people on the idea that the economy is good, that things had improved dramatically under Biden. And people weren't feeling that. People don't feel a change in the inflation rate as a number. They feel it as a price. And prices were still high. And prices are something that people feel as an economic thing in a way they don't feel unemployment. They feel it in the way they might feel an increase in an interest rate, the bank rate or something.

But not like they don't feel it like economic growth. It's really, really personal. And when it's not going your way, it's a tough, tough thing for any campaign anywhere to have to fight against. And I think that principally was just too much to overcome. You know, I'm glad you explained it the way you did, because ironically, the economic indicators, almost all are pointing up for the Biden-Harris administration. But in the end, that didn't make a difference, and quite possibly because of the way you framed it.

Bruce, what's your opening thought on what happened last night? Well, I should start with a kind of a caveat. I'm not a journalist, as you guys know, and I feel like what I'm about to say needs to be prefaced that way. I'm not a neutral observer of this outcome. I hate it. I think it's bad for the world. I think it's bad for America.

I think it's going to be bad for me, but it's going to be worse for my kids and my grandkids. So I'm not unbiased about this. These are dark, dark choices that were made by more than 70 million U.S. voters. And I feel a lot of empathy for the almost 70 million at current count, who voted the other way, who fought hard to prevent the outcome that America is now going to see. Because I do think the point you were making at the outset about it's not only the White House, it's the House, It's the Senate. It's the Supreme Court and likely two more appointments to the Supreme Court, meaning that for those people who are hoping that the court's bias towards some right wing solutions is going to be solved anytime soon, that's not going to happen.

So there's a lot of consequences here. But to go right to your question, this, in my view, it would be a mistake to analyze it like it's just a normal war, a normal battle, a normal election. There are some elements that are normal, and Keith touched on them quite well, that the economy is the price of food and fuel, and for some people, rent and maybe a mortgage, but it's prices. And so in that sense, it is important for people to reflect on the fact that telling people who can't figure out what the grocery bill can be that they can afford, that the stock market is up and GDP is strong and unemployment is down. Those things don't work. And that part of this is normal. But this outcome wasn't about

how good Trump's campaign was, because it was a terrible campaign by any kind of historical way of looking at it. It wasn't about how weak her campaign was, because it was a good campaign that she ran by any historical reference points. What to me is different about this is that what it reveals about 71 million Americans, what they were willing to look past, what they were willing to not learn about, what they were willing to put in jeopardy, whether it's action against climate change, whether it's deficits, whether it's the idea of a two-state solution in the Middle East, whether it's the idea of collective security through NATO, whether it's the protection of Ukraine against Putin, a lot of voters either decided they didn't want to think about those things, or they thought about them and said, you know what, I just like the cut of his jib enough, or I'm going to get a tax cut, or he makes me feel like I'm hurt. And that's a large number of people to put a lot of important things at risk.

And so, yeah, I'm pretty worried about that. Let me scratch a little deeper on all of that, on all of what both of you said. I've heard a few people trying to analyze this today, and one of the points that I pulled out of it is that perhaps we've misunderstood just how progressive the U.S. is. Perhaps we've misunderstood how progressive we think we are. But when you look specifically at the United States, did yesterday's results show that a majority of Americans are more misogynistic than perhaps we had thought was the case, more racist than perhaps we had thought. I mean, that's pretty tough stuff, if in fact it's the case. But that is the way some people are looking at this right now, that we've kind of misunderstood America the way it is in 2024.

And those are two of the major areas where we've perhaps misunderstood. Keith, what do you make of that? So first of all, I would say that the success of Joe Biden was in ways in which he was similar to Donald Trump, but not Donald Trump. And I think people thought that was a very good way to approach the problem of Donald Trump at the time. And this time, because of circumstances, they took exactly the opposite route. And in many ways, you couldn't have a candidate who was more different from Joe Biden. And because Joe Biden was the problem, there was a sense that that kind of freshening up was actually a positive thing, and in many ways it was.

But you're still running a black woman against Donald Trump, which is a high-risk proposition because it is the United States of America. And I think you can't overlook that. I'd like to circle back a little to some of what Bruce said, because I think it was really important. I would add to it that I think we're in a really important time in terms of how people feel not just about prices and so on, but about the last 40 years of the economic orthodoxy that's been shared by Republicans and Democrats. And you're seeing this around the world in different ways. And you're starting to see it in some democratic policies as well, that are shifting towards what Trump has been saying from the beginning. And it's been too easy to dismiss what Trump is saying because of who is saying it.

But these are the people who have suffered most from the orthodoxy that the free movement of goods, capital, labor, information across borders is inarguably a good thing. And yet what the result of it was for many of those people was the destruction of their communities, the export of manufacturing jobs that paid well to low-wage countries. They feel like they've lost everything and they can see just down the street, people who are just killing it, making a fortune. And the inequality that is so obvious to them every day seems to be something that didn't exist 30, 40 years ago. And when Donald Trump says, make America great again, and they think back to that, yeah, they'll sign up for that.

You know, when you see, I think you're going to see people talking in the Democratic Party about taking seriously the issues that used to look like protectionism to them, but they now see as possibly a response to something that is seriously wrong with the way the economy has developed over the last four and a half decades. And I think one of the reasons I'm attracted to that theory is that it can also explain Brexit. And I think that we saw these things happen in tandem together. And I think that some of the things you hear people say in those different contexts nevertheless sound very similar.

I'll pick that up later if you want. I don't know. Let me bring Bruce in on that point as well, and then I will try and get back to my questions in some fashion. You know, my question, Peter, is I actually think that the amount of racism is probably not changing. There's a significant amount of it.

There always has been. There's a little bit less of it in Canada, but there's plenty of it in Canada as well. And misogyny, I think there's quite a bit of it. I think there remains quite a bit of it. I think that it has changed in the last several years because of a phenomena where women have more opportunity, succeed more often, represent higher proportions of people who are taking post-secondary education, are succeeding more often in the workplace. And we've got this cohort of young men in particular who see this happening and they see it as a zero-sum game. And if they're not offended by it, they're unhappy about it. They feel as though

it's something that used to be almost a birthright. And it's creating another level of friction. That's not normal misogyny, if I can put it that way. Not that misogyny should ever be normal, but this is a new political phenomena. And we see it in the Canadian public opinion data too. So it's not like I can't have a woman be president or prime minister. It's that I've got to stop this sense of erosion of opportunities from men towards women, because it's coming after me or because I feel aggrieved about it. And so that's an important part of it. But in addition to racism and misogyny, new or old, there are a couple of other things that I think have been growing that we need to be really aware of. One is ignorance. The amount of people who know very little about the political choices, the policy choices, the way the institutions work,

what's at stake with an outcome of an election. And a part of that's an education system. Part of it's the dissolution of the media and the fact that nobody gets their information from the same sources or few guardrails around the quality of the information. People consume more rogue ideas and conspiracy theories than I ever thought might be possible. And so there's a lot of people who really just don't know why they should be worried when RFK says, the first thing we'll need to do is get rid of fluoride in the water. Things that the three of us would listen to and say, well, that's absolute lunacy. There are a lot of people for whom that's not that obvious.

The second thing of the two new things is an extraordinary redefinition of self-interest. I gave a talk a few years ago about how you could see in public opinion that people were less inclined to think about what we as a society should try to do together through politics, more inclined to respond to messages about what's in it for me. Now, I think Trump has almost successfully redefined the American dream for a lot of people. It isn't about America. It's about what you can get. And it's about who's getting more than you that you need to do something with, to Keith's point. It's about this kind of false nostalgia that says there was a time when you didn't need to worry about somebody taking advantage of you. But now you do. And now you need to take advantage of them. And now you need to think about that other person, not as a fellow citizen, but as somebody who, if their hat is blue and yours is red, is some sort of an enemy of your interest. So this notion of self-interest being at odds with the collective interest is a thing that populists do, is a thing

that Trump is almost purpose-built for. If he's built for one thing, if he has one thing that you might call a superpower, it is this idea that I'm going to tell somebody who feels this grievance that they're right to feel it, and I'm going to solve it. I'm going to solve it right away. Isn't the war in Ukraine likely to be over tomorrow, according to what Trump has promised? He's not even going to wait until he's sworn in. That kind of rhetoric, for all of the years of my sentient life, assuming I'm still sentient, but I'm like not counting the years one to six, maybe. We would have listened to that and thought, well, nobody's going to vote for that. And yet here we are.

Do you want to pick up before I try to boil this down to a different kind of question? Do you want to pick up on that, Keith, before I do that? Well, in the middle of what Bruce was saying there, I began thinking about how you saw people noticing and writing about and talking about how masculinity was on the ballot, largely because of the vice presidential picks who seemed to be the mirror opposites of each other. And if you combine how that looks and with what Bruce is saying about how men and young men feel, and you listen to what Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are saying, then perhaps that

sounds appealing to them. And what we might look at as the strength of the ticket on the Harris-Waltz side was actually maybe fatal. Yeah, that's what it made me think while I was listening to Bruce. Well, these progressive parties and the Canadian Liberal Party has a similar problem, I think, which is that there

was a moment in time where it became fashionable to embrace every progressive agenda item that seemed shiny, that seemed like it was edgy, that it was not just kind of regular, incremental progressive policy that kept an eye on the center line of public opinion and the idea that you need to maintain a big resonant with people for whom they might agree with those progressive agenda items. But they're not going to solve the price of bananas. They're not going to sound like they're going to make your life better anytime soon. And so you get tempted, if you're one of these voters, to listen to somebody who says,

I'm going to make the houses cheaper. I'm going to go after the corporations that are gouging you. I'm going to do those things that are going to make you feel like, at least if I'm not solving it, I'm thinking about the things that you're thinking about. And I think that, you know, Kamala Harris did a pretty good job of that. But she was coming from a background as a candidate who a few years ago was a kind of an avatar of that progressive movement somewhat. I also think, and maybe you'll want to get into this as well, Peter, that she did run a good campaign, but she only had 107 days. And that's on Joe Biden.

And I think progressive voters and parties here, especially the Liberal Party, needs to think about that. Okay. And we will. We'll come back to that a little later. Let me just say, I'm glad Keith raised the J.D. Vance issue, because here is a guy who was quite properly, for most people, was ripped into during the campaign, was criticized, was made fun of, was a lot of things happened to J.D. Vance during the campaign. But keep in mind, Trump's 78. He's showing signs of that age. J.D. Vance could easily be president before the next election.

So keep that one. Keep that one in mind. Last question before we take a break. Kind of relates to what we've just been discussing. In the end, did what happened last night say less about Donald Trump than it said about America in 2024? I think in the substance of everything we've been saying, yeah, it said more about America than it said about Donald Trump.

I mean, you're not going to get away from, I think, the idea that Donald Trump is more in touch with the kinds of things that we've been talking about and the grievances that people feel than Democrats were. I thought that one of the most interesting things that I saw happen in the Trump campaign, because for so long, it looked so bad, right? And he was bad. But I believe I saw somewhere that the number 22 issue for voters was transgender rights. And they turned it into, I think, their number two or number three spending item in terms of advertising in September.

And that was probably a gamble, but it seems like it was probably a gamble that paid off. Because I think it illustrates exactly the kinds of things that Bruce was talking about, that they could prove that what's on this woman's mind is not what's on your mind. What she cares about is not what you care about. In fact, she doesn't even know what you care about. And nobody cares whether that's fair or true. I mean, we know that the policy did not change under trump he had the same policy in his administration for transgender transgender surgeries for uh immigrants who were

imprisoned and so on but it doesn't matter that stuff doesn't matter it's it's like a i don't know what they call it's like a rorschach test, I guess, when, you know, somebody can be tagged with that as she was. It's really effective. And I think, you know, they got some credit for recognizing how effective it could be for them. Bruce? I got three things on this.

I mean, I think that Donald Trump is the most open book candidate I think we've ever seen. There's literally no part of what goes on in his mind that he isn't willing to say publicly or show through his behavior. We know who he is. And he kind of revels almost in doing his kind of meandering weave that he calls genius, where he reveals a whole lot of thoughts that would be disqualifying in any other time with any other candidate and should be. If there's a genius to that, it is that he's got an understanding that he said so many things and done so

many things that there's a dilutive effect, that we can't be shocked by him anymore, and that voters will hear another person come forward and say, he sexually abused me or assaulted me or whatever. And it won't even be a story. It won't make a single news cycle. It will not array the mention. I think the second thing, therefore, is that the traditional media, not all of them, have a lot of reflection to do, which they will not do, in my view, about this idea of sane washing. About taking the fact that he says, I'm going to put tariffs on everything. And I'm not even going to have to address the obvious question raised by the hundreds of leading economists who say, this is nuts, this is local. And he doesn't even need to

address that question, because nobody wants to stay on that question. And he just sort of slides away from it. And so people end up thinking that he's best for the economy, even though he was worse for deficit, even though his idea on tariffs is completely bonkers. Even though he would deport millions of people who are an important part of the labor market in the United States right now. And did the media really do what they needed to do to flush out the differences on this economic agenda and how it was going to help people? I don't think they did. And I don't think that they're capable of doing it anymore. And the last thing I'll say is it told us something about how to reach America. I don't know how the Harris campaign will evaluate what they could have done differently, but probably in one conversation, they'll say, well, she probably should have gone on Joe Rogan, that that might have been a more useful thing to do than go on Saturday Night Live.

And that going on Joe Rogan would reach an awful lot of people, including a lot of people who might have been skeptical of her and might have been persuadable by her in that venue. But none of the three of us at any time prior to, call it five years ago, would have said, you know, the thing that a presidential candidate would want to do in the waning days or hours of the campaign is go on a podcast. No offense intended to those of us who are on a podcast right now. None taken, of course. Yeah, it probably explains why Trudeau pops up on more podcasts these days. Not that I'm aware that it's doing him any good, but he goes on more podcasts than he does on conventional media.

Okay, we've got to take our break. But there's lots more to talk about on this, and we'll do just that right after this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here. If you tuned in this Wednesday for our, you know, encore edition of The Bridge, you're probably thinking, listen to this, they're playing that 2016 podcast,

the night Trump won. No, sadly, that is not the case. This is not 2016. This is 2024. And this is real. This is real life. Donald Trump won last night. And we're here to talk about it on SiriusXM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform or on our YouTube channel

because we're putting this one out on video today as well. So you can find that by going to nationalnewswatch.com and you'll see the links to our YouTube channel. One of the things that appears to have happened last night is this issue of unchecked power. Obviously, Donald Trump has a convincing hold on the White House. His party has a convincing hold on the Senate. And while they're still doing some counting,

it's entirely possible that they will also have a hold on the House as well. And if that happens, he's got it all, along with the judicial side in terms of the majority in the Supreme Court. So what does unchecked power mean at this moment? Well, it won't be this moment, but it'll be in January after the inauguration. What would unchecked power mean in the real life of Americans and the impact that it could have here? Bruce, you start us this time. Well, it means, you know, a lot of people who are listening to this

or watching this podcast will know about this Project 2025 document that lays out a whole set of ideas that are quite radical in terms of changing the structure of the U.S. administration and changing what it does and dropping the education department, for example. So there's a whole set of ideas in there that I think people could look at and say, well, they're pretty radical, but there's going to be some checks and balances. And Trump was distancing himself from them. But there's no reason for him to distance himself from those ideas now when he's got the Supreme Court and the Senate and the House and the White House.

So people who are worried about that content need to be even more worried, I would say, now. Second thing is that he's talked about putting people in positions of significant authority, like Elon Musk and RFK Jr. And I don't know if you stayed up to watch the comments that Trump was making at his rally last night after his victory was declared or he declared it. But he mentioned RFK, who has said that Trump promised him that he would run the CDC. And he's an anti-vaxxer and run all of these health agencies of the government. And the crowd started hooting and hollering, going, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. He'll have no trouble getting his appointees confirmed because he controls that party. That party does not feel like it has any ability or right or efficacy at challenging the things that Trump wants to do. And there's no end of people who

will be filling his head with all kinds of strange ideas that he might find fascinating and interesting and worth pursuing. And then there's this whole question of how America relates to the rest of the world, where again, he will be alone in deciding whether America is no longer for a two-state solution, whether America wants to challenge Putin at all with respect to Ukraine, whether America is going to continue to participate in NATO, what the relationship is going to be like with China. He's going to get to decide those things. And it's so hard to imagine that after this many years of seeing this man and spending billions of dollars on a betting and an electoral process,

that America has ended up saying, this is the guy who should decide everything. And we should have no more checks and balances, at least for the next four years. But that's what we've got. Keith. Yeah, so I think it's important to make a comparison between the first Trump administration and what's going to happen in the second one. They didn't expect to win the first time. They hadn't really given much thought about what to do the day after the election.

And then they found out how it had gone. And suddenly they had to learn quickly. And they did have the trifecta then. They did have the House and they did have the Senate, but they didn't know how to use any of it. And so for the first few years, they were characterized basically by the failures of the Trump administration to accomplish anything. And then they were interrupted by the midterms and suddenly you had this big majority in the House that was Democratic. And that became essentially the main check on the Trump administration, that it was able to investigate, to hold account, and ultimately impeach the president. That was the first impeachment over Ukraine. That's gone now because you're going to have an experienced group of people around Trump

in terms of policy ideas, but also in terms of legislative procedures. He will get stuff done, whether it's the stuff he wants done, or it's the stuff that the Heritage Foundation wants done, going to get done. Second thing, you know, you've mentioned a couple of times that, you know, he has the courts on their side, in particular, the Supreme Court. But it's not just that he has the courts on their side in the Supreme Court. The court has already ruled in a way that is a kind of surrender to the chief executive by granting him qualified immunity. But it's not that restricted.

He can basically do whatever he wants, provided he's doing it in his official function as the president of the United States. And he can do it without you even asking questions about it. As soon as he establishes that it's me acting as president of the United States, that's the end of it. You don't get to say, what are you doing? Who are you talking to?

That's all off limits now. That's an incredible power. And then, of course, he has all the powers that he had before to continue building a judiciary that's sympathetic to his agenda. So I think what you have is a lot of signals to Donald Trump to just let it rip. You can do whatever you want, and if it's wrong, there's nothing anybody can do about it.

You know, I mean, maybe they don't get the House. But if they don't get the House, I can't think that there really is anything else that stands in his way from doing what he wants to do. And, you know, in that decision on immunity, in the dissent, where Justice Sotomayor said, I think it was her, you know, that she worried for her democracy. I mean, she also referenced that, you know, this country was built on the idea that we don't have a king. Now we have a king. I think a lot of people agreed with that at the time, and I think the test of that is what we're going to see ahead.

I mean, this could be just extraordinary and unchecked, Donald Trump. For four years, if he chooses not to change a lot more than what already exists, which will bring into play again the whole discussion about dictatorship and autocracy and all of that. And all of that's going to play out over the, one assumes, over the next few weeks and months before the inauguration, those kind of discussions. But for starters, the opposition is in shock, trying to determine what happened, what went wrong,

and what do they do now. So, you know, it's a very particular time. What about, you know, both of you are experts on, may not be experts on American politics, although I think you're showing that you're pretty close to that on this day, but you are experts on Canadian politics, and there's no argument about that. So what is this mantra? What do you think it means?

What's going to be the fallout from what happened in America to what's happening in our country that's going through a particular bit of parliamentary chaos is one way to describe it, and a lot of people soul-se searching about what it is they stand for, what it is they should be doing, who should be leading them, what they should be saying. What will this mean to the Canadian political landscape? Well, Keith, you start.

Well, I really just wanted to kick it off to Bruce because, no, no, but I'll tell you why. I just would add to your question because I think a lot of this has to do with the current leadership of the governing party. Someone who's very unpopular, as was Joe Biden, and someone who's under pressure to step aside, as was Joe Biden. And I wonder, since it didn't work, how does that affect that argument now? And I think Bruce is better to answer that question than I am. But does it have an impact on that? It's funny, you know, before Bruce starts, I heard already this morning in a couple of different areas the question being asked, well, maybe he shouldn't have stepped down. Yeah. Sure, it looked bad two months ago, but.

That's going to settle on maybe he should have stepped down after the midterms in 2022. That's where that went. Yeah, and that's where it went with some of the answers this morning. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to kick it over to Bruce and then snatch. Bruce. Yeah, look, I think that if he stays true to form, Justin Trudeau will probably maintain that what this really means is that you need a seasoned, experienced leader to remain at the helm because this is going to be choppy.

He's had experience dealing with Donald Trump. He understands all of the issues at stake and he'll be an effective interlocutor. I don't think that Canadians will buy that. I don't know that they should buy that. I don't know that the nature of his relationship with Trump would lead anyone to believe that he would be particularly effective at dealing with Trump. I'm not sure that Pierre Poliev would either. But the real question for me is, and to your point about when should Biden have

decided that his time was coming to an end, I think Trudeau should have decided that his time was coming to an end? I think Trudeau should have decided that not long after the last election. And we talked about that at the time, that after one majority and then two minorities, there was enough writing on the wall that this guy wasn't increasing his popularity or increasing his ability to persuade Canadians of the agenda that he wanted, and he'd lost the popular vote. And so he manufactured, you know, political stratagems to bring his policy agenda forward, much of which I think has been a productive policy agenda for

the country. But ultimately, he is borrowing time that his party could use more productively by stress testing, vetting, showcasing a next generation of political leadership aspirants. I think the lesson from Biden is leaving 107 days on the clock and no chance for a race that people could look at, could evaluate the different candidates, could have some say in who that standard bearer would be. That was a huge mistake. And similarly, there are more than 107 days on the clock, but Justin Trudeau is maintaining that he's going to use all of the days on the clock in the hope that either the status quo, which he represents to a lot of voters, will somehow become popular. I don't see it. I could be proven wrong. I was wrong about yesterday in the United States. So this is an opinion. But 40 years of experience measuring public opinion tells me that when the status quo feels like a bad product that people don't want anymore, when they say I've had enough of it, give me something different, they're going to get something different.

And it's only a question of whether or not the Liberal Party wants to be part of the conversation about what is on offer that's different? To me, they have five, six, maybe seven candidates that if they had a leadership race now would be interesting to people. Whether they would do better, it's no way of knowing. But if you were the Democrats this morning, it's pretty easy to imagine that would have been better if Biden had left earlier. Don't feel bad about being wrong yesterday, Bruce. Some of us were. You're in good company. You're in good company. You were, you know, I was wrong about this a year ago.

I was pretty convinced, even if Biden had been running, that the Democrats would have won and the Republicans would have come to their senses about Trump and all that. But hey, you live and learn. Okay, Keith, you get the final word today on the question about the impact here. Question about the impact here?

Yeah, politically. Oh, I just think... You've got to weigh in here, Keith. Come on. No, I just think... Yeah, but I'm going to weigh in exactly the way that you're going to hate most of all, which is to say that I think. But I also think it's true. People will see in this what they want to see in this. They have their own opinions. And then and I think people on both sides of this argument can, you know, about Trudeau and his future and whether, you know, whether he should go now or he should take the loss. I don't want to argue that if he stays, he's going to win. But I also don't think there are many people who want to argue that

if they change leaders, that means he's going to win. No one knows about that stuff. But if you're looking at what happened and you think he should stay, you can make the argument that it didn't work in the United States. And if you are thinking of running against Trudeau, what does it mean for your longer term future or your medium term future? Because I don't think it means very good things for Kamala Harris that she has now lost the election. Right. I don't think that that she comes back from that. The other side of the argument, though, you though, is I think what Bruce outlined. And the problem really, I think, will be settled on as Biden not leaving soon enough. And so there could very well be an intense period now where people come to Trudeau and say, you know, you still have time to get this right. And meaning that. What he does, though, it's my impression that what he does is in his head, and he's really committed to staying.

And that he will draw from what happened yesterday, the argument that best supports the decision he's already made. That was a really good way of- I remember, Keith, you and I spent a bunch of time together in the 1993 election. Yeah. And I was working with Jean Charest in that election campaign, as you know, and you were covering that campaign. You had the misfortune of-

Yeah. And the reason that's always on my mind is it was a deeply traumatizing experience to watch what happens when a party that has what it considers to be a reasonable floor of support, watch the floor drop away and essentially kill that party. And so I think that for the liberals who are kind of wondering if it's better for Justin Trudeau to take the loss, you know, maybe I'm overly scarred by that experience. But I have in my mind what take the loss can look like. Once people start moving away from thinking, well, maybe I should keep this party alive, or I should kind of find a way to ask to vote for it because I did in the past or what have you.

It can be a very scary scenario. And we kind of need parties to be successful and competitive. And that's kind of what I look for in the future of our political system, too. All right, gentlemen, it's been a not surprisingly, it's been a, not surprisingly, it's been a fascinating conversation. It's a big story any way you look at it. It is a remarkable comeback from someone who many of us were convinced four years ago was dead in the water and would never recover.

But he did, and he will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States in a couple of months, with all that means. So Keith Bogue, Bruce Anderson, thank you for this. Thank you for your thoughtful commentary on what happened last night. Before we leave, just a quick reminder about tomorrow. Your turn's focus tomorrow will not be on this. As promised, it's on Remembrance Day and some of your thoughts, some of your memories about what Remembrance Day means to you as we approach that. Friday, of course, will be a good talk. Bruce will be back, so will Chantel, so it'll be interesting to hear what she has to say about all this as well.

That's Friday's program. Tomorrow, once again, your turn. If you've still got a letter to write, send it in. I can tell you we've had a lot already, and this is just a one-week show on Remembrance Day, so only the best letter, well, the best. Only the letters that touch in some fashion my heartstrings, if you will, will be making it into tomorrow's program. But I really sincerely thank all of you for writing the things you've written this week. There have been lots of letters coming in.

Thanks again to Bruce and Keith, and we'll talk to you all again tomorrow. Thanks, Chance. Nice to to you all again tomorrow. Thanks, Jess. Nice to see you. Thank you.