I haven’t changed but many others on the left have

Work in Progress/By Ivan Morgan

Trump didn’t win!

For those Trump haters out there, I thought I’d start on a high note. Let me explain.

Over the past few weeks, I have been accused by some friends and family of being a Trump supporter. Of being a right winger in my old age. I’m not.

My life has been dedicated to left wing causes. I worked for the federal NDP in the early 1980’s. I worked for an aboriginal organization for seven long years (I am not aboriginal). I worked for a private human rights organization for 15 years. Last going off I worked for the provincial NDP for 12 years.

Were I an American, I would be a Democrat. I was moved to tears when Barack Obama won in 2008. I was in physical shock when Trump won in 2016.

My creds should be solid.

But apparently, they’re not.

We all see the world differently. That’s the joy of being human – the joy of politics. I do not think Donald Trump won. I think the American left wing – in this case the Democrats, lost. I think they completely and utterly blew it. What evidence do I have for this? Donald Trump, who they say is a convicted felon, a sex offender, a crook, a Nazi and a charlatan, completely and totally wiped them off the political map. They didn’t just lose. They lost everything.

What happened? One of my favourite British political comedians, Johnathan Pye, said it best.  What happened? The left lost. They’ve lost the argument. They’ve lost relevance. In his words, the left wing forgot the point of being left wing.

When I was young being left wing was about free expression, freedom of speech and working to bridge the gap between rich and poor. Now it’s about self-righteousness, and piety and virtue-signalling, and policies which, however well intentioned they may be, the average voter thinks are loopy.

Now it’s Trump’s Republicans who defend freedoms. Now the working class supports Trump. As Pye said, the Democrats completely abandoned the working class, so why is it a surprise the working class abandoned them?

The American left ended up promoting issues which mean nothing to the average person struggling to pay for groceries and keep a roof over their head. The left lectured us all that things we took to be self-evident and common sense were in fact hateful lies, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for thinking otherwise.

I am told, somewhat piously, by a few left-wing acquaintances that they are “progressives” and, because I am not, because I dare to question some of their current policies, I have been left behind. That may be true, and if it is, I am not the only one left behind. In the USA the Democrats left a lot of people behind. And Trump was there to pick up their votes.

I have been told Kamala Harris lost because America wasn’t ready for a black woman president. Perhaps. But could it also be because she was never democratically elected? Parachuted in by Democrat power brokers when it was clear they could no longer cover for a mentally challenged president, she was, by anyone’s standards, a terrible campaigner. She was politically inept. For most of her campaign she avoided the press. President Joe Biden clearly disliked her and didn’t exactly help her campaign. She was obviously complicit in lying to the American public about the president’s mental stamina. And as vice president she had been next to invisible for the previous four years.

To flip that argument over, did people think she should win only because she’s a black woman?  Imagine if Michelle Obama had run instead.

Now, after being obliterated, the American left and their supporters continue to promote the agenda they touted during the campaign. We saw how that strategy worked for them.

The left wing is important to me and has a long and proud legacy in Canadian politics. With both a federal and provincial election looming in Canada, I’d like to think they have learned from what happened south of the border, and that some bright young minds are retooling their message for the upcoming campaigns, developing policies more in step with what the average voter needs.

I’d like to think that, but I fear otherwise.

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com