By Dave McKee
After many months of an intense electioneering, we are finally just weeks away from the US elections on November 5. It’s been an absolutely bizarre campaign, with one of the main presidential candidates being replaced mid-stream and the other facing criminal charges and a possible prison sentence.
For many people in Canada (including this writer) the strong temptation is to preserve our mental and emotional health by either laughing at the spectacle or tuning it out altogether.
While this urge is understandable, and probably shared by a lot of people in the US, it is the wrong approach. Like it or not, US presidential elections have a massive geopolitical impact, and this one hold some very important lessons for the working class in Canada.
Most countries around the world experience a US election through the lens of foreign policy. This makes sense, given that it is the largest capitalist economy in the world, with by far the most powerful military, and is the leading country in the Western imperialist bloc. So, when we see the two main candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, promoting what is substantially the same foreign policy – soaring military spending, continued development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, escalating Cold War against China, tightened blockade of Cuba, unconditional political and military support to Israeli apartheid and genocide – it’s easy to conclude that the outcome doesn’t matter.
Working people in Canada need to recognize the danger this presents. This country’s foreign policy is largely written in Washington, and its military is deeply integrated with (and subservient to) its US counterpart, both directly and through alliances like NATO and NORAD.
This reality is a large part of what is driving the Canadian government’s push to sharply increase military spending – in fact, to more than double it to around $80 billion by 2032. In the process, government programs which working people rely on – everything from health and education to employment insurance and public pensions, to public transit and transportation infrastructure, to environmental and climate action – will be subject to neglect, funding cuts and outright cancellation.
Lesson one from this presidential election is that it is crucial to de-couple Canada’s foreign and military policy and institutions from the US. This includes withdrawing immediately from NATO and NORAD, and sharply reducing Canada’s military spending. Working people’s interest is in a foreign policy of peace and disarmament – we need to push for this now.
While Democrat and Republican foreign policies are very similar, there are some important differences in the area of social policy. In his current campaign and during his first term, Donald Trump has made it very clear that he intends to roll back labour rights, deny abortion rights, attack LGTBIQ+ and especially trans communities, and diminish and undermine civil rights. Furthermore, Trump and his allies have shown their willingness and readiness to violate even bourgeois democratic norms in order to implement these policies.
Of course, Kamala Harris and the Democrats have their own regressive social policies, most notably with respect to policing and immigration. But the overall differences between two main candidates are real, and they understandably become magnified within the US where many working people will likely vote for Harris in order to block another, likely more aggressive Trump attack on social and civil rights.
This tactic – voting for the Democrats to block the increasingly dangerous Republicans – is often denounced as being the politics of “lesser evilism.” Sometimes it is just that – especially if it emerges from an understanding of politics that starts and stops at the ballot box, or if moves from the immediate necessity of blocking Trump into unconditional and uncritical praise and support for the Democrats. But the fact remains that the peculiarities of the two-party system in the US don’t exactly leave a wide range of voting options for November 5.
A key challenge for the labour and progressive movements in the US is finding a way out of this conundrum, so that working people have a political and electoral option beyond lesser evilism. One of the strongest proposals comes from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union (UE) which is pushing the labour movement to build an independent political organization, united around a working-class political program, that can change the terrain of the fight in the electoral arena. The conditions for building such an organization exist, but even the UE notes that it will take time.
Herein lies the second lesson for working people in Canada. While the rigid two-party dynamic in the US isn’t reflected in federal (or most provincial) politics here, there is an increasing tendency to diminish labour’s political voice. This is true both on the side of the NDP – “labour’s party” – which is stampeding to the political centre as its class base shifts more and more toward small business and “enlightened” professionals – and on the side of the labour leadership which is increasingly timid about advancing any kind of independent political view which might upset the NDP leadership. The tragic result of this trend lies right before our eyes south of the border, where working people have to ponder which genocide-supporting representative of Wall Street will be least bad. Labour in Canada must commit to independent labour political action.
One of the curiosities of this presidential election is that Donald Trump has any kind of following at all. After all, he has proven himself to be dangerous in both international and domestic settings – his election would be an absolute disaster. Yet, poll after poll shows him keeping pace with the Democrats – even after they yanked Joe Biden – and well within striking distance of the 270 electoral college votes needed to return to the White House.
This problem is not limited to the United States. From Le Pen, Kickl and Wilders in Europe to Bukele, Milei and Bolsonaro in Latin America, far-right populism is resurgent in countries around the world. In Canada, this is reflected in the increasingly dangerous rightward shift of politicians like Pierre Poilievre, Danielle Smith, John Rustad and Blaine Higgs, particularly their willingness to use climate change denialism, transphobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism and xenophobia to pursue their political aims.
One of the big reasons that working people are drawn to right-wing populism and far-right demagogues is that mainstream centre and “left” parties have completely failed to address the severities of the economic crisis. As unemployment rises and living costs soar, as real wages decline and corporate profits skyrocket, as wars and aggressions escalate and expand, parties like the Democrats in the US and the Liberals and NDP in Canada have provided no solutions for working people. In fact, they have doubled down on neoliberal policies within the framework of state monopoly capitalism.
The resulting widespread anger, confusion and anxiety are manipulated by the right wing and their deceitful, simplistic narratives of blame. They begin to appear, in fact, as outliers and anti-establishment forces, the only ones offering answers to millions of suffering working people.
Specific party policies are not, of course, responsible for the deepening crises and sharpening contradictions which are endemic to capitalism. But through their failure to address these crises, parties like the Democrats and NDP open the door for the working class to be swayed by right-wing populism.
So, the third lesson for working people in Canada is to recognize right populism for what it is – a dangerous anti-worker step toward more wars, unemployment and austerity, racism and discrimination, and authoritarianism and repression. Labour in Canada needs to confront politicians like Poilievre and Smith by exposing and confronting the systemic crises and contradictions which they manipulate.
Whatever the outcome of the US election, it will also weigh heavily on this country’s next federal election. There will be enormous pressure for Canada’s foreign and domestic policies to shift to the right, which will have serious immediate and long-lasting consequences. Recognizing these dangers, drawing lessons from them and moving into action is the best response from working people here.
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