The big blue Tuesday night tsunami that swamped the red Republicans to our south is now widely credited with having reduced U.S. President Donald J. Trump to a state of pathetic lame-duckery.
This is quite possibly true, although no one should let down their guard given the ridiculous American formula for changing governments, wherein the People speak on election night and thereafter everyone has to wait two and a half months for the new leaders of the Republic to be sworn in.
That’s plenty of time for a demented lunatic like Mr. Trump to get up to all sorts of mischief, including mischief aimed at Canada – which, no doubt, accounts for the emphasis in yesterday’s federal budget on Canadians remaining maîtres chez nous, regardless of how much that phrase annoys the Bloc Québécois.
Nevertheless, what is manifestly clear is that our American Cousins have had it up to here with President Trump and the heavily armed MAGA bumpkins who may yet volunteer for another go at being his storm troopers. He is therefore officially a lame duck, that delightful American term of British origin for a political leader untethered from the ability to make his policies stick around.
Meanwhile, here in the formerly somewhat sovereign state of Alberta, where blue and red convey opposite messages to those on the south side of the Medicine Line, our MAGA-adjacent premier may have found herself in a similar state to the American president she admires so much due to an electoral misadventure of a different sort.
To wit, Danielle Smith’s famously flopped Oct. 19 separation referendum – which was widely and correctly interpreted as a project of integration with the Benighted States – seems to have reduced her re-election chances significantly, although it is not yet clear if her resulting unpopularity is significant enough to reduce her as well to the status of lame duck.
A panicky column by a Postmedia commentator Wednesday rang a warning Bell that according to a new poll by ThinkHQ Public Affairs, if an election were held tomorrow here in Alabamberta, the Opposition NDP might win!
“I think the UCP can lose,” scribbler Rick Bell worriedly quoted ThinkHQ’s Marc Henry. “I think if the election was tomorrow they would lose,” Mr. Henry added.
Well, Ms. Smith has some advantages Mr. Trump lacks. No term limits for one, and her justice minister’s pish-poshery about fixed election dates notwithstanding, she can call an election whenever she pleases. But if she does and loses, there will be no two-and-a-half-month interregnum during which her separatist henchpersons can plot a hillbilly coup or an invasion of Saskatchewan or B.C.
On Tuesday, another column by a reliably conservative Postmedia columnist counselled Premier Smith to lay off the MAGA vibe if she wants to get to stick around.
It would seem as if Lorne Gunter has cottoned onto the possibility that severely normal Albertans – much like their normal American counterparts south of the world’s longest formerly undefended border – are sick and tired of the kind of MAGA fumduckery Ms. Smith just can’t get enough of.
His nervousness may be justified. For one thing, Ms. Smith does seem somewhat disconnected from reality at the moment, having just explained for all to hear that Tuesday’s Democrat victory Stateside vindicates her strategy of ignoring the other premiers’ Team Canada response to the Trump Tariffs and racing off to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to the Tariff King instead.
“It is a vindication of our approach when it comes to tariffs,” Ms. Smith told the Legislature during Question Time on Wednesday, no doubt leaving many denizens of that august chamber of oratory speechless.
Quoting Ms. Smith telling a far-right videographer recently that she’s thinking about setting up an Alberta version of Elon Musk’s DOGE disaster, Mr. Gunter asked, a little plaintively: “What’s next for Smith, calling for an Alberta equivalent of Trump’s ICE to help enforce the results of the immigration questions on last month’s referendum? Midnight raids, masked law enforcement officers, detention centres, forced deportations?”
Well, given what we’ve heard before, not to mention the tone of her risible round of racist referenda, the answer to those questions is probably Yes.
“If Smith cannot figure out how better to appeal to ‘normies,’ she is going to hand government to Naheed Nenshi and the NDP on a silver platter,” Mr. Gunter warned.
That, I’m sure, would be fine with most of the readers of this post. The problem with Ms. Smith metaphorically tarred with lame duck feathers, however, is the same as with President Trump in somewhat similar circumstances: What will she get up to before we have a chance to vote her out of office?
Will she accelerate her scheme to destroy public health care in Alberta, for example, are just stick to banning flags, library books and gender-neutral toilets?
My point is merely this: We could be on the verge of a new and better day, in both Alberta and the United States, and still be at risk of being nibbled to death by lame ducks!