FOR NEARLY A YEAR, Canadians have been discussing the danger posed by the United States. The anxiety shows up everywhere—online forums, polling questions, and in the unusually blunt asides from officials. This is good. We need to get in the habit of having hard conversations about who threatens us, the extent of that threat, and what we can and must do if we are to survive as an independent country.
For CANADA, the diagnosis of the US administration is not academic. It is the difference between managing a relationship with a flawed but crucial ally and planning a campaign of resistance against a powerful neighbour no longer reliably constrained by its domestic institutions.
Unfortunately, we see signs of deference everywhere.
Congress has effectively abandoned its role in holding the president to account. It has failed to uphold its power of the purse on things like international development assistance, bowing to the administration’s decision to simply not spend the money. The loss of that funding has already led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition. It has failed to uphold congressional power to declare war, ignoring military actions in the Caribbean that culminated in the unlawful capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian president. It declined to act when the administration sidestepped the Senate’s confirmation power by allowing Elon Musk to wield cabinet-level authority without ever being confirmed. Congress has also largely demurred in defence of its power to regulate import tariffs. It is, in effect, a presidential lapdog.
Eh… That’s debatable. The modern democratic party being center right is kinda a byproduct of Thirdway politics. Which was largely popularized by the party leaders itself, specifically by the Clinton’s.
Bill Clinton rose to power by advocating for compromise as a way to get through the growing gridlock in Congress. This worked for his career, but it gave the Republican party a huge amount of influence over defining what that middle ground was. They would work with Democratic candidates with policy that served their purposes and completely ignore the ones that served anyone left of center.
This had the overall effect of not only controlling policy in congress, but actually being able to vicariously control the opposition. As time went on the only people who reached seniority in the DNC were those who would compromise with the rnc to create a “mutually” beneficial policy.
Pretty sure that we’re saying the same thing.
My point of contention is largely that the issue isn’t with the will of the voters, and that the direction of policy is largely directed from the top down.
Most American progressives are vastly more progressive than their representatives. It’s just that the DNC’s leadership is filled with thirdway democrats who refuse to support anyone left of center.
Edit: just reread you original comment. I misread it the first time round and thought you had said it was as far left as the people were willing to go. My bad.
It’s all good. I do that a lot myself, lol. One thing trump has shown and been extremely transparent about, is that the billionaires don’t give one shit about us and they run everything.