Nov. 7 mid-term elections: Canadians losing sleep

To tweak the old adage, when you sleep next to an elephant, be sure not to sleep too deeply and be especially alert to even the suggestion that it’s about to roll over. Canadians need continuously to keep our peripheral vision wide and during the mid-term elections of a President’s final years, we again look south.

These elections will be a barometer of the state of American democracy. Will voter participation fall below even the meager turnouts of recent years? Has the war fever broken? Can George W. use the fear of terrorism and the constituencies of the religious right to steal another victory from the jaws of apparent defeat? Will the religious right, frustrated and disgusted by what they see in Washington, stay at home this time? Will the Republican election machine, which our Conservatives mimic increasingly, turn apparent victories for Democrats into another hard-earned lesson?

Are middle class Americans, starting to believe that Republican economic policy is making the rich richer while leaving them stalled, be willing to send a wake-up call? Have the poor become so defeated that they just don’t care much who wins? Will unions and progressive young people get the poor and working men and women to the polls? Will young people bother to vote at all?

What of Afro-Americans? Will the promise of Senator Obama and the memory of the Clinton administration be enough to relight that force in Democratic politics?

Have Americans had enough of the Iraq war, and of the Hobbesean policy of “attacking them before they attack us?� Will the gender gap be sufficient, now that Americans feel less threatened, to turn some races to the Democrats? Will voters be convinced that Democrats will return to tax and spend liberalism, even as they remember the good days of the Clinton administration?

Are Americans better off now than they were then? Will George W. Bush’s Presidency be given the chance to finish what he has started, or will the electorate put a major obstacle in his way? Will the most money spent decide the outcome?

Have voters had enough of negative attack-and-scare ads? Will voting machines work, providing a fair, accurate reading of the will of the people? Who will be left standing in line, or head home without casting a ballot?

House Representatives are elected for a two-year term and they reflect the principle of representation by population. Even though, at least in recent years, sitting Members have enjoyed advantages, this year change appears in the wind.

There may well be some considerable ‘throwing the bums out’ enjoyed by Democrats. The Senate, where members are elected for a six-year term to represent state and regional interests and where only one-third of the seats are determined every two years, may be a different story. Winning control of the Senate in this contest would be a clear harbinger of Democrats’ future prospects for the presidency.

Both outcomes will turn significantly on the independent vote; those Americans who do not identify by party and who move with relative ease between the two.

We should watch this episode of West Wing Tuesday night. American electoral competition does indeed spill into Canada. Since 1919, our political practice has been moved by the star spangled banner, although it’s often revealing to see what we’re able to resist.

Moreover, we will see whether or not the neo-conservative agendas of the Bush administration are finally repudiated by the electorate, this with significant possible effect on our own political parties. (A Bush victory, holding both the House and Senate, will again give our Conservatives the sense that they’re on the right track, that they too should “stay the course�).

And finally, despite it all, we have a complex and important friendship with America. The democratic state of their polity should concern us, just as the outcome of this election will concern most of the nations of the world, even if some of our friends to the South aren’t always sure where Nova Scotia is, or why that matters.