The Anti-Trump Backlash

Last year, I made an unpopular prediction: Donald Trump would win the Presidential election. Despite record fund-raising totals and a seeming social media wave for Kamala Harris, it seemed to me that the best indicators of the election – polling data and prediction markets – suggested a Trump victory was likely. Progressives were angry at me for this prediction, but that prediction proved correct.

But I made another prediction that was even more important. Trump, ironically, may be crucial to a resurgent progressive movement in the United States and around the world. And today’s news of a historic comeback win by the progressive candidate in the Canadian national election, Mark Carney, is the first evidence we have that my second prediction may also come into effect. Just look at how Carney’s Liberal Party (the red line below) performed in polls after Trump came into office. It’s likely the greatest comeback in the history of Canadian politics.

How did it happen? Quite simply, the backlash effect. It is often the case that progress is achieved, not by our own efforts but by the backlash against our adversaries. And Trump is, in many ways, a uniquely helpful adversary. He shines a spotlight on the absurdities of our system, e.g., our nation’s quasi-imperial past. It was not just tariffs against Canada, but Trump’s bizarre rants about taking over Canada as a 51^st American state, that pushed Canadian voters against him.

Let’s be clear about what this means and doesn’t mean. Trump will give progressives opportunities, as he has with immigration and tariffs. But success in harnessing the anti-Trump backlash will require a discipline and strategy that progressives utterly failed on during his last term in office. Trump Derangement Syndrome, the obsessive focus on hating Trump, rather than building up a positive vision and alternative, was a real thing. Glenn Greenwald convinced me of this.

What should that positive vision be? In the face of Trump’s attempt to narrow our moral horizons, and his cruelty to vulnerable beings, what we need more than anything is a movement of compassion. Anger and confrontation have their role. But they’ll only succeed if grounded in love. And what better place to build for that movement than among those who are fighting for the most vulnerable among us, wielding only the tool of love.