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cover of episode Party of the People
People
H
Henry
活跃在房地产投资和分析领域的专业人士,参与多个房地产市场预测和分析讨论。
P
Patrick Ruffini
Topics
Henry: 本期节目讨论了民主党候选人John Tester和Sherrod Brown的竞选广告,分析了他们在争取工薪阶层选民方面的策略,并指出他们试图通过强调与共和党合作以及关注地方性议题来争取那些可能投票给共和党总统候选人的选民。 Henry: Tester和Brown的成功取决于他们能否争取到一部分特朗普的支持者,他们的广告策略旨在向这些选民传递他们值得信任的信息,避免激怒民主党的核心支持者。 Henry: 在全球范围内,工薪阶层选民正在远离中间偏左的政党,转向右翼民粹主义政党,这给各国的中间偏右政党带来了挑战。 Patrick Ruffini: 共和党在过去几次选举周期中,在白人工薪阶层选民中的支持率大幅提升,并且这种趋势并没有在2016年之后停止。特朗普的支持率在白人工薪阶层选民中保持稳定,并且在西班牙裔、非裔和亚裔社区的支持率也有所提高。 Patrick Ruffini: 非白人工薪阶层选民的行为越来越像白人工薪阶层选民,这改变了人们对民主党和共和党未来选情预测。共和党正在获得美国人口中占70%的非大学学历白人或少数族裔选民的支持,这使得共和党处于进攻态势。 Patrick Ruffini: 共和党获得更多支持,更多是因为民主党失去了选民,而不是因为共和党做了什么特别的事情。自21世纪初以来,民主党逐渐放弃了工薪阶层选民,这为共和党提供了机会。 Patrick Ruffini: 长期以来,美国政治呈现出阶级政治的两极分化趋势,共和党在非大学学历白人选民中占据优势,而民主党则在大学学历白人选民中占据优势。如果共和党能够争取到少数族裔选民的支持,那么他们将拥有获得多数席位的潜力。 Patrick Ruffini: 特朗普时代的政策转变是其获得成功的一个因素,但并非关键因素。特朗普在贸易和移民问题上的立场,以及他特立独行的个性,是其获得成功的关键因素。 Patrick Ruffini: 特朗普将文化议题的讨论重点从宗教转向了犯罪和移民等问题,从而吸引了更多非宗教人士的支持。 Patrick Ruffini: 2016年大选结果表明,那些坚持传统保守主义理念的选民数量远少于华盛顿的政治精英所认为的。共和党已经放弃了对财政责任的承诺,这标志着美国政治的一个重大转变。 Patrick Ruffini: 加拿大保守党在皮埃尔·波利耶夫领导下,通过调整政策和策略,赢得了更多工薪阶层选民的支持,这为其他国家政党提供了借鉴。

Deep Dive

Chapters
Patrick Ruffini discusses his book 'The Party of the People' and explores the shift in the Republican Party towards a multiracial populist coalition, focusing on its sustainability and implications for the GOP.

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Normally in this segment, I preview an ad and I explain why this ad conveys a good message to a target audience that the campaign needs to reach in order to win. But this week, I'm going to give you double the pleasure, double the fun. To quote an old Wrigley gum advertisement tagline, I'm going to give you two ads and

And these are the ads of Democratic incumbent John Tester of Montana and Democratic incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Let's hear why they are an effective pair for each of these candidates' shared objectives. When Montanans see a problem, we get to work.

John Tester worked with Republicans fighting to shut down the border, target fentanyl traffickers, and add hundreds of new border patrol agents. And he fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America instead of remain in Mexico. John Tester knows defending Montana starts with securing the border. I'm John Tester, and I approve this message to do whatever it takes to keep Montana safe.

It's amazing something this small can make such a big impact because these chips are in nearly everything we buy and foreign countries control their supply and cost. But that's about to change because the world's largest plant is being built here.

creating 20,000 jobs across Ohio. I'm Sherrod Brown and I worked with Republicans to jumpstart American chip manufacturing. So now this little thing is making a big impact in Ohio. That's why I approve this message.

Well, there you go. You've got Jon Tester letting the narrator do most of the work for him, and you've got Sherry Brown speaking direct to camera. So facially, they're pretty different. But actually, they're mirror images of each other. In both cases, the candidate or the candidate's campaign is taking on a local issue.

that is of national importance, that is particularly important to the state that they are running in. For Montana, it's immigration and it's fighting to control the border. For Ohio, a heavy manufacturing state, it's bringing manufacturing and jobs to this Rust Belt, although not completely failing, state. So each candidate is putting themselves on the side

of an important local issue, and each is talking about how they work with Republicans. In Jon Tester's case, he specifically says he fought Joe Biden.

He also says he worked with Republicans. And the picture of that ad has him at the White House with Republican senators. Now, I doubt there's a whole lot of Montanans who recognize Susan Collins of Maine. But for those of us who do, the picture tells the message. And another one of these things that I tend to like, that you've got words and pictures that are inspiring.

in sync with one another so that you can drive home your message visually and audially. Now, why is it important that they do this? Well, let's understand who their constituencies are. Tester is running for his third term in a state that Donald Trump carried by nearly 20 points. Jon Tester wins because he convinces people who vote for Republicans for president to vote for him.

Sherrod Brown is running in a state that, when he first won election to the Senate, was carried narrowly by Barack Obama. But, ah-ha-ha, this is ground zero of the Trump working-class white revolution. Since then, Ohio has become a lean, strongly red state, so strongly red that J.D. Vance, an outsider who only had his famous book and Donald Trump's endorsement to give him credit for running, beat a...

an incumbent member of the House of Representatives who was running a moderate, pro-Ohio, pro-manufacturing, anti-free trade campaign.

So when you're looking at those figures, what you're saying is the only way for these guys to survive is to get between 15 and 20 percent of the people who are going to vote for Donald Trump over Joe Biden to say, but this Democrats on my side. And that's why these ads are paired.

is because they're probably not coordinated. They're probably not coming from central Democratic casting, but each side knows who they have to talk to. And they're starting the campaign by talking to that person. They're not going to rile up the Democratic base with the sorts of things that rile them up, like democracy and abortion and climate change. No, no, no. That's the way to message to Trump voters that,

That you're not on their side. So what they're doing is starting their campaign with big buys that are focused solely on saying, Republicans, you can trust me. You can trust me to fight for the thing you care about. You, the person who used to maybe be a Democrat, I'm the sort of Democrat who you used to like. I'm not. And they're not necessarily saying that, although Tester kind of says that when he says he fought Joe Biden.

I'm not the sort of Democrat who's driving you away. I don't know if this is going to work, but this is their only chance at winning. And the fact that they see this this early and are doubling down on it and effectively communicating it is why both of these ads are the ad of the week.

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at LuckyLandSlots.com. No purchase necessary. BGW Group. Void or prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. Well, any partisan contest is not a one-way fight, although often one might be surprised at that by reading our mainstream media, who seems to think there's only one player that gets to set the rules, and that's Team Blue. But that's in fact not the case, which is why Team Red often wins elections.

And here to tell us about the Team Red side of the story, particularly with an emphasis on the working class, is Patrick Ruffini, the author of Party of the People Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition, remaking the GOP and the founding partner of Echelon Insights. Patrick, welcome to Beyond the Polls. It's great to be here, Henry.

Well, you have a provocative thesis, one who listeners and readers of my work know I heartily agree with. But why don't you tell my listeners what your book finds and what it argues? Yeah, I mean, so it's no secret that we've seen a dramatic shift in the last few election cycles with Donald Trump.

doing a lot better with initially with white working class voters. That's what enabled him to be the surprise winner of the 2016 election. But the story didn't stop there. It didn't stop in 2016. That we saw in 2020.

was that the election was a lot closer than the polls had expected it to be in that cycle when Biden was picked to, you know, win by an almost double digit majority. He only ends up winning by four points.

He ends up winning in a very narrow set of states. So just a point six percent shift in the national popular vote means that Donald Trump is the president again, which was virtually I think there was almost no support for that idea in the pre-election polls and in the data. But it turns out to be the case because Trump's support

holds up actually pretty well in the white working class, despite the polls predicting he would lose double digit support in the white working class. It holds up pretty well. And he does better among Hispanic voters. He does better among African-American voters, even after the George Floyd protests and the racial reckoning of 2020. He does better in Asian communities. So what's going on here? What you're really seeing is

is that non-white working class and the non-white vote in this country is primarily working class, right? They are behaving more and more like white working class voters. And that has flipped, I think, the dynamics that a lot of people had expected, particularly pre-2016, where Democrats were this coalition of the ascendant. All the rising groups in the electorate

particularly minority voters, young voters, were trending Democratic or had huge Democratic majorities. And the declining groups in the electorate were Republican groups, specifically the white working class. And so Democrats would own the future. But when you add sort of non-whites to that equation of strong Republican support in the white working class, what you get is Republicans are on the offense. Republicans are gaining support cycle after cycle.

with the demographic majority of the country, which is 70 percent who are either white, non-college or non-white. Now, these groups are still pretty different in their voting preferences. Right. So non-white voters as a whole tend to lean Democratic among black voters. It is a very it's almost it's historically been 90 to 10 split. But the point is the shifts, right, the shifts from election cycle to election cycle, which is how majorities are made.

And we're already seeing it in the 2024 polls. We're seeing particularly a trend with non-white voters trending even further to the right than they were in 2020. And really that making the difference, right, turning a narrow Trump defeat into, you know, what you would have to say if the election were held today, even with the recent tightening in the polls, would be a narrow Trump victory. And it's all because this election

working class coalition is starting to coalesce under the Republican banner.

So is it a positive move to Republicans that they're hearing things from Republicans that they like? Or is it a negative move that they're hearing things from Democrats that they don't like and they're willing to give the other side a chance but aren't sold yet? Look, it's always going to be more the latter than the former. But I don't put too much shock in which one is it, right? Because I think if you just look historically...

even within the white working class, right? It's not that Republicans have historically made a huge effort to gain that, necessarily made a huge effort to gain that support. It's mostly that the Democrats really abandoned that constituency, really starting in the early 2000s,

And but even in 2012, right, Mitt Romney, the most let's just say the most, you know, the candidate who was most ill-equipped to, say, appeal to a working class electorate still makes gains in states like Pennsylvania. Now, I think Trump makes more of an effort. But I think, you know, a lot of these shifts oftentimes, I would say, start as more negative moves, right? Start with a break, right?

From the old party of the people, the old working class party, which was strongly identified as the Democrats throughout their history, it starts at the break. And then people, I think, gradually, once that break has been made, they start to find reasons to associate more with the new party.

Now let's take a look though at some past failed efforts of Republicans. Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 makes massive gains among working class voters, particularly in the North, back when the South was still segregated and the South was still angry at the party of Lincoln. And he wins massive majorities in 1952 and 1956, and by 1958,

It's all gone, and the Republican Party goes through probably its darkest quarter century in its history. The New Deal dip was deeper, but it didn't last as long. The Republican Party never gets above 192 seats in the House between '58 and actually '94. It doesn't get above 43 or so seats in the Senate until the election of Reagan.

And Nixon, you had a 61% landslide as the working class North and South reject the Democratic Party, and they come back very quickly. What is it that explains those sorts of movements that didn't gel? In contrast, let's say with the Reagan movement, where you saw similar movements,

unprecedented movement that did gel to some extent going over the next decade. Well, I think it's just a different story when you're talking about the presidency, when you're compared to Congress. Right. So I think there's probably a whole different thread around that. But I don't want to say that everything has basically gone in one direction for the last 60 years.

But even when you look at periods of retrenchment, like 74, 76, right, Democrats gain Jimmy Carter, you know, win Southern states, win states in his home region. You know, I think that there is there's a trend that maybe Democrats may be weathered the storm of the late 1960s and early 1970s when they lost really deeply with the white working class and the white middle class. And you see a lot of those voters tend to come home.

That the net balance over the long sweep of history, right, has been towards a class politics that is now polarized on educational lines where Republicans are winning the lion's share of when I have won the lion's share of white voters without degrees. And Democrats seem to be on track to winning, you know, if not a lion's share, then a more comfortable majorities with white voters with degrees.

Certainly you saw Bill Clinton reverse some of these trends. You do see Democrats every now and then come in who aren't as associated with the cultural left and are able to claw back some of these gains. But the long-term trajectory has been towards this sort of polarization. And I sort of make the argument that, look,

If Republicans play their cards right, this is a natural majority of the electorate, particularly if you expand it to include nonwhite voters. And why should it include nonwhite voters? In 2016, we didn't think it would include nonwhite voters in particular.

because, you know, Trump did really well, obviously, in the upper Midwest states, but he did not so well. And there were warning signs for him in Arizona, perhaps in Georgia, in some of the southern states, if he was not able to, let's say, move some of these, some of the, let's say, nonwhite voters. And look, I mean, I think that in particular, right, I mean, it should be, and it's not that there aren't pitfalls, but there should be

You know, they are coalescing, right? A base of support among the majority of voters, which is a stronger place, I think, to build a potential future majority from. So how does a future majority that's based on the working class differ in its policy orientations from the pre-Trump,

Romney-Ryan party, which had gained grounds among white working-class voters who were religious, but had not really gained ground among non-white working-class voters. And, you know, the big shift in 2016 happens in non-evangelical Protestant white working-class communities, the sorts of places that had voted Democratic except for landslide years going back decades.

are now Republican bastions. You know, now we look at the upper peninsula of Michigan and say, well, that's safe, right? Well, it wasn't safe, right, as recently as a decade ago. And this is dominated by non-observant Catholics, Finns, Norwegians, and so forth, who didn't find much that appealed to them outside of the occasional Ronald Reagan prior to Donald Trump, and now can't find much that doesn't appeal to them.

So that's a kind of long digression to say, how does the Patrick Ruffini majority Republican Party look on policy that's different from the pre-2016 rapid shift towards the working class? I think a shift in policy has been...

Certainly a facet of the Trump era, but it is not I would not say it's the key ingredient to this shift that we've seen politically and that you had did have Trump seize upon two issues you really cared about. And I would say maybe the only two issues you really cared about trade and immigration.

which were issues that I think uniquely appealed to this white working class coalition. And a big part of the reason, certainly a big part of the reason, I think a large part of it also had to do with his personality, his demeanor, his approach to politics, the fact that he was completely outside the system and was somebody who really projected as somebody who I'm going to go in there

and blow the whole thing up, right? And, you know, particularly for people who have been at the fringe of the politics, maybe haven't always voted or have disdain for traditional politicians, traditional politics. I don't think you can ignore that aspect of Trump that I think is possibly even

a bigger reason for his gains than simply what his policy orientation was, which was also fairly different in terms of its outward presentation from previous Republican nominees. But I think we overstate the policy to an extent, too.

Because, look, you had Mitt Romney also talking about getting tough on China, currency manipulation, right, in 2012. You know, he also had strong positions on immigration. In fact, he was lambasted after the election for taking too strong of a position on immigration, including by Donald Trump. Right. But obviously, Trump's combination of personal style and some of his emphasis on just change of emphasis on

on both cultural issues and on these and on some of the economic priorities around trade, I think was enough for him to make a breakthrough in places like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But I think you see it also to some degree in the abortion politics where Trump is willing to, let's say, stick a little finger in the eye to sort of the hardcore pro-life movement and say, you know, I am, despite

having had to nominate judges, right, because of my promise in the 2016 primary that eventually overturned Roe versus Wade. I did that.

But I'm not taking a hardcore position on either national abortion ban or supporting these more draconian state abortion laws, right? That Trump is somebody who departed from, as you said, the, let's say, more culturally conservative voter who is more secular.

who is not as motivated by the traditional religious conception of social issues. It's more focused on crime. It's more focused on immigration. In many ways, kind of a throwback to the politics of New York City. I write about this in the book where he really shifted, I think, the whole orientation for how

You know, a populist would talk about, let's say, some of these cultural issues away from a so-called religious right, moral majority orientation that you would have seen in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s to a base of issues, particularly on crime and immigration, that even if you don't go to church, those are the issues that are primarily motivating you on a cultural front.

So he's turned it more from a religious cultural wedge into a patriotic cultural wedge, a common sense lived experience, to use the phrase of our progressive friends. That's right. So how does a Republican Party deal with that? Because what I'm hearing is, OK, GOP, you can have your tax cuts, you can have your deregulation, but you've got to say, OK,

It's time to say no to illegal immigration. It's time maybe to say no to winking at corporations that pretend to inspect the citizenship credentials but have arranged for laws that means all they have to do is look at paper and not care about their validity, that we have to say,

Free trade isn't automatically the tide that lifts all boats. That religious right, you can't get your way on everything. You have to recognize that two-thirds of the country wants abortion to be legal in the first trimester, and the Republican Party of the populist right is going to say okay to that. Can a Republican Party deal with those deviations from orthodoxy while keeping some of the other orthodox things intact?

Or is that something that will ultimately create the sort of internal explosion within the Republicans that you often see within the Democrats between their warring factions?

Well, I think we thought this would happen in 2016, right, in terms of the ride of the never Trump faction, in terms of the people who were, you know, committed to the three legs of the school of social conservatism, economic conservative, national security conservatism. And we found that, you know, let's say those adherents to that, you know, what is sort of traditionally conceived of as that Reagan coalition, right?

were far less numerous in the actual electorate than they were in Washington, D.C. And the conservative movements or conservative ink groups. Right. That that were really, you know, at least even if money went along with Trump were privately, you know, mourning the loss of what seemed like the heyday of conservatism.

But that had very little to do with the conservative politics as it existed in the base of the Republican Party, which was far more motivated around the issues that Trump talked about, which is, you know, specifically.

the sort of simmering, you know, the simmering and eventually boiling over pot of immigration, right, that, you know, you started in the mid 2000s and rebellion to George W. Bush's push for comprehensive immigration reform. And that goes unaddressed practically for a decade until you get Donald Trump, who is willing to fully indulge that sentiment within the party

And that turns out to be rocket fuel, right, for his 2016 campaign. I think that the biggest change, maybe not for the Republican Party specifically, but for the country substantively, is that we basically have a Republican Party that has given up all pretense to care about fiscal responsibility and spending, which was a core commitment, even of the so-called populist right during the Tea Party movement.

that we're not going to spend as much, we're not going to tax you as much, right? And that turns out that went out the window during COVID. And you're not really seeing anyone in any wing of the Republican Party

Promise that because it's losing politics. Right. And particularly on entitlements. So I think what you're seeing is Trump keeping right. The I think let's say popular elements of his tax cuts. Right. His tax cuts sort of a definitional accomplishment of his first term. So keeping the popular elements while jettisoning maybe some more toxic or unpopular elements.

aspects of the Republican economic agenda focused on spending cuts. But that's going to lead to a reckoning right in a few years when the entitlement trust funds run out. Yeah, but by then Donald Trump will be out of office unless, unless, of course, all the Democratic fears are really true. And we've had our last election and his 88 year old self. Anyway, the joke aside, from a Trump perspective, that doesn't matter.

because he'll be gone before the reckoning hits. From a party perspective, the question is, how are you going to deal with that? If you win a multi-racial ethnic coalition that is based in large parts on, as you said, the jettisoning of the unpopular parts of pre-populist Reaganism, which I would argue, I argued in my book, is not actually what Ronald Reagan said, but it's

Ronald Reagan is viewed through the libertarian, weird colored prism. They stick inside their eyes. Oh, Ronald Reagan's this, and I'll forget that he said all of these other things that made it a more nuanced philosophy. If that's the case, then either, you know, then what you'll be doing is saying, well, there's going to be a Republican majority because the politics have worked out the way you predict. And the reckoning happens on Republican watch. How does a populist conservative vote?

coalition deal with that reckoning, much as how does it deal with the need to rearm in the face of Chinese, Russian, Iranian, North Korean, and many other sub-rosa of their allies who haven't declared themselves yet rearmament on themselves, you know, which is how do you square the circle of endless needs for spending and a commitment to low taxes and a debt load that's significantly higher than it was when Ronald Reagan basically said, let's put it on the credit

I think it creates a huge risk, right? I mean, it creates potential for taking time bomb where you have something like the potentially like the financial collapse, right? That seems to be more like a manmade disaster than let's say COVID was.

where you have that hit and the question then becomes, right? I mean, who's in power when that happens? I'm not, you know, I'm not here to say that we've abolished political cycles. And that's what I try to be very careful in this and that any future Republican majority

I think will be based on this coalition almost, I think, inevitably. Right. I mean, I think we're sociologically headed to this position. It's not even just a question necessarily of political leadership, although I think that Trump has, I think, to some extent substantially. He really has, I think, accelerated this trend. But I think we were probably headed this way anyway.

But the question is, you know, really, does this hit between 2032 and 2036? Who is in power in that in that situation or does it hit after 2036? And the question is, yeah, I mean, at sub level, do you want to be in power right when that happens? Right. Do you want to maybe lose that election right before it happens and let the Democrats deal with it? Because I think that right now that's the only plan that they have, if there is any plan at all.

Of course, the Democrats, you know, one of the things I do is study elections worldwide. And I think you do as well, Patrick. I know we share a friend in Brian Locknane down in Australia who sings your praises. But this is not an American phenomenon. Virtually everywhere in the developed world, the working classes are moving away from center-left catch-all parties that used to dominate.

and are moving towards rightist populist parties, or in the rare case when you've got a rightist leader who recognizes and encourages that, like Pierre Poliev in Canada seems to be doing. And I won't ask you if you're doing work for the CPC, although you can tell my listeners if you are. Or Boris Johnson briefly in the UK Conservative Party. I look at the centre-right as being divided in

Two, you've got leaders who see this coming and are willing to make the adaptations. And you've got leaders who fight it, which simply means that the center right continues to be divided and lose ground because any effort to move to embrace the

Higher educated voters whose parents voted on the center right but are now open to voting for the center left. Split your party. Now, this is the lesson of David Cameron. This is the lesson of Malcolm Turnbull down in Australia. It's the lesson of Frederick Reinfeldt in Sweden who throws away his effort to rebrand the moderates. I'd say the only thing you need to know about Swedish politics that the most conservative party is called the moderates.

But throws away the moderates' effort to rebrand themselves as the New Workers Party, and he wins a record high share in 2010 for the last century, and then throws it away by being open borders, because he doesn't actually want to be the New Workers Party. So that's a long way of saying this is a worldwide phenomenon.

The center left can't figure out how to deal with its erosion without turning more and more on the cultural left, which turns more and more into a loser for them. But the right has its problem because the old right has to recognize that the new right, the new working class is going to be different. And, you know, you're saying.

Of course we're going to be more hardline on immigration. Of course we're going to be more hardline on trade. Of course we're going to take a blind eye towards fiscal responsibility, to which many people on the old right say, and in what measure is that conservative? I see that as partly being behind the Haley movement, and I think it's not a coincidence that the three best places that Haley had in her primary were D.C., Alexandria, and Arlington, which is the epitome of the Washington Beltway.

How does a Republican old guard accept that they're now the losers in this? We make a strong argument. She would have been a strong general election candidate, but she simply was not where the party wanted to go. And I think ultimately, I don't think you, you know, over the long term. Right. I think you only have to look to the UK in terms of, yeah, they got rid of Boris Johnson.

but every you know certainly things have only gotten worse since they got rid of boris johnson they now see they're now seeing substantial uh erosion to their right to the reform party the successor of the old ukip the successor of the old brexit party um but basically by trying to um undo the kind of shift right uh the breakthrough that boris johnson had uh you know in the united states it was the blue wall

in the uk it was the red wall those northern labor seats that were working class that voted for brexit and uh he actually like won you know conservatives won tony blair's old seat in northern england right and uh it seems like look uh yeah uh johnson had a lot of liabilities but sunak is doing even worse

and certainly is not doing well on the issue of immigration. Now, it could be that maybe nobody could win that election. Conservatives in the UK have now been in power for something like 14 years going. So it's not like they would be expected to probably win the next election anyway. But do you have to lose the next election by breaking

your party. And the way the only way you've had any kind of a unified Conservative Party in the UK has when it has stood, I think, you know, four square right on the side of Brexit and on the side of, you know, on the side of the populist movement that I think has has has reshaped the right in the UK.

Well, yeah, I agree. You know, basically the response to Boris Johnson winning an unprecedented election was COVID.

12 months of what do we do now and fight within the party as to whether they should be responsive to the demands of the red wall constituents who, oh, by the way, had never liked traditional Tories and traditional Tories kind of saying, no, actually, you should like us now. And of course, what we've got is a government that campaigned to take back borders and record high legal immigration.

Record high illegal immigration, although, you know, to put it in perspective, they're complaining that they're getting 5000 people a month and we get 5000 people or more a day on the southern border, you know. So you look at that and you say, this is a party that doesn't want to change.

And they're going to get the electoral response to that. Now, I look and I say, I've seen this play before, Canada, in 1993, you know, when the progressive conservatives went from a massive majority to being a three-way split.

that the West wasn't happy with accommodations made to Quebec. Quebec wasn't happy that the accommodations weren't carried through, and the Tories were dropped to two seats as they got wiped out in both of these other regions. And 16% of the vote just doesn't cut it very far. And eventually what happened was the old dominant

Eastern Toronto wing of the party rejoined the ascendant Western wing, the Quebecers forming the separatist Bloc Québécois and Parti Québécois, which continue to this day. And the conservatives were in charge, but in a new coalition where they had to play along with the moderates to get their majority. But.

It was a conservative-oriented rather than a progressive-oriented Conservative Party. And now, under Pierre Pelliev, we see the Conservative Party of Canada, that reunited entity, polling at its highest level since the reunification. And shockingly, I say that ironically, doing quite well in working-class areas formerly dominated by the

labor union-formed New Democrats and in poor areas in Atlantic Canada that are working class but had shunned the old conservative-dominated Tories. Is there a lesson in this? That liberal fecklessness can draw, and liberal culturalness as driven by Justin Trudeau, can drive people away, but they have to have something that they can see as acceptable.

to go to they won't simply buy a pig in the poke yeah i mean i think of what you're seeing with the conservatives in canada it's always been always a bridesmaid never a bride they've i think in the last two elections have won the more votes than the liberals but um have not been able to put together a parliamentary majority um and now you're seeing it um uh now i would argue that a lot of that has to do with uh you know really post covet all over the world incumbent parties

are having a hell of a time uh not just uh you know not just in the uk not just in canada um i think you'd argue joe biden is having a hard time right um yeah when incumbent even when incumbents are sort of in the united states naturally favored for re-election now he's having less hard of a time um perhaps because of the some of the political weaknesses of his opponent and i think there's a lesson i mean there's a lesson um certainly that uh in canada

that you have, I'm going to botch this pronunciation, Paul Evra, the leader in Canada, I think has moved aggressively

to seize the mantle of the voters who have been most disappointed. It's talking, conservatives talking about housing policy in a way that you wouldn't see like a Donald Trump talking about housing policy, but he's moving aggressively to the middle and with double digit majorities, it seems like, which would be enough to oust Trudeau from power.

And here it's it's almost 50 50. But I do think that the difficulties you're seeing in Canada are the same as the difficulties that incumbent parties are facing all over the world. And I think ultimately, Joe Biden could still, you know, could still face here.

Well, Patrick, this is going to be a long discussion, and I don't mean long today. I mean, this has been going on for years. It's going to keep on going on for years unless we have some sort of world crisis like the Great Depression or the massive inflation of the late 1970s that crystallizes dramatic, sudden change that brings a new coalition to power.

So that means that listening to you is going to be important for a very long time. Where can my listeners follow your work? So I have a sub stack at Patrick Graffini dot com. You can subscribe to my newsletter there. I normally have a piece going out at least once a week. I'm Patrick Graffini on Twitter slash X and most of my work is on Twitter.

most other places, I suppose, but mostly on Twitter slash X and won't necessarily go all the way in calling it X yet. And Echelon Insights dot com is our polling company. And we're regularly putting out great stuff from there. Well, Patrick, I really enjoyed this conversation. I look forward to having you back. And thank you for coming on Beyond the Polls. Thanks so much, Henry.

That's it for this week. Join me next week as I'll feature a special guest. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the poles. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest. Life comes at you fast, which is why it's important to find some time to relax. A little you time. Enter Chumba Casino. With no download required, you can jump on anytime, anywhere for the chance to redeem some serious prizes. So treat yourself with

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