Trump is a threat to Canada, but not as much as he'd like to be

Their political system is very different than ours and for the next few years, that's a blessing.

As I was reading an article yesterday, I realized that their budget bills are not confidence motions and that realization made me learn more about the political system in the United States.

I’ve followed U.S. politics peripherally, like most of us probably did until Trump’s first term. Chances are, we all really started paying attention when that idiot thought tariffs would raise money from outside of his country and almost tanked his own economy.

The Prime Minister has to be diplomatic about it — I do not.

The good news is that there are not really “party politics” down there. I know we often refer to Democrats and Republicans as a monolith in the same way we do with Liberals and Conservatives, but it’s very different down there.

First, let’s go over what should be more familiar in order to set up the differences.

In Canada, we have parties where members have a sense of power (or real power if their leader is willing to risk losing an election based on very unpopular demands the membership is making of them), and the leader has power over the caucus.

The leader of a federal party in Canada must sign off on whether a potential candidate can even be a candidate. So, Leslyn Lewis? She got the nod from Erin O’Toole to run as a candidate, and the fact that she’s still a member of caucus is a decision Pierre Poilievre makes every single day.

Caucus has some power as well. They can throw a leader under the bus by holding a non-confidence motion. That’s how Pierre Poilievre took Erin O’Toole down, and the fact that Danielle Smith is still Premier of Alberta is a decision her caucus makes every single day, too.

Her caucus could make a different choice. It’s available to them every day.

Even today.

Not even joking — that option is available to them today.

That’s not how it works in the States

Each state has their own rules for “primaries” (like a candidate race) and anyone — even a mentally unfit and emotionally unstable dipshit — can run as a candidate and no one from “the party” can stop them.

It’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because they would be breaking the law if they tried.

If people want to vote in a primary in their state, all they have to do is tick the box of whichever party who is holding the primary on a voter registration form and they can vote. Unlike with our party system where we can purchase and cancel memberships, or hold many at one time and vote in all the races, if a Statian registers as a Democrat, they cannot turn around and register as a Republican to vote in their primary as well.

That is the way people vote for a candidate in their state, and how they also vote for the person they want as leader of the party/President.

In sum: the people of the United States choose their candidate for president, and the people within each state choose their candidate for congress, and the senate, and there is no “purity test”. If Republicans who register to vote for a congressional candidate like what the candidate says they will (or try to) do in congress, then that person will be the Republican representative; even if they’re talking about state-sponsored health care, or banning fracking, or tightening state gun laws.

There is a general “party” line, but if a person gets elected on an anti-guns for every lunatic in the state platform, they’re still the Republican representative.

There is no requirement for the Republican representative to be in favour of any of the policies the president wants. The president might make things difficult for them if they are not, but there’s nothing he can really do about it. He cannot throw the member out of caucus, he cannot stop them from running in the next election.

Now, the current makeup of the two different levels, Congress (the House), and the Senate, is also not in Trump’s favour.

The Republicans have the smallest majority in the House since 1931. They require 218 votes to pass any legislation and they have 219 members, which means any legislation can be held up by just two people. TWO!

The Senate is not exactly in the best shape either; the Republicans have 53 members to the Democrats’ (including three independents) 47. That means four Republicans can stand up to outlandish policies.

I’m not suggesting they will, but they could

The budget bill is currently being contested because not all Republicans have lost their marbles. The bill includes tax cuts, as well as a commitment to start paying down the U.S. eye-popping $36 trillion debt, and at least a few Republicans have the ability to see that reducing revenue won’t get them closer to paying down ballooning expenses.

This is, of course, one reason why Donald Trump wants tariffs. The “best word in the dictionary” that he couldn’t be bothered to read the definition.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just wave our magic wands and have someone else pay down our debt? Because that’s what he thought tariffs were going to do.

I know there’s some folks out there who want us to believe that a little premier who could made all the difference but that requires one to believe Donald J. Trump gives any f*cks about us or average folks who live in the States. And he doesn’t.

That industry leaders in the States were losing their freaking minds when Trump announced tariffs on February 1, I have no doubt. They understood immediately what tariffs would do to their bottom lines; they had just previously thought their smart as rock president did, too.

I also have no doubt they were making calls and raising hell about it after, which caused the small little man to start reposting screenshots of all the elected Republicans who agreed that tariffs were great (probably helpful for voters, tbh), as well as a bunch of two-week old posts from people super excited about attending the inauguration.

The guy needed his binky.

The point, however, is that an elected Republican is not required to support the leader, or his batshit alternate reality where everyone else will pay your bills because your friends want you to put more money in their pockets.

They are accountable only to those who elected them.

This is why ensuring the people who live there know what’s happening is far more important than bowing down to the madman who thinks himself king.

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