OTTAWA (Reuters) - About two-thirds of Canadians surveyed this month said American democracy cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump in the White House, and about half said the United States is on the way to becoming an authoritarian state, a poll released on Monday said.
The November U.S. election is likely to pit President Joe Biden against Trump, who is the clear frontrunner to win the Republican nomination as voting in the presidential primary race kicks off in Iowa on Monday.
Sixty-four percent of respondents in the Angus Reid Institute poll of 1,510 Canadians said they agreed with the statement: “U.S. democracy cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump.” Twenty-eight percent disagreed.
The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters seeking to block certification of Biden’s 2020 election win shocked many Canadians, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly blamed Trump for inciting the mob.
Trump has vowed if elected again to punish his political enemies, and he has drawn criticism for using increasingly authoritarian language.
Three times as many Canadians say a Biden victory would be better for Canada’s economy (53%) than a Trump win (18%), according to the poll which was seen exclusively by Reuters. The poll, taken between Jan. 9-11, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points
The very last thing you need is for Trump to become a martyr.
While that is certainly true, in the short term he is impossible to replace as a demagogue. The people who rabidly follow him tend to do so at the absolute exclusion of everyone and everything else, even if it’s supposedly “their side” making the offering.
For a couple examples, the RNC is suffering hard for cash because Trumpers are donating directly to him and skipping the RNC entirely, and look at how Nikki Haley lost to fucking “None of the candidates” in the Nevada primary. They literally came out to the primary to cast a “go fuck yourself Nikki” vote instead of just staying home because the orange chancre wasn’t on the primary ballot, lol.
If the spraytan antichrist were to inexplicably lose his last horcrux tomorrow, he would indeed become an instant martyr – but with no one remaining able to take up that martyr’s cause. For Trumpers, it’s literally Trump or no one at all. His own kids have the charisma of blighted tomatoes, and no one in the GOP comes anywhere near understanding how to move his devotees.
It MIGHT just give us enough of a space in the noise to try to return to the path of democracy. I don’t know. For myself, I just want him to keep eating as many more hamberders with extra large fries and a side of lard nightly for as long as he can lift those little hands up to that hamberder hole and push 'em in.