Frankly Speaking

Donald Trump will be the 45 th president of the United States – to the shock of many people, myself included. His victory is a massive repudiation of the polling industry, the mainstream media, the Democratic Party and many Republicans, particularly most of the party establishment. The polls were all wrong. Almost every one of them had Hillary Clinton winning, right up until Tuesday morning. Trump not only won the electoral vote, which in 48 of 50 states means that the candidate with the most votes wins all the electoral votes, but throughout Tuesday night he was winning the popular vote. He may end up slightly behind Hillary Clinton when the final vote is counted. The same thing happened in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore got the most votes, but lost to George W. Bush when the Florida result was finally decided, weeks after the election. Because of the electoral vote system, Democratic candidates for president can be on the losing end even when they get the most votes. Thi...

The Canadian hand-wringing over Donald Trump is palpable. There is hardly a media or political figure who won't go out of their way to denounce the Republican candidate for president of the United States. The most recent one to jump aboard was James Moore, former Conservative cabinet minister, who painted quite a dark and foreboding picture on CBC Radio's The Early Edition Friday morning. They may all be correct. However, it isn't up to Canadians to elect or defeat Trump. That is the job given to American voters, who hopefully will turn out at the polls in droves in November. I watched almost all of Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican convention on Thursday. I wanted to hear it for myself - not through a variety of media filters. I also wanted to compare it with earlier speeches I'd seen him make after primary wins. Those, I thought at the time, were stream of consciousness speeches - with him saying whatever came into his head. I wondered if this would...