Unlike most of the candidates crisscrossing the country on speaking tours and book launches, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney embodies everything the Democrats need in order to win.
Carney says Canada will negotiate if US has ‘right attitude’
A trade deal would be possible if the U.S. returned to the negotiating table with the “right attitude,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said.
There has been a lot of angst in the Democratic Party recently: Should the party be more centrist, more middle-of-the-road, to appeal to more moderate voters? Or is all the enthusiasm located with the progressives?
As former presidential candidate Howard Dean famously said, “I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” What does the Democratic Party even stand for anymore? And, crucially, having lost twice to Donald J. Trump, who should the Democrats nominate for president in 2028?
I have the answer to that last question: The person the Democrats need to nominate is Mark Carney.
Yes, Carney is the prime minister of Canada. But unlike most of the candidates crisscrossing the country on speaking tours and book launches, he embodies everything the Democrats need in order to win the White House in 2028.
Carney did what Trump did not
First, Carney has a quiet resolve about him. When Trump used social media to mock the Canadian prime minister as “Governor Carney” and accused him of being “weak and ineffective,” Carney did not stoop to similar sophomoric tactics. He did not engage in name-calling on social media. No four-letter words, no AI-generated pictures of apes.
Instead, Carney calmly and confidently explained to Canadians what had happened in trade negotiations with the United States: “Over the past year, the United States has imposed a series of tariffs that violate its commitments under our agreement with them and Mexico, CUSMA. … We cannot accept what they’ve offered, and we will not give what they have asked.”
Carney also has a steely spine. While Trump threatened Canada to “fall in line” to the trade terms he had dictated, the prime minister stood his ground, even at the cost of a trade war with the United States, knowing that such a stance would raise costs for Canadians.
Moreover, Carney has made it clear he is more interested in solving problems than griping about them. What a concept! When Trump shifted America’s foreign policy to one that is friendlier with longtime foes Russia and North Korea, and more confrontational with longtime allies such as Britain and France, Carney neither backed down nor complained.
Instead, in remarks delivered to the World Economic Forum, the prime minister laid out a new strategy for countries like Canada to compete and thrive in the new world order. He called for an alliance of the “middle powers” to join together in what he called a “principled and pragmatic” coalition.
“This is not naive multilateralism,” Carney explained. “It’s building coalitions that work – issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. … In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice – compete with each other for favor, or to combine to create a third path with impact.”
And how has all this played out?
Carney’s more popular than any Trump acolyte
Well, 76% of Canadians believe Canada did the right thing by ending trade negotiations with Trump. And Carney is enjoying a 60% job approval rating (by contrast, Trump’s approval rating is at 33%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken Aug. 21-24).
Trump has repeatedly said that Canada should become the 51st state. He better hope not. Because if Canada did and Carney became an American and ran for president, his popularity would swamp that of Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio or any other of the Trump acolytes likely to run in the next presidential election.
This will never happen, of course. But Democrats should take notice. The Democratic Party has a long and storied history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (see: Clinton, Hillary, 2016). If Democrats seriously entertain notions of winning in 2028, then look north to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for how it’s done.
Rusty Hills, a past chair of the Michigan Republican Party, is a lecturer at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. This column originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press.