Hello Canada! Regarding the recent US election: it's their country, eh. Americans made a choice. Deal with it. Mr. Trump's critics claim they believe in democracy. The election was fairly run and produced a decisive result. The Republicans won. Period.

Some mainstream media outlets and much social media in Canada are devoted to hand-wringing and hair tugging over Mr. Trump’s victory. A lot of it speaks to one of Canadians’ less appealing traits: an ineffectual and generally hypocritical sense of moral superiority over Americans. One might take pause to reflect on the history of Indigenous / non-Indigenous relations in Canada or our sad performance in per capita carbon emissions before getting too haughty.  

Some instant prognosticators want to suggest a certain group or another was responsible for the election outcome. That's to fall prey to the same strain of uncritical thinking of identity politics that sometimes hobbled the Democratic ticket. Team Trump - Vance increased their votes among women. The Republican ticket upped its share of votes from African Americans. It received over 40% of the Hispanic vote. It won some usually Democratic counties in places like Texas with large numbers of Latino votes. Are all those voters fascist white male supremacists? I think not.

Ms. Harris faced a steep challenge created by President Joe Biden and the leadership of the Democratic Party. For the longest time Mr. Biden and his family seemingly were the only people who refused to recognize what many saw: his advanced age and evident decline made his re-election unlikely, even perilous for the American nation and the world. By the time Mr. Biden accepted political reality, his party had little time to re-group. Rather than an open process, it opted to gift the nomination to Vice President Harris. She or another candidate might have benefitted from the test of a primary process and an extended opportunity to be introduced to voters.

Having secured the nomination in an unprecedented fashion, Ms. Harris made a few critical unforced errors. The vice presidential pick of Tim Walz from Minnesota rather than Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was political malpractice.

The media strategy was chaotic. Running on 'joy’ and ‘vibes' propped up by celebrities, Team Harris spent weeks avoiding the press. That's right—an untested 'Democrat' candidate wanted to bypass the press. Until she didn't. Then her performance, even with friendly interlocutors, was often weak. She literally provided material for Republican advertisements particularly with repeated non-answers about how her administration might differ from Mr. Biden's. Ultimately Ms. Harris was a very rare presidential candidate to never hold a press conference. I was flabbergasted during the campaign when even some of my journalist colleagues defended Team Harris’s media strategy. Perhaps we can all now agree it didn’t help her.

The assault on Mr. Trump as a fascist or even Nazi by Democrats from a previous generation such as James Carville and Hillary Clinton was over the top to many voters who had not drunk that overripe Kool-Aid. Ms. Harris was unwise to truck down that road herself as the race tightened. It seems to me that voters recognized that Mr. Trump had been president for 4 years already. The American constitution and democratic system survived the experience. While his performance and rhetoric left much to be desired and his actions after his defeat in 2020 were abominable, his record as President was not like that of Hitler and the American system has not been supplanted by fascism. 

The constant Democrat sneering over its 'deplorable' and 'garbage' opponents undermined Ms. Harris to many Americans who simply wanted an opportunity to make up their own minds. 

Team Harris – Walz might have been better served on the policy front by emphasizing the great unspoken matter in campaign 2024: climate change and Mr. Trump’s denial-ism of same. Instead, Ms. Harris wanted to ensure Pennsylvanians she was not really opposed to fracking. That was another unforced error.

On the policy front, immigration was critical. Mr. Trump's plans for massive deportations and his rhetoric about ‘criminal’ migrants are frightening and will remain hugely problematic. All the same during the campaign he and J.D. Vance effectively exposed the contradictory, ineffective, wobbling record on the dossier of the Biden - Harris government. Sovereign nations require secure borders and effective, rational immigration policies. Ask Justin Trudeau.

Events matter. The impact of inflation on ordinary Americans. Wars ongoing in globally critical areas. To reiterate, Kamala Harris had a steep hill to climb.

Some proclaim that Mr. Trump will be dangerous and unreliable on the foreign front. Perhaps. I suggest voters wonder what could be worse than the ongoing mayhem in the Middle East and the illusion of Ukrainian total victory in a war of attrition against the Russian aggressor.

Perhaps there is another approach to foreign policy. Trump Mach 1 brokered the Abraham Accords that brought a measure of peace between Israel and some of its erstwhile enemies. Not a perfect plan, but perhaps better than yet another war in the Middle East? Negotiations to end the war between Russia and Ukraine are overdue. Perhaps a new American government can achieve that. At the moment we are perilously close to a global conflict or nuclear arms tragedy. I am not espousing Republican foreign policy. I am asking how one can look at the morass of Hamas – Israel, Russia – Ukraine, a flood of fentanyl and methamphetamine into the US and Canada and suggest that the Biden – Harris approach to international affairs was successful?

I am not a partisan. I am not an American. I lived in the USA as a child and have worked there off and on for decades. I have American family members and many friends and colleagues. To tar all of them with the brush of being part of an unstable fascist society strikes me as dehumanizing and false.

In all likelihood Donald J. Trump will be sworn in next January. May his critics and the media thoroughly examine his actions and plans. May his political opponents challenge him legitimately. Please oh please may journalists do their damn jobs and stop playing at being insiders and partisans. 

The American system provides an opportunity to make significant changes to Congress in 2026. Perhaps world citizens, including Mr. Trump's countless armchair critics in Canada will respectfully allow Americans an opportunity to live with their decision and sort out the consequences democratically.

James Cullingham is a filmmaker, historian and journalist. He is a fellow at Peter Gzowski College, an adjunct graduate faculty member at Trent University and founder of Tamarack Productions.