Opinion: Anger is everywhere; are liberals paying attention? – Montreal Gazette

In the recent senatorial elections in Georgia, the city voted Democratic, the countryside voted Republican. We saw the same demarcations during the presidential elections, and during the referendum on Brexit in the United Kingdom. In the 2018 Quebec elections, Montreal and part of Quebec City voted Liberal and Qubec Solidaire, while the rest of Quebec voted CAQ (most ridings) or PQ (a few).

Premier Franois Legault has been able to channel popular anger and identity anxiety for the past two years. The glue still holds, thanks to his impressive management of communication in times of pandemic. But what will happen once COVID-19 becomes a bad memory?

In Ontario, in front of a dismayed intellectual elite, Conservative Doug Ford won the most recent election with 40 per cent of the vote. Like Legault and like Britains Boris Johnson and Albertas Jason Kenney Ford is a populist. It would be incorrect, unfair and demagogic to call them Trump emulators. What they have in common, however, is they have managed to harness the frustration felt by an angry population, eaten away at by anxiety and incomprehension.

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Opinion: Anger is everywhere; are liberals paying attention? - Montreal Gazette