When it comes to American politics, Canadians are heavily Democratic.
But Canadians might want to pause before hoping for a Democratic victory in November's congressional elections.
Canada is economically dependent on the United States and although Canada has fared much better than the U.S. in the Great Recession, Canada too is stuck in the economic doldrums and will remain so as long as American consumers keep their money in their wallets. They will likely stay out of the market as long as fear dominates the U.S. economy. As long as they do so, job growth in the U.S. will remain anemic.
It is the American consumer, then, who will ultimately put the U.S., Canada, and much of the rest of the global economy back on track to full recovery.
A Republican victory in November might be the political catalyst to move that consumer. Consider a number of factors:
The United States is clearly uncomfortable with Democrats in possession of the White House and Congress. In 1992, Democratic president Bill Clinton came to office with a Democratic Congress - the first time that had happened in many years - and promptly lost his majority in Congress two years later. Most economists mark 1994 as the beginning of the boom years that accompanied the Clinton administration.
President Barack Obama also brought a majority Democratic Congress with him two years ago but polls now strongly indicate that he will lose that majority, at least in the House of Representatives, in the next two months. This certainly doesn't mean that a new boom will start in 2010 as it did in 1994, because too many economic factors are very different. But it does perhaps foretell that the current anger and hopelessness gripping millions of Americans may give way to greater optimism as a result of the catharsis of "giving the Democrats hell for making things worse, rather than better."
For many Americans - main street - things are worse today than they were in the fall of 2008. The collapse of Wall Street and the U.S. banking system may no longer loom, but unemployment is significantly higher, foreclosures are greater and nothing seems to be getting any better.
Many main-streeters forget - or never really understood - that the current economic downturn is at least as much the fault of the Republicans as the Democrats and that Democratic policies haven't really made anything worse. Indeed, they may have helped avert an even greater economic disaster.
But angry voters - and the American electorate is very angry right now - don't want to hear about disasters avoided. They want to see better results. And they are not seeing them at the moment.
Most Americans consumers - or the potential consumers who are part of the 90 per cent of Americans who have kept their jobs - have money to spend. They are saving more than at any time in recent history and they are paying down their debts. But they are not spending out of fear that things will get worse. They have not only seen or experienced an economy in near collapse, but they have also experienced the great oil spill, in some ways reminiscent of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Their roads, bridges, dams and electric grid seem to be crumbling around them. They have lost thousands of troops killed in Iraq and many more grievously wounded and seem to be undergoing the same thing again in Afghanistan. Wherever they look they see incompetence, particularly in government.
Many Canadians might loathe the Tea Party, or the near demagogues of the air, such as Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. But all three resonate with conservative Americans who seek a quick solution for Mr. Obama's supposed lurch to the left.
At the same time, the President and the Democrats are suffering even among liberal and independent voters. The rancorous health-care debate, which eventually produced a 2,000-plus-page law that no one seems to understand and that compromised on every major question, was an exercise in futility that turned many of Mr. Obama's supporters right off.
There is a national mood of pessimism and depression in the United States today. To many who will vote in November, it doesn't matter a bit whether Mr. Obama and the Democrats are truly at fault for America's ills. They want change and they won't come back to the market until they feel safer and more secure. They are more convinced than ever that nothing will change if the political alignment in Washington remains the same.
Most Canadians may be appalled at the prospect of a Republican victory, but there's a good chance such an outcome will have a silver lining for Canadian economic recovery.
David Bercuson is a professor of history at the University of Calgary.