Belief, Desperation, and Conservatives’ False Hope

On What Monday May Bring

There’s an in house band that plays covers at Ottawa Senators games, or at least at Thursday’s night Leafs-Sens playoff game, and at the intermission before OT, they played a cover of the Hip’s Grace, Too. It wasn’t the first Hip cover, hilariously - as me and my buddy walked to the stadium, there was a cover of Blow At High Dough playing, though I must confess I was too drunk to tell if it was the same band. (I think it was a male vocalist earlier?)

Obviously, the loss fucking hurts, but it was an electric atmosphere with one of the best people I know, and that’s what I’m choosing to focus on, if only because I have to. It’s a similar dynamic in this campaign, where Conservatives are looking for any good news in a shitstorm of a campaign right now. I understand why they’re grasping around for any port in a storm, but it doesn’t make it any less intellectually vacuous.

I went through the model this week and tapped a few seats the model is too high on the Liberals in, and even with those manual overrides - Central Newfoundland, Markham Unionville, Sault Ste. Marie, and Kapuskasing—Timmins—Mushkegowuk - it’s 188 seats. (The model has got Matt Green down right now, which I don’t feel super great about, but call it 187 if you tip him over the line manually too.)

The problem for the Conservatives is that the path from 187 or whatever to 171 is littered almost entirely by hopes that other people will save them. There’s a handful of seats in Ontario, mostly in York, where the Conservatives could gain, but I’m also pseudo expecting us to gain Bay Of Quinte which is currently blue so that’s not great for them. In BC, right now the model sees 2 Conservative gain opportunities from the Liberals within 10%. That’s it.

So, what the Conservatives need is the Bloc to steal another 7-10 seats, the NDP to scrape a few more incumbents over the line, and basically sweep the tossups … all to get to maybe 165 Liberal seats. Sure. Congrats. I’ll be so fucking devastated if the outcome of the election is Liberal governance unfettered by the prospect of another election, given the financial situation of the NDP. And again, that’s probably the best case for the CPC.

My struggles with mental health and wanting to die has been talked about in these pages that I’m hesitant to invoke them, but there was a desperation in me to try and, I guess, prove to my illness or whatever part of my brain that was convinced I was worthless that I had value. It would take sometimes truly ludicrous forms, but it took some ludicrous forms because we had passed rationality on the road a million miles before. I’d say it was barely concealed psychosis, but that implied I managed to even sometimes conceal it.

But what is so interesting with the benefit of hindsight is how much my time straddling the line of wanting to live or not is how most losing partisans act. This isn’t just about Conservative partisans now - TruAnon certainly met any threshold for desperation in 2024 and don’t think for a second that just because Carney ends up working out I’m going to let all of those fucking chucklefucks celebrate a win they all laid their bodies in front of to stop - but it’s really funny.

IRG this week is as big of an outlier in Ontario as Franky was for months, and yet everybody who mocked Liberals for believing fake news and falling for whatever they were told by friendly husksters suddenly fell for Gordon Campbell’s old campaign manager putting out the first CPC lead since Claude Giroux lost the ability to win a fucking faceoff. (I swear I’m trying to get over this game.) It’s fun to point out the hypocrisy for fun, but it’s evidence of desperation.

This desperation is going to lead to more and worse takes, stupider discourse, and more and worse reactions. The problem with tricking yourself into believing something that makes you happy is you either have to deliver the goods, or you will get punched in the face again. All that these desperate Conservatives are going to do is make Monday worse than it needs to be.

Jenni Byrne has run arguably the worst political campaign of the 21st Century, a fight she can have with a certain podcaster and friend. (Look, Curse of Politics has been must listen to this month, doesn’t mean David Herle’s 2006 campaign doesn’t suck ass.) This is a campaign that has to go to Peterborough and Carleton on the final day instead of going on the offensive. For some reason, they’re convinced Anita Anand can be gotten (she can’t), but either way, it’s really fucking hilarious they’re having to play defence for Ferreri on the final day. They’re in Sasky and Calgary in the final 100 hours. But yeah man, you’ve definitely got momentum, for fucking sure. I’m sure it’s coming any second now.

The honest truth is that this has been one of the longest campaigns in modern times, if you start the clock properly at the October caucus meeting or even just the Freeland resignation. We’ve been going at an 11 for 4 months, be it campaigners or writers or media in general, and we’re all loopy at this point. But that need for something different, something new, something that has changed since Mark Carney called this election doesn’t mean anything has. Monday is going to suck for a lot of people who lied to themselves that this is close. It’s not.

At some point I’ll be able to get over the Sens loss Thursday and remember the fact that I got to watch the consequential game in Sens history in 8 years with the biggest fan I know. At some point I’m sure the people who genuinely think Pierre Poilievre will be PM after Monday will be able to get over their loss too. But they won’t have the memories of an otherwise great night that I’ll always have, everytime I hear the opening notes to Grace, Too.

And to my friend, we’ll be there when we get ‘em next year.