Biden, Trudeau, And Leadership's Inherent Obligations

On Biden, Trudeau, And Time's Cost

Because Canada is fundamentally an unserious country that doesn’t have an original thought, seemingly everybody’s second thought after Joe Biden announced he was stepping down as the Democratic nominee was about Justin Trudeau. It’s hackneyed thinking, a lame premise, and frankly lamentable that breaking US political history was treated as an excuse to indulge our leadership psychodrama up here, and yet it is our curse. The question of the Canadian Liberal Leadership rolls on, with the Prime Minister now on vacation till the end of the month. Given that nothing much will presumably happen while he’s away, and yesterday marked 4 weeks since the disastrous loss in the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection, let’s have an honest conversation about leadership, patriotism, putting country over party, and what leaders are owed by their countries.

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There is a line of argument, whenever I say that Trudeau has an obligation to go because his going will increase the number of Liberal seats, that somehow he has the right to run again. That he has earned some right to face Poilievre despite the polls, that his saving the party from ruin comes with an implied debt to the party to let him see out his tenure on his own terms. It’s only slightly less obtuse than the argument that it’s in the party’s interest to get destroyed with Trudeau so that he’s the one to “take the loss”, as if somehow 44 seats with him will be somehow better than 75 seats without him because we didn’t take someone else down with him. But it’s certainly nonsensical, because it flips the burden of obligation from Trudeau to the people, as if we - either the country at large, Liberal voters, or Liberal members, it’s never particularly clear - owe him something. We don’t.

Leadership of a political party in a democracy is about earning the people’s trust. Justin Trudeau does not have that right now. He has seen spectacularly bad polling numbers, but even more than that he has seen a spectacularly, horrifically, monstrously bad byelection result that pretty much bang on matches that polling. The Liberal plot to see a 5 point poll bounce by the summer has gone the way of everyone’s goals of a 6 pack by the May long weekend. Their numbers are now worse on average than they were when they leaked that goal. Things are fucking bad for the LPC. And the best we get is a fucking website about Poilievre. No new policies or new ideas, no articulation of liberal principles, a fucking anti-Poilievre website. I fucking despair.

(And yes, “Is relitigating what party leaders said and did in the 2000s” a valid point - there is an opportunity cost to focusing on dumb shit. The Liberals are attacking Pierre Poilievre for, amongst other things, voting against gay marriage, something he apologized for in La Presse in 2020. So either Liberals don’t believe that past acts can be forgiven - in which case how the fuck do you justify voting for Trudeau given *gestures at his Halloween costume* - or they’re massive fucking hypocrites about who deserves forgiveness. And if this is in part what your big attack on Poilievre has devolved into, instead of I don’t know attacking his current beliefs and advocating for your action policies, then it’s shit politics and further evidence the government is fucked.)

There’s been no media blitz from the PM, he didn’t attend the Calgary Stampede (which, yes, he absolutely could have done the weekend before leaving for the NATO summit in Washington), there’s been leaks about maybe possibly swapping out Chrystia Freeland for Mark Carney, but no decisions have been taken and no new strategy has been implemented. Despite a horrific loss in St. Paul’s, this government is in keep calm and carry on mode, and it’s not good enough. Liberals don’t have an answer, and that’s fundamentally not acceptable.

This is incredibly arrogant to say, but it’s also true so I’m gonna fucking say it; there has been less evidence of strategic thinking from the PM and the Cabinet in the last four weeks than there has been in the pages of this site. Either in actions, quotes, or leaks, this government has shown less command of the situation it finds itself in and less idea of what it can do to fix it than your local resident asshole pundit. There might be a master plan somewhere in the building formerly known as Langevin, but if you’re the average Liberal voter or member, there’s little reason to trust the party has any idea of where to go from here. And if the leadership can’t fix this, then it has to change.

The difference between Joe Biden’s bad debate performance and Barack Obama’s 2012 disaster of a first debate is that 2012 was a shock. Nobody, no matter how big a Democrat or a Republican, expected Obama to get beaten that bad by Mitt Romney. It was an aberrant performance from someone who was usually very good at big set piece moments, a night of disastrous oratory from a traditionally elite orator. Biden’s performance wasn’t that, it was confirmation of all of our worst fears about him. It was different, and the thing about the days and weeks after was that he was never able to show the world what he would have needed to to move the needle back. He couldn’t do a 5 rally day, which is the only thing that could have convinced any of us that he was fine, and that the debate was aberrant. And Democrats deserve better than that.

Trudeau’s flaws are different than Joe’s in specific, but there’s the same feeling in my bones after St. Paul’s. If the polls are fake and St. Paul’s was an aberration and there is actually a path forward for the party - not a path to win, even, just a path to something - then show me it. It’s been 4 weeks, show me something, anything that tells me you’re aware of the scale of the defeat we suffered, the hole we need to climb, and the path forward. I don’t have to agree with all the parts of it, but Liberal voters and Liberal members deserve evidence that the party’s heads aren’t up their collective asses. We haven’t seen anything yet, and with the leader on vacation till August, we won’t for a while yet.

I have tried to frame the discussion on this site since I called for a new leader mostly neutral on how to go forward, because there are a lot of ideas that can be implemented either by the incumbent leadership or a new PM. I stand by those ideas firmly, and think that they represent a starting point for renewal, either in the hands of Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney, Anita Anand, or whoever else. But at some point the question of leadership has to be settled. Joe Biden saw the writing on the wall, a comparatively small but stubborn deficit that more importantly he was not the person to bridge. He knew he was not the leader for the moment, and stepped aside.

Justin Trudeau needs to reckon with whether or not he can be the leader we need right now. He has an obligation to the Liberal Party and to liberal and progressive voters to not allow any more Conservative MPs than is absolutely possible. If he is the man for the job, he needs to come back from vacation swinging, with a refreshed strategy, a final decision on Mark Carney’s status, a coherent message that combines the good parts of the economic message with a coherent message on Poilievre, and an all-out blitz both in terms of ad spending and appearances. If Trudeau wants to claim he’s the right person for the job, show us. We deserve a leader who can save the Liberal Party. And if he’s not able, he should take a page out of Biden’s book.