Yeah, sorry...after Carney's takedown of Trump, why would anyone vote for Pete Polyester? Aside from "I'm not Trudeau", he's still the same "Skippy" who tried to bully his way past the RCMP..too big for his britches and utterly devoid of original thought.
I’m baffled by the CPC’s inability to roster a solid candidate, and their willingness to double down on PP at a time where ripping pages from a MAGA playbook probably isn’t the best approach.
Of course in four years from now the situation with the US might be completely different. And just like Trump is single-handedly getting Carney elected now, the situation in the US in four years will have an outsized impact on Canada as well.
Is the US a full blown fascist failed democracy in four years? It is possible. Could Trump and the GOP have imploded completely and the US is rebuilding its institutions and alliances? I could see this happening as well. Both will impact politics in Canada and require the CPC and LPC to adapt.
What I would worry about if we’re conservative is the lack of intellectual talent in the party. And the ones with some brain cells are staying quiet or are participating in the dumbing down of our politics. Right now the only conservative intellectual is the food professor and that is not going to cut it.
The CPC ceased to be 'conservative' since the 'reform' influence. Conservative politics formally was more balanced. Now it's totally Libertarian with a mix of discrimination on many levels - gender, race, religion etc. all the usual suspects. The root cause of the ability to influence is economic discontent with a highly unbalanced economy- introduced by Thatcher/Reagan/Mulrony and 'trickle-down' economics that prioritized shareholders above all. The gap between the wealthy and not is large and growing and the 'not' are pissed. Conservatives have no plan to balance value for all citizens - indeed, their platform is to reduce any taxes. Taxes pay for common requirements (eg: infrastructure) while creating jobs that ultimately pay income taxes which get invested in public projects etc, etc. a virtuous cycle. But - that's NOT a CPC political platform. Historically, CPC tend to sell parts of Canada to 'balance' the budget.
I think the political future is going to be shaped more by the demise of the NDP than by what might happen to the Cons, whose problem remains the fact that 60% of Canadians share small “l” liberal values.
If the NDP loses official party status (or gets completely wiped out) then what is its future? And in a 2-party race outside of Quebec the Liberals win.
The NDP has an obvious base to rebuild from. Lots of well organized and active membership and elected representatives on the provincial level across the country. Maybe they don’t bounce back, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a clear sweep of the current federal deadwood does them good in the medium-long term
They’re a lot better placed to bounce back than the Liberals would have been if they’d continued the trajectory from a couple months ago. Where does the new blood come from to revitalize a Liberal Party reduced to 30-40 seats all concentrated on one region?
The CPC is a party of grievance politics now. Losing will just fuel their anger; there will not be a split, just more "F Carney" idiocy.
Also, CPC focusing on Alberta is a mistake. Alberta is their free space on the electoral bingo card so they can jgnore it at no peril. CPC must-must-must appeal to the " Netflix & Chill" social upper and middles, or at least present like Harper did.
Oh, also cut the Woke shit, does not work in urban areas.
I think you are trying to be even-handed but at times it very much reads as if you wish the Cons were ahead… that’s not true is it?
If you are in fact a Liberal supporter, maybe these post mortems are better saved until after the election?
Don’t misunderstand, I love your detailed writing but I find your sympathies a little confusing at this moment in time. If the Cons want to screw up this election please let them. Canada really needs a Carney majority to deal with the southern shitshow “war” that is only picking up speed!
I think the point was to discern that the CPC right now too ideological and straying from the coalition's purpose. That the CPC is not strategic to win elections right now and what happens if they lose... again!
In many ways, the Conservative cultural dominance out west does them a functional disservice. The pipeline their staffers and politicians are coming out of is an environment that doesn’t actually require them to be very good at their actual jobs. Instead, it rewards fervency and loyalty to small pressure groups.
That’s not something they can just shake off once they get to the big leagues.
This is rare, but I’m not sure I agree with you about Ford’s chances post-Poilievre. I hear you that the more strident folks in Alberta and Saskatchewan will be unhappy with him - every party has some disaffected group, even in power. I wonder if the David Parkers of the world have a shelf life, especially given the nonsense over in AHS - the more extreme Conservatives may fall out of favour out there. And I think Ford’s Trump story - “I supported him, then he fucked us”, or thereabouts - will sell better in Alberta than you think. And lastly, won’t 2029 sound a lot like Ontario 2018, where the Conservatives lost the previous winnable election and now were the beneficiaries of an electorate truly sick of the incumbent?
(Also, I’m much less confident in a housing crisis easing than you. The feds can do what they will - the provincial and local governments will still listen first to their boomer constituents, the most awful pieces of humanity that exist, and will have incentives to keep housing prices high, youth be damned.)
Canada focuses far too much on big tent parties and party popular vote.
I really wish we had ranked ballots (STV preferred, but even Instant Runoff Voting would help). Then the Federal Progressive Conservatives and Reform would never have merged (or could separate again), and the Big Tent "Liberal" bubble would burst. This would allow voters to actually have choices that are closer to what could represent them.
Unfortunately we have Canadians that believe Canada elects the Prime Minister (and thus believe there is a two-horse-race between party leaders), and other Canadians with a tunnel-vision on the toxic concept of "Party Popular Vote" (Which is again focused on the parties and the cult of leadership, and not on PEOPLE who can actually represent us from our regions).
Trudeau made stupid mistakes, which was common for Trudeau even when a policy idea was good. One of the mistakes was to put the opposition in charge of the committee studying electoral reform, with it configured different than any other parliamentary committee. The party hacks from the NDP, Greens and CPC did the hyper-partisan thing and merely opposed reform. Then these hyper-partisan groups spread misinformation about what went wrong.
The LPC had a majority, but Trudeau stupidly gave that up and allowed the other parties to control the agenda and block reform. The LPC members of the committee actually did work, and what they wrote in the study actually contradicted some of what Trudeau's election campaign team said.
The NDP and Greens are narrowly focused on "Party Popular Vote", couldn't see anything beyond their tunnel vision, and should be written off as irrelevant. On this specific policy I blame the NDP and Greens more than I do the LPC, but blame sits on all the current parties.
The Conservatives only cared about embarrassing the Liberals, so set up impossible conditions (A referendum on optimizing for "Party Popular Vote", which will always fail).
It is one of the things that makes me not interested in the current Conservative party even though I have many views which are considered conservative. The current Conservatives kept to short-term thinking of being angry and seeking to embarrass the Trudeau Liberals. They did not exhibit any long-term thinking about what is good for the conservative movement in Canada, or what was good for Canada as a whole.
The current Conservatives will seem fine if you are narrowly focused on who to be ANGRY at all the time, but not useful if you want to actually DO something.
I want a real Progressive Conservative Party back....
You are correct, and subsequently that will doom the Conservative Party as old NDP supporters will vote Liberal to stop Pollievre. FPTP has a way of giving more seats to a party with less percentage of vote. Especially when large numbers of Con supporters are in 2 Provines.
Plurality (FPFP is Single Member Plurality) forces people into thinking in terms of two competing visions (ignoring everything but what is believed to be the top two options).
In the current context, many Canadians are looking at the LPC as the lesser of two evils. Partisans have made politics to be about fear and hatred, and the primary thing that "Unites" the so-called "Right" is a dislike of the LPC. That uniting has forced anyone that disagrees with the CPC to also "Unite" behind one brand to keep out the "Conservatives".
Few Canadians I'm aware of are voting FOR anything, and when you ask them why they vote Conservative it is because they hate the "Liberals" and if you ask them why they are voting for the Liberals it is because they hate/fear the "Conservatives".
If the current Conservatives form government, which I still believe is possible, there will be an even more painful push to "Unite the Left" (With again, the only thing that unites them being a dislike of the "Conservatives").
Ranked ballots help push politics the opposite direction, where successful candidates are those who do the "Even if I'm not your #1, then maybe put me down-ballot". It also allows regional parties to form, and reduces the alienation that a focus on "Party Popular Vote" or pan-Canadian parties in general cause.
You see this in leadership races, and it is the same type of thing that should be happening during general elections. Leadership races during my lifetime never used divisive FPTP, and instead used runoff voting (district delegates in the early days). The parties then modernized to using Instant Runoff Voting, even if they report it painfully slowly for the video cameras (they often don't show the Instant part).
Yeah, sorry...after Carney's takedown of Trump, why would anyone vote for Pete Polyester? Aside from "I'm not Trudeau", he's still the same "Skippy" who tried to bully his way past the RCMP..too big for his britches and utterly devoid of original thought.
I’m baffled by the CPC’s inability to roster a solid candidate, and their willingness to double down on PP at a time where ripping pages from a MAGA playbook probably isn’t the best approach.
Of course in four years from now the situation with the US might be completely different. And just like Trump is single-handedly getting Carney elected now, the situation in the US in four years will have an outsized impact on Canada as well.
Is the US a full blown fascist failed democracy in four years? It is possible. Could Trump and the GOP have imploded completely and the US is rebuilding its institutions and alliances? I could see this happening as well. Both will impact politics in Canada and require the CPC and LPC to adapt.
What I would worry about if we’re conservative is the lack of intellectual talent in the party. And the ones with some brain cells are staying quiet or are participating in the dumbing down of our politics. Right now the only conservative intellectual is the food professor and that is not going to cut it.
The CPC ceased to be 'conservative' since the 'reform' influence. Conservative politics formally was more balanced. Now it's totally Libertarian with a mix of discrimination on many levels - gender, race, religion etc. all the usual suspects. The root cause of the ability to influence is economic discontent with a highly unbalanced economy- introduced by Thatcher/Reagan/Mulrony and 'trickle-down' economics that prioritized shareholders above all. The gap between the wealthy and not is large and growing and the 'not' are pissed. Conservatives have no plan to balance value for all citizens - indeed, their platform is to reduce any taxes. Taxes pay for common requirements (eg: infrastructure) while creating jobs that ultimately pay income taxes which get invested in public projects etc, etc. a virtuous cycle. But - that's NOT a CPC political platform. Historically, CPC tend to sell parts of Canada to 'balance' the budget.
LOLZ
The new Con conspiracy theory? Carney is the mastermind behind Trump’s tariffs LOLLLLL
I think the political future is going to be shaped more by the demise of the NDP than by what might happen to the Cons, whose problem remains the fact that 60% of Canadians share small “l” liberal values.
If the NDP loses official party status (or gets completely wiped out) then what is its future? And in a 2-party race outside of Quebec the Liberals win.
The NDP has an obvious base to rebuild from. Lots of well organized and active membership and elected representatives on the provincial level across the country. Maybe they don’t bounce back, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a clear sweep of the current federal deadwood does them good in the medium-long term
They’re a lot better placed to bounce back than the Liberals would have been if they’d continued the trajectory from a couple months ago. Where does the new blood come from to revitalize a Liberal Party reduced to 30-40 seats all concentrated on one region?
I think you raise good points to consider. I also know you don’t need to use words like fuck to get our attention.
The CPC is a party of grievance politics now. Losing will just fuel their anger; there will not be a split, just more "F Carney" idiocy.
Also, CPC focusing on Alberta is a mistake. Alberta is their free space on the electoral bingo card so they can jgnore it at no peril. CPC must-must-must appeal to the " Netflix & Chill" social upper and middles, or at least present like Harper did.
Oh, also cut the Woke shit, does not work in urban areas.
I think you are trying to be even-handed but at times it very much reads as if you wish the Cons were ahead… that’s not true is it?
If you are in fact a Liberal supporter, maybe these post mortems are better saved until after the election?
Don’t misunderstand, I love your detailed writing but I find your sympathies a little confusing at this moment in time. If the Cons want to screw up this election please let them. Canada really needs a Carney majority to deal with the southern shitshow “war” that is only picking up speed!
I think the point was to discern that the CPC right now too ideological and straying from the coalition's purpose. That the CPC is not strategic to win elections right now and what happens if they lose... again!
In many ways, the Conservative cultural dominance out west does them a functional disservice. The pipeline their staffers and politicians are coming out of is an environment that doesn’t actually require them to be very good at their actual jobs. Instead, it rewards fervency and loyalty to small pressure groups.
That’s not something they can just shake off once they get to the big leagues.
Par for the course...and thank god!
Yes
This is rare, but I’m not sure I agree with you about Ford’s chances post-Poilievre. I hear you that the more strident folks in Alberta and Saskatchewan will be unhappy with him - every party has some disaffected group, even in power. I wonder if the David Parkers of the world have a shelf life, especially given the nonsense over in AHS - the more extreme Conservatives may fall out of favour out there. And I think Ford’s Trump story - “I supported him, then he fucked us”, or thereabouts - will sell better in Alberta than you think. And lastly, won’t 2029 sound a lot like Ontario 2018, where the Conservatives lost the previous winnable election and now were the beneficiaries of an electorate truly sick of the incumbent?
(Also, I’m much less confident in a housing crisis easing than you. The feds can do what they will - the provincial and local governments will still listen first to their boomer constituents, the most awful pieces of humanity that exist, and will have incentives to keep housing prices high, youth be damned.)
Canada focuses far too much on big tent parties and party popular vote.
I really wish we had ranked ballots (STV preferred, but even Instant Runoff Voting would help). Then the Federal Progressive Conservatives and Reform would never have merged (or could separate again), and the Big Tent "Liberal" bubble would burst. This would allow voters to actually have choices that are closer to what could represent them.
https://r.flora.ca/p/why-i-dont-consider-what-most-call
Unfortunately we have Canadians that believe Canada elects the Prime Minister (and thus believe there is a two-horse-race between party leaders), and other Canadians with a tunnel-vision on the toxic concept of "Party Popular Vote" (Which is again focused on the parties and the cult of leadership, and not on PEOPLE who can actually represent us from our regions).
Wasn’t it the Liberal Party that promised electoral reform in Canada, back in 2015 if Canadians voted for them?
Anyone who clicks the link to the article will see what happened on electoral reform. The last thing is a link to:
https://r.flora.ca/p/justin-trudeau-electoral-reform
Trudeau made stupid mistakes, which was common for Trudeau even when a policy idea was good. One of the mistakes was to put the opposition in charge of the committee studying electoral reform, with it configured different than any other parliamentary committee. The party hacks from the NDP, Greens and CPC did the hyper-partisan thing and merely opposed reform. Then these hyper-partisan groups spread misinformation about what went wrong.
The LPC had a majority, but Trudeau stupidly gave that up and allowed the other parties to control the agenda and block reform. The LPC members of the committee actually did work, and what they wrote in the study actually contradicted some of what Trudeau's election campaign team said.
The NDP and Greens are narrowly focused on "Party Popular Vote", couldn't see anything beyond their tunnel vision, and should be written off as irrelevant. On this specific policy I blame the NDP and Greens more than I do the LPC, but blame sits on all the current parties.
The Conservatives only cared about embarrassing the Liberals, so set up impossible conditions (A referendum on optimizing for "Party Popular Vote", which will always fail).
It is one of the things that makes me not interested in the current Conservative party even though I have many views which are considered conservative. The current Conservatives kept to short-term thinking of being angry and seeking to embarrass the Trudeau Liberals. They did not exhibit any long-term thinking about what is good for the conservative movement in Canada, or what was good for Canada as a whole.
The current Conservatives will seem fine if you are narrowly focused on who to be ANGRY at all the time, but not useful if you want to actually DO something.
I want a real Progressive Conservative Party back....
You are correct, and subsequently that will doom the Conservative Party as old NDP supporters will vote Liberal to stop Pollievre. FPTP has a way of giving more seats to a party with less percentage of vote. Especially when large numbers of Con supporters are in 2 Provines.
Plurality (FPFP is Single Member Plurality) forces people into thinking in terms of two competing visions (ignoring everything but what is believed to be the top two options).
In the current context, many Canadians are looking at the LPC as the lesser of two evils. Partisans have made politics to be about fear and hatred, and the primary thing that "Unites" the so-called "Right" is a dislike of the LPC. That uniting has forced anyone that disagrees with the CPC to also "Unite" behind one brand to keep out the "Conservatives".
Few Canadians I'm aware of are voting FOR anything, and when you ask them why they vote Conservative it is because they hate the "Liberals" and if you ask them why they are voting for the Liberals it is because they hate/fear the "Conservatives".
If the current Conservatives form government, which I still believe is possible, there will be an even more painful push to "Unite the Left" (With again, the only thing that unites them being a dislike of the "Conservatives").
Ranked ballots help push politics the opposite direction, where successful candidates are those who do the "Even if I'm not your #1, then maybe put me down-ballot". It also allows regional parties to form, and reduces the alienation that a focus on "Party Popular Vote" or pan-Canadian parties in general cause.
You see this in leadership races, and it is the same type of thing that should be happening during general elections. Leadership races during my lifetime never used divisive FPTP, and instead used runoff voting (district delegates in the early days). The parties then modernized to using Instant Runoff Voting, even if they report it painfully slowly for the video cameras (they often don't show the Instant part).
Provinces.