Canada, Forum, And Panic For Lack Of Anything Better To Do

Calm Down. Please. I'm Begging You.

One of the things I’ve had to face in my two years of doing this is a lot of worried liberals. Either in the US or Canada, the panic all over my mentions at the prospects of either Joe Biden or  Justin Trudeau has always whipped itself into a frenzy, needlessly stressing people when the facts provide nothing to worry about. And yes, even in the US, there was no need for the Democratic panic that came, because it wasn’t founded in anything rational. Sure, the polls were shit, but what good did any of the panicking do? It’s not like it made November 3rd go any easier for you, and it certainly was the case that the panic around the 2019 Canadian election and the Georgia runoffs was an exercise in wasted panic, as the math both times told a consistent story of strength for the left wing party, and on the night we got a result that looked remarkably close to what you should have expected, and yet, people panicked. And the reason they did was simple; the lack of anything better to do.

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I always used to run the cooking for the two big food events for my family - New Year’s Eve and Super Bowl Sunday - and my mother and I used to clash (in a very playful sense) because she would always want to make sure I was on top of everything, and I would always have a plan sketched out in my mind for days beforehand. For me, it was a task which required army-level precision, and I always pulled it off exquisitely, but she loved nothing more than to hover, and to second guess. I always used to wonder why, but it was simple - she was just waiting for the events of the day to begin, and so she had nothing better to do than to make sure I was on top of the schedule for the day (as I always was). She was panicking for the lack of anything better to do, and it’s the perfect metaphor for the experience Canadian liberals are going through.

Mainstreet, EKOS, and Nanos all released polls showing extremely good Liberal positions in Quebec, Ontario, and BC yesterday, but fucking Forum Research released a poll that makes literally no sense, and my mentions became full of chucklefuckery that could be best summed up as “but what if it’s right?!?” People panicked because of a tweet from Quito Maggi, as if Quito’s vague tweets were newsworthy (they’re not) and as if the lesson of this campaign hasn’t been that overreacting to risibly bad polls is dumb (it still is dumb, especially when it’s Forum). Like, have we forgotten how Forum were the morons who released a 2013 byelection poll, on a one night sample, showing the Liberals ahead by 28% in Brandon Souris - on the night of the fucking Grey Cup? Have we forgotten that these morons spent the entirety of the 2015-2019 Parliament having a Tory majority when no pollster even had them close to winning? Have we forgotten that it’s fucking Forum, who are a collective joke? My response to the poll was “I see Forum is Forum-ing hard today”, which is always the correct response. The Bloc would get 51 seats in Quebec, according to these chucklefucks, but people who should know better panicked about it anyways. Make it make sense.

The thing I don’t get about these people, these fucking liberals - and if you’re reading this and you think I’m shading you here, I absolutely am - is what the fuck do you want? When the polls show amazing results for the Liberals, you’re miserable, talking about how it’s too good to believe and it can’t happen and what about this and what about that and what if this or what if that, and then when Forum drops a poll that should be drowned in the Rideau Canal, you’re miserable, because clearly it means something important. What fucking result do you want, because you come to me and you want me to tell you everything is going to be okay (which it will, in this case), but then when things go well, you don’t believe me? It would be infuriating if I didn’t know what this was.

Understand what this is, because the illogic of this bullshit is verging on a level of stupidity that I honestly didn’t realize people could still find. Panic about Trudeau if you want, but you have to understand that at some point you’re looking for bad news. You’re looking for the way it’s all going to fall apart, and the thing is, that fear will become self fulfilling, you get that, right? If you’re looking for evidence Trudeau is up shit’s creek without a paddle, to quote my Grandfather, then you’ll find it, or at the very least you’ll become convinced it’s coming right around the corner. This is the best position the Liberals have found themselves in since the first polls of the election period, and while my patience for trying to help people work through complicated emotional reactions to seemingly contradictory data is high, it is not endless. At some point, it’s on you - either calm the fuck down, or pay up, because at this point, many liberals aren’t looking for electoral analysis or polling reaction, but full on therapy. And at some point, you either have to admit that things are going better than you ever could have expected when the Liberals were seemingly in the shits three weeks ago, or you need to admit that there’s absolutely nothing that any pollster or any analyst could say to calm you down. Either way, you’re panicking for a lack of anything better to do, and that’s your right - but don’t act like it’s not an act of delusion.