Consequences Of Losing

Lessons From America

One of the stupidest narratives of the new Trump Presidency is various complaints against Democrats for not doing anything. It’s an incredible stupid complaint because the American people chose not to have Democrats in any source of real power, but it’s also lays on the table a fundamental part of that election - some number of Americans didn’t actually believe that the Trump presidency would be this bad. Either progressives who thought that Gaza justified a protest vote or not voting or moderates mad about inflation and Biden’s age, there are people who did not believe that a second Trump Presidency would be nearly as bad as the warnings were, and took Democratic warnings about Project 2025 and the level of insanity, overreach, and destruction of state capacity that they intended to commit as hyperbole. Now many of the same people are asking where Democrats are.

It would be fun to dunk on these people, to spend your days making fun of the people who genuinely argued Kamala and Trump were equally bad for Palestinians as Trump calls for US ownership of Gaza, but I don’t bring this up to gloat. That Trump was the very obvious wrong choice was self-evident, and I think those acting like predicting that his administration would be terrible again is some accomplishment are being ludicrous. It wasn’t tough to know this was coming.

But Canadians are going to the polls this year, at some point, and Pierre Poilievre is overwhelmingly likely to lead a majority government after it. That is the reality of the situation, even if the poll narrowing has us excited right now. And it’s incumbent on those advocating for the Liberal Party and progressive ideals in Canada to not be in a position where we’re sitting here in a year yelling at powerless politicians to Do Something to stop the dumb and policies that seem likely coming for us if Poilievre wins.

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No, Poilievre is not anywhere close to as bad as Trump. That’s also not the point. I am not a Conservative or a conservative and I don’t like conservative governance for many reasons. Pierre Poilievre isn’t a threat to democracy or an authoritarian, he’s just a bad conservative like Doug Ford and Scott Moe and Blaine Higgs, all people who are addicted to cultural wars and either were or are still pretty bad at the actual task of managing a government. And anybody of my general persuasion is not going to like a Poilievre government.

Even the “good” version of a Poilievre government - one where he doesn’t cut the main programs of the Liberal government, but merely starves the government of much new money and spends the bulk of his time on tough on crime policies and cultural wars - is not good enough. The truth is Canada is in a bad way, and we need a serious politician for a serious time. Even in the most optimistic scenario it’s avoiding disasters. If Poilievre does dismantle dental care or child care, that’s horrifying. If the CBC is truly fully defunded, we’re completely and utterly fucked. It will be bad, and no amount of less bad outcomes will add up to a good outcome.

We need to stay focused on articulating a message that will be believed, because if we are going to ask people to take on the obligation of being serious and deliberate with their choices we must also be serious and deliberate in strategy. We must take the next election seriously enough to learn the lessons from America, that true but incendiary statements will not be believed, and that we must make arguments that are both true and seen to be true. What this site has been trying to do for months is articulate pain points for the Conservatives and strategies to do so, and I’m optimistic when Mark Carney wins this race it’ll be more conducive to good ideas (mine or otherwise). But it’s also on us.

It’s on us to know that a Conservative government will actually do conservative things. What a conservative government will mean is something that plenty of people intrigued by Poilievre will not like, because what a lot of those saying they’ll vote Conservative right now is economic liberalism but a clawback on the cultural wars. If you’re a private sector union worker in southwest or northern Ontario or a fisherman on either coast and you want your hospital to stay open but think that we’ve gone too far on wokeness and shit, the key to getting them back on our side is not to call them bigots for having questions but by making them believe that a Poilievre government won’t be good at the basics of governing.

What we don’t want is to be sitting here a month after the next Canadian election having regretted the very obvious first decisions of a bad government. Progressives across Canada should learn the lesson of America and not expect the Liberals or the courts or the civil service or vague ideas of public pressure to hold the Conservatives back. It is on us to stop the worst excesses of Pierre Poilievre, and it’s on us to do so now.

The reason I pushed so hard for Justin Trudeau’s exit was that he was a blockade to getting people to appreciate the crisis a Poilievre government would represent. Now that he’s gone I’m hopeful we can have a better, more honest, more intelligent conversation about the costs of Conservative government, because we need to. The costs are real, and they will be paid in bad ideas and unserious notions and dumb cultural wars litigated from the government benches and it will make us all wonder how on earth they won. So let’s not wait. Let’s dig in now, so we’re not begging for some saviour once we lose.