Conservatives’ Attacks On Carney Aren’t Landing

Conservatives In Crisis

Is Mark Carney a good candidate? I can make the case that he's objectively the worst Canadian politician since Ignatieff, and yet he’s on track to win a bigger majority government than Trudeau 2015, Harper 2011, or any of Chretien’s majorities, even accounting for seat inflation in the House. The reason those two things can be true at the same time is the things that makes Carney a bad politician would be greater liabilities if he and his braintrust didn’t realize they’re problems.

Mark Carney is in a lot of ways an aesthetically bad candidate, in that he has a lot of flaws that are superficially bad for him. He’s not a world class public speaker, he’s a wonk and a nerd whose brain is clearly having to translate from how he’d talk at a Monetary Policy Committee meeting to how he should talk to Canadians, and he’s open to a lot of mistakes/moments that make it clear he’s not a regular Canadian. But none of that matters for a simple reason - Carney’s not claiming to be an Everyman.

There’s something fish out of water to Carney, a Central Banker and Finance Bro who is now in a world where being right isn’t enough. At the Banks Of Canada and England, and at Goldman and Brookfield, being right was enough, because you just had to convince a small group of people that you were right. Now you have to convince a country that isn’t formally trained in the issues you’re fighting about - and you’re not just talking about dry economic matters you are formally trained in.

The problem for the right is that Carney isn’t pretending to be something he’s not. What sinks most campaigns is not bad policies - most policies announced during campaigns poll well, that’s why they get announced! - but leadership failures. This isn’t exclusively true - the Green Shift didn’t meet the moment (though how much of that was because Lehman went bust two weeks into that campaign), and Hudak’s promise to fire 100k people was just really bad politics - but it’s a lot of time either perceptions of incompetence or hypocrisy that trips people up.

Michael Ignatieff’s problem wasn’t the policy agenda, it was the fact that he was personally seen to be flaky on the whole concept of giving a shit about Canada. What took down Harper in 2004, and what he needed to fight back against for the next three elections, was the idea he was hiding things and being dishonest. Carney might be out of touch, but it’s not as big a problem because he’s never pretended he’s something he’s not.

Years ago, I was lightly arguing with my mother about various celebrities, and she was trying to lump George Clooney into the Brad Pitt/Ben Affleck/Tiger Woods sleazebag category of male celebrities, and I remember pushing back strenuously for one reason - being a playboy doesn’t inherently mean you’re a sleazebag. Clooney never pretended he was trying to settle down (until he met his now-wife), whereas Pitt et al did - and there is honour in being honest. Carney’s a similar thing - he’s not checking the flyers to see whether Sobeys or Food Basics has the cheese at a better price or seeing who has ground beef cheap, and we all know.

What would be more politically damaging - admitting that he doesn’t buy his own strawberries, or wearing a Rolex in a video about how the price of apples is going up? Let’s play out the counterfactual, where Carney pretends that he’s diligently checking the country of origin labels on his strawberries - would anybody believe him? Of course not. One of the lessons from Jagmeet Rolex Singh is that insincere stunts are worse than doing nothing at all. If Carney held a press availability in my local Sobeys to rail against grocery prices and talk about the need to buy local, he’d look about as comfortable and authentic as Derek Zoolander in that coal mine.

The problem for Conservatives is that Carney’s flaws as a candidate, as real as they are, are incidental to what voters care about. They’ve yet to make it more than his French sucking or him being awkward - they’ve failed to drive a narrative through the heart of his candidacy, in the same way that the Liberals were able to derail Harper by tying together Cheryl Gallant’s nonsense about gay marriage and abortion and Ralph Klein’s decision to announce reforms to the health care system in Alberta as signs the newly formed CPC were not committed to pluralism, Canadian values, and the Canada Health Act. The problem is this Tory campaign is much more 2006 Liberals than 2004.

In 2006, the Conservatives had survived a mini civil war, an embarrassing floor crossing, and came out the other side stronger, while the Liberals were defeated by the drip drip drip of AdScam and Gomery revelations every other week. What happened in campaign, with some insane RCMP tampering too, was the Liberals got really desperate that none of their attacks on Harper were working. Desperation was why Scott Reid resorted to the asinine Beer And Popcorn line, it’s why the Liberals ran Soldiers In The Street, and it’s why that campaign went off the rails - well, plus the Conservatives had tragic events bounce their way too.

Now, it’s a similar thing. Conservatives are increasingly desperate because nothing is landing on Carney, events are conspiring against them, and they’re losing, and losing badly. We’re getting increasingly unhinged claims of 6500 people in Oshawa that’s just plainly exaggerated, we’re talking about how polls that show minor Conservative popular vote leads nationally but Liberal seat leads show some form of “momentum” even though Abacus is the same poll on poll if the leak is right. It’s just so pathetic.

Obviously the Conservatives could still win the election - there’s a lot of pressure on the English debate, per Abacus data that David Coletto teased on my show on Monday. Maybe he gets hostile at a question he thinks is beneath him and looks like an asshole. Maybe he gets something very wrong about the nature of the economy. Maybe he gets so in his head about not sounding like an economist he dumbs himself down so much he actually comes off like an idiot. I wouldn’t bet on any of those events but they’re within the realm of possibility. But they’re not likely outcomes, and we are firmly in the territory where the Conservatives need unlikely outcomes to win.

But by the same token the Conservatives are about to get even more desperate. Their polls have been going the wrong way for the 2 weeks of this campaign and desperation leads to bad decisions. For whatever chance there is that Carney shits the bed in the debates, there’s an equal or better chance Poilievre makes a big mistake trying to get himself back into the game with one swing.

The CPC’s messaging about Carney has failed, because they’re trying to attack him for things he doesn’t pretend he’s not. And every time they launch attacks that don’t land, they waste time they can’t get back. The CPC are in deep, deep trouble.