English Debate Liveblog: Yankee Hotel Foxtrox

Thoughts Throughout The Night

Welcome to the ScrimshawUnscripted Debate Liveblog, also known as the “Why Would I Give These Thoughts Away To Elon’s Website” Memorial Debate Liveblog. (I might already be drunk, this is the vibe of the night.

New comments will be posted every 5-ish minutes, and they’ll be posted at the top. I did this for the day Chrystia Freeland resigned, the day Trudeau did, and for the LPC English Debate. Refresh every 5 minutes and you’ll see my thoughts, and feel free to ask questions in the comments - I’ll answer the good ones. If you’d like to support my work, consider a paid subscription, but as always all my work will remain free for all.

Closing Grades:

Singh: D-. He served my interests by fucking with Pierre, but he was mostly dogshit tonight on his own merits and he’s messing with Liberals who like Carney while trying to get their votes. It’s a bad performance that doesn’t make sense.

Carney: A-. Hated the security clearance question but he made his points, didn’t lose his head, dealt with the questions he was asked mostly well and mostly survived the Trudeau of it all.

Blanchet: F. Get him off stage.

Poilievre: A. Delivered his messages well, I hated most of what he said but I’m a bleeding heart Liberal so who cares. He wasn’t angry, seemed calm at most points, and dealt with Singh’s interruptions well. Would have prepped him differently on pipelines but oh well.

Paikin: A+, except for his Sens erasure.

8:56PM: Hearing the three Canadian leaders talk about this country in the way they just did is touching, and I’m honestly glad to see it.

8:50PM: I should probably promote that I’ll have a Scrimshaw Show up tomorrow on the debates.

These questions are nearly putting me to sleep.

8:46PM: I have never been convinced that the Security Clearance shit matters. Maybe the Liberals have polling showing it’s a winner, but I don’t see it.

8:45PM: If I’m Poilievre, I’m pissed that this opportunity to attack Carney came so late in the debate. I don’t know that Poilievre landed it perfectly, but it’s undeniably a good moment for him, but I also think Carney did fine?

I really think this is just reinforcing that the top two parties are winning this debate.

8:40PM: Turning Brookfield into a Canadian success story and in general answering better to Blanchet is a win for Carney.

8:38PM: I would like a better answer on the Brookfield of it all, but Jagmeet is absolutely blowing a good message by being a fucking asshole and cutting him off constantly.

8:32PM: Rare note of genuine appreciation for Poilievre: very glad he and Carney are on the same side in understanding that we need to pressure Iran to stop sponsoring terror and I’m glad Carney joined himself to Poilievre’s answer on Iran.

8:27PM: We are now in the Serious Ideas That Will Move Zero Votes section of the debate. I don’t think anyone has shone or failed but at this point the politics have mostly been settled unless anybody fucks up.

8:17PM: I quite like Carney’s plans to catalyse private dollars through public investment, it’s a great way of working and it’s a good way to get maximum investment for the least public dollars.

8:15PM: Carney giving the oil sands a verbal blowjob is probably good politics but holy hell it’s wild that we’re here.

8:10PM: I am unconvinced that Carbon Capture is an answer but I’m glad that Carney is making the case for lower emissions from the oil industry while we transition.

Also Poilievre is getting totally fucked by Jagmeet’s decision to step on all his answers, which I love as a Liberal partisan but hate for him.

8:07PM: There’s something so deeply reassuring having a Liberal leader who knows what the fuck he’s talking about. The fact that Carney can stick handle through energy and resource extraction while sounding optimistic and on top of his shit makes me very happy.

8:03PM: Midway through the debate, I think Poilievre and Carney are close at the front, Singh’s in third, and Blanchet might as well not be here. I don’t like anything Poilievre has said, but he’s getting good and somewhat popular lines out there, I just don’t think he’s landed anything big on Carney so far.

7:56PM: YES FUCKING THANK YOU MARK CARNEY FOR STANDING FOR JEWISH CANADIANS. FUCKING THANK YOU. THANK FUCKING GOD.

7:51PM: Feels like both Poilievre and Carney are getting what they want from the Notwithstanding Clause debate here - Poilievre looks tough on crime, Carney gets to defend the Charter and lock up the left. It seems like they’re both happy with this.

Also I hate that Carney’s talking about reverse onus for bail but fucking fine.

7:47PM: Blanchet fucking sucks. That's all I got.

7:42PM: The Liberal answer on guns as a way to blunt the Poilievre strong on crime message is very smart, and I’m glad Carney did. That said, Poilievre humanizing the issue of bail reform to the victims is smart politics.

7:37PM: Singh deserves a drink from some Liberal tonight for doing a lot of the attacking but also shut the fuck up while Carney’s talking.

7:33PM: Poilievre is good on housing issues mostly because the Trudeau government spent 8 years fucking around, but the thing is, people who care about housing issues know that Nate is a meaningful catalyst for this. Carney’s answer is basically designed to make me happy, so I’m not great at judging it, but I think he’s doing well so far at showing he’s on top of the issues.

7:27PM: Can someone tell Jagmeet Singh that cutting the GST on shit will benefit millionaires who spend more than it does for a single mother making 37k?

7:25PM: Paikin is a legend for subtweeting Doug Ford like that. Poilievre’s answer was nonsense, and yet was somehow significantly better than Jagmeet’s bullshit. I’m losing my mind at how bad the NDP’s housing plan is.

Carney’s housing answer is good but that’s just because I’m a slut for some Nate Erskine-Smith ideas.

7:20PM: Singh is doing better tonight on aesthetics tonight but I don’t think anybody who is on the fence about Carney from the left of the Liberal Party is going to be convinced by this stuff. I don’t know if he has a better argument, but he’s doing well at the message he’s trying to convey.

7:16PM: I just don’t see how this is a winning message for Poilievre? Carney has agreed to one review per project - take the win and claim he only did it because of your pressure!

7:13PM: Singh fucking attacking Carney for going and building relationships with our European allies can fuck off. God, he’s so fucking terrible. Also, Blanchet, Carney already slapped down your stupid Emergencies Powers nonsense in French, shut up.

7:10PM: Every time I hear Blanchet’s voice speaking English I have an immediate reaction of wanting to smoke a cigar in Dorchester Square.

This is where my brain is going to be the entire fucking night, yes. Also the “contestants” bit from Skippy was weird as shit.

Poilievre is trying to do the “calm but stern” thing on the Liberal record, and I don’t know if it’s working? Carney shot back pretty well.

7:05PM: As a Canadian, I’m glad Poilievre is (essentially) on the same page on our tariff response, but leading with the things he’d do the same as Carney before getting to his energy pitch is bad for the Conservatives.

7:02PM: Steve Paikin is the only moderator? There is a God, after the disaster of 2021.

6:55PM: I’m going to get this prediction on the record - Carney’s gonna win this debate. I don’t think Poilievre can go strongly enough at Carney without raising his negatives, especially with women, to the point where it’s still a draw, and a draw is enough for the guy who is winning.

6:50PM: Ezra Levant trying to bait David Cochrane on live TV - which is the implication of what Cochrane just said - is one of the funniest images I can imagine, given the titanic gap between those two men. Also, whatever journalist allegedly screamed at Ezra, you have my eternal gratitude and I’ll buy you a beer at some point.

6:40PM: I should shout out David Cochrane by the way while I wait - Cochrane’s an eminent professional and his tenure at P&P has raised the level of these shows a lot, but his evisceration of the Debate Commission the last 24 hours has been a masterclass. He’s an immense talent who really digs into the things he covers, and with how relentlessly negative I am, it’s worth noting the immense respect Cochrane deserves from us all.

Intro: Are There Good Trends For The CPC?

There has been a lot of talk of trend lines this week, a sign from Conservatives that they can’t talk about the levels so they have to start talking about relative placement. It’s partially copium, no matter what they say, but there’s half of a reasonable point - the polls have tightened a bit. Abacus went from a 10 point Liberal lead in Ontario to a 7, Leger from a 9 to a 7, Ipsos from a 20 to a 10, Angus Reid from a 16 to a 10. I get it. There is some truth to it.

EKOS and Mainstreet have gone backwards for the CPC in the same time, an inconvenient fact for this narrative, but it’s also missing a basic reality - it’s a lot harder to go from LPC+10 to LPC+13 than it is to go to LPC+7, because these two outcomes are not equivalently likely. I wrote 10 days ago that Liberals should expect some slight slippage solely because they had some insanely good, too good to be true polls in the model that they were not going to have repeated. Spoiler: Obvious Thing Happened. In other news, Dog Bites Man.

There are currently zero polls with the Liberals doing worse than a 4% lead in Ontario, and the one that’s within 6% (Nanos’ 4.3% lead) is a tracker and frankly if we’re going to invest much mental or emotional capacity into the trackers we’ll need Government-funded TheraCare to cover the psychological damage it would do. Are there green shoots of recovery for the CPC? Sure. But the idea that this will continue to Never Never Land is nonsensical.

There is a tendency to want capital-R Reasons for outcomes and we like to think that there are capital-T Theories that explain everything. We like over-determination, or more accurately over-prescribing Reasons and Theories to outcomes. It is far, far, far more random and less meaningful than we want.

Have the polls gotten a tad bit better for the CPC? Sure. Can you just extend those trendlines another 11 days and declare the outcome? Fuck no, and a lot of people doing this would laugh at similarly banal amateurism in their respective fields.