Fournier, Bubbles, And Wishing For A Different Outcome
On The Stupidest Tweet Of 2022 (So Far)
One of the things about people who are big city, weak kneed, bleeding heart liberals – whether Canadian or American or British or Australian, whether they vote for parties of the centre-left or of the left, no matter the context – is that they resolutely suck at understanding rural, cultural conservatives. Uniformly, we suck at it, as a group.
I like to think I’m pretty good at it, all said – and the fact that the two pieces of mine with the highest traffic in this site’s history were the pieces on the PPC and the Convoy suggests that y’all agree – but I’m aware that even if I am one of the best at it, I’m not very good at it. It’s a struggle to do in an even-handed way, because when your social circles are so insulated from the people you have to try and understand, the risk of bad analysis goes way up.
Like, I’m a guy who spent the entire 2016 election campaign saying Donald Trump had no chance because I disbelieved the data that said it was close and continued to insist that there was no way he could lose. In every way, that 2016 belief was worse than my 2020 work, because my 2020 work was at least based on a data set that overwhelmingly pointed to Joe Biden being the runaway favourite. In 2016, it wasn’t analysis, it was wishcasting – and specifically, praying that the views I wanted that group to hold would actually be the views they held.
I desperately wanted America to care about decency in public life and the risk of Supreme Court nominees and that Trump hadn’t paid taxes, I wanted that to be enough to earn Trump a stunning rebuke from the electorate because I wanted America to be a place where that would happen. I wanted to look at America and Americans with pride that they had done the right thing, and so I let the wish become the author of the thought.
This bias works in one of two ways – it’s either that bias, which projects a totally different set of values and beliefs onto cultural conservatives because bleeding hearts don’t want to admit that so many members of our society hold views that many, myself included, find reprehensible (especially around gay rights and abortion), or it’s just dismissing every cultural conservative in a rural area as an irredeemable failure and a racist bigot. Neither are true, and the reason I think the piece on the Convoy I wrote was one of my better pieces is because it held some charity for those who are genuinely aggrieved by the state of the world, even though I have a fundamental disagreement with them. I explained their plight without dismissing that it’s real, because to understand a movement you must not judge them.
The other bias is even more insidious, and its one that I try very hard not to fall into. I was never as strong a believer in Peter MacKay as others in 2020, and I called Andrew Scheer to win in 2017 for months for this fact – the Conservative membership are completely divorced from the average Conservative voter, let alone the average Liberal-CPC swing voter, and their members are crazy people who wouldn’t elect a moderate. Turns out, both times, I was right. Why is this relevant? Well, because of this masterpiece from Lord Fournier of Failure-upon-Punditry, first of his name, suggesting that a fairly anonymous National Post columnist would be a serious contender for the Conservative Party Of Canada Leadership.
Do you, dead seriously, know who this person is? I think I do, but am I sure? God no. If you gave me two guesses and had to find this person in a lineup of 3 women, I would have a 33% chance of losing, because I know nothing about her except I’m sure I’ve occasionally read a column of hers. Now, this isn’t really about her, because it’s not her fault Fournier said a dumb thing, but his asinine belief she would stand a fucking hope in hell in a Conservative leadership race is instructive of the problem of the Laurentian political bubble that he is in.
I don’t know Fournier at all – I’ve never spoken to him, he’s never acknowledged my existence directly, and he has me blocked on Twitter because I called him a Chucklefuck during the last campaign (which, to be honest, I totally deserved) – but I do know a lot of people like him. He’s a professor in Montreal, he’s spent most of, if not all of, his adult life in academia, and his circle presumably includes a lot of blue Liberals and Red Tories. When you rise to a certain social class, you end up knowing a lot of them, because they’re overrepresented in “Professional” jobs – bankers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, and academics. “Oh, I have no problem with gay people, but I just think Harper’s tax changes were the right mix for Canadian industry” is the kind of thing you’d hear a lot in the Quebec City to Niagara corridor, because that corridor is, with few exceptions, full of social liberals who like the idea of low taxes because they make a lot of money, and would like to pay less of it in taxes.
The Tories are not looking for some Post columnist with friends like Fournier right now, are you mad? The Tories just ditched Erin O’Toole and you think their response is going to be to pick some random Post columnist who thinks populism is a dirty word, and the only reason he thinks that is because he desperately wants them to want that. He wants the Tory Party to be a normal, functional opposition because he thinks that would be better for the country – and that view is correct. It’s not good for Canada that the next Tory leader is likely to be an assclown from suburban Ottawa with so little intestinal fortitude that he’s standing with Ottawa’s occupiers over his fellow citizens, and that the only other kind of candidate who could presumably beat him would be a social conservative, pro-conversion therapy jackass from the west. It’s bad for Canada, but it’s the reality.
Pretending the Tory membership is something it plainly is not anymore is not just bad punditry, but it’s plain bias. Fournier wants the Tories to be a different political party than it is because he wants a political party that is more in line with his socially liberal, Laurentian elite bubble. The problem is, wishing doesn’t make it so, the next Tory leader won’t be a random ass National Post columnist, and the guy who claimed Erin O’Toole was the favourite to be Prime Minister with three weeks to go should probably stick to calling less seats right than a dude with a Substack.