Memo To The Left: Fight Ford, Not Tucker
Where The Left Should Focus
Last week, a right wing American provocateur came to Canada and did his routine to a room full of people that included Danielle Smith. Three provinces over, Doug Ford was in Week 2 of defending the world’s stupidest decision to repurpose some Service Ontarios into Staples and Walmart locations, with the government fronting the cost to pay for the necessary renovations. Guess which one everyone lost their minds about?
The right wing provocateur did what he always does, and what he came here to do – get a bunch of media attention by saying outlandish shit. It’s what he did every night on Fox for years. Now that he’s gone from there, people haven’t heard from him as much. His answer is to ratchet up his specific brand of … what passes for humour, let’s say, to 11. None of this is worth columnizing about, but it caused so many to want thinkpieces and media fervour.
The desire for a pile-on to Smith for associating with that nutjob is understandable, but the problem is the electorate has clearly decided they don’t care. Attacks on ephemeral associations or distasteful actions do not work, whether it’s right or left. Canada elected a leader who did Blackface for fuck’s sake because the country was in a reasonable position. Danielle Smith won in Alberta despite comparing the vaccinated to German citizens who blindly followed the Nazis and the video coming out in the writ period.
It’s distasteful for the left, who desperately want “character issues” – as defined in this case as failure to agree with left wing orthodoxy on social issues, or to associate with those who don’t agree – to be a vote mover in a way it’s just not. But at some point the left needs to live in the reality of how the world actually works, as opposed to how the world ought to work. Step one of that process? Focus less on Tucker, and much more on Doug Ford and Francois Legault.
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A Pallas Data poll out this morning has Legault’s CAQ at 21%, down 11 points on the PQ and essentially half of what they got at the last election. For as much as we talk about the Federal Liberals being on the ropes – and they are – this is a government that has fallen much further, much faster. How many people reading this can explain why?
If the left wanted to look at the actual reasons for it, they’d see a prolonged teacher’s strike, a health care system in crisis, sweeping reforms to the health system that nobody’s sure will do any good, a housing crisis, and a government focused on spending money to bring an NHL preseason game to Quebec City instead of working to fix any actual issues. In Ontario, we see Ford bumbling from health care crisis to housing failure to weird needless reform solely to benefit his donors.
Both of these governments are theoretical data points that could buttress an attack on Pierre Poilievre, because they’re both evidence of the same thing; conservative governments in this country mostly govern like shit. The best government out there right now is David Eby’s BC NDP government for a reason. Hell, look at how much better Olivia Chow is than the 13 years of bad conservative Mayors Toronto had. There’s a very easy story to tell about how a Federal Conservative government will fuck us in the exact same way these conservative Premiers do.
The problem with that is that there’s no effort to tell that story. To the extent that left wing pressure works to change media coverage, it’s focused on the wrong shit. “How terrible is it that Tucker made a homophobic joke about Trudeau” is not a story that requires a segment on Power and Politics or a column in the Star or the Globe. You know what does? Pointing out that it takes significantly longer to be seen in emergency rooms across Ontario these days because of the choices that Doug Ford has made. But the pressure gets wasted on dumb story of the day bullshit.
If you want to beat the right in this country when things are going well, you can point out that Andrew Scheer’s pro-life and once compared gay marriage to a dog’s leg and that half of his candidates are nutters, but you can’t do that in a cost of living crisis where the average socially liberal voter under 40 is considering voting Conservative over your housing failures. If the left wants to win, we need to make the case not that Conservatives are bad people, but that they won’t actually achieve anything on the issues we care about.
Doug Ford and Francois Legault are shining examples of the risks of conservative governments – they run ineffectual governments focused on weird, unimportant shit of their corporate friends above the issues of the people. It’s an easy argument to make that ties in the Greenbelt scandal, the NHL preseason game, and the Service Ontario stuff into one neat package. Their willingness to play divisive politics to shift the attention from their troubles? You’ve got the English Universities attacks from Legault and the parental rights stuff as evidence. You can make a really valuable case that they’re unfocused and unconcerned with the real priorities of Canadians.
Remember when Pierre Poilievre backed a bill to ban all vaccine mandates, or Leslyn Lewis spread all that crap about withdrawing from the UN? You can use these provinces as a way to draw all that together into a narrative that the right wing ecosystem is focused on shit that doesn’t matter, but that’s hard. It’s hard to think about anything more than the idea that Tucker’s bad and that should be enough. Of course it’s not.
If the left wants to get its head out of its ass, the priority should not be indulging the whims of a provocateur, but fighting against the actual substance of bad right wing provincial governments. It won’t magically turn the Liberals back into an election winning position in the polls, but attempting to tie Poilievre to the actual bad choices of Ford and Legault will go a hell of a long way to denting his numbers than trying to make him responsible for Tucker’s bullshit. That it might also help to hurt Ford and Legault’s standings with their own electorate makes it even more valuable.
I sincerely hope that the PMO and Liberal caucus are reading Evan’s columns. This advice is spot on.
In the next 18 months a tremendous amount of discipline will be required. It will be so appealing, even tantalizing, to get into pointing out the offensive positions and messages by the CPC. It will only do two things:
1) Convince the PPC leaning voters that Poilievre is their man
2) Convince potential liberal voters that the liberals care more about moral issues and than issues that really make a difference in their lives
So, the Liberals need to keep it really simple. For each provocation there needs to be a simple response that turns the issue to a conservative premier’s failing. Something like this:
Parental rights - yes parents should always be involved unless there are unique circumstances, but let’s talk about how student in province X are scoring 30% lower of math than 10 years ago. What are we going to do about that?
Alberta Pension Plan - incredibly bad idea to abandon the highest performing pension fund, but let’s talk about the lack of long term care homes in Alberta.
Cost of living concerns - yes, we are equally concerned and are increasing competition, but let’s talk about how Doug Ford abolished rent control and gives money to foreign office supply stores to provide government functions.
Etc. etc.
And stop being concerned about provincial jurisdiction. Poilievre does not care about this when he accuses the Federal government of not doing enough about foreign doctors not being accredited by provincial licensing boards. Why would you care?
It’s an excellent column. I want to make a minor distinction, although some might say it’s a distinction without a difference.
You say that “character issues” is not a vote mover. I disagree, I think it’s a great vote mover. It’s just that the left, more or less already has those votes cornered.
Much like LGBTQ issues, single issue voters who prioritize integrity already don’t vote conservative. And, like you pointed out in your Trans Rights column recently, that means they need to stop focusing on those issues as election issues.
Which doesn’t mean ignoring them. They need to be part of the policy platform. But they need to be campaigning on things that move voters they don’t already have.
But I think the distinction between “no one cares” and “lots of people care, but those votes are already secure” is worth making.
Addendum: This distinction is why the Federal NDP’s flirtation with nonsense, conspiracies, and unserious policy is playing with fire. Their voters care. Losing their credibility with “integrity” voters will have similar consequences as losing their credibility with LGBTQ voters