Memo To The Liberals: Do Y'All Wanna Win Or Not?

On How To Stop Poilievre

I’ve always felt bad for Matt Kuchar.

One of the most unsporting things that has happened in my lifetime has to be the Birkdale Bogey, when my Lord Jordan Spieth went full Karen on everyone and somehow managed to take 20 minutes between golf shots, all in an effort to get an interpretation of the rules that was technically legal but a gross violation of the spirit of the rules. Kuchar taking a knee in the middle of the fairway is an iconic image, and it really is unfair that Jordan got away with such complete shithousery.

That said, his Claret Jug counts just the fucking same, because he won. How he won is less important than the fact that he did. In the same way, we find ourselves too focused on what should matter, rather than what does. And this week we’ve had another set of opportunities to test it.

Pierre Poilievre had another of his traditionally testy scrums with the press this week, and now Liberal cabinet ministers are trying to make respect for the press a dividing line. And I just have to ask; do you get you’re polling at 24%?

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I want a Liberal government. I do not think Pierre Poilievre will be a good Prime Minister of Canada. I do not think conservatism is a structurally good way of viewing a world with as many problems as this one does. I have used my platform to shill for Steven Del Duca before, that’s how you know I’m willing to go far in trying to beat the right.

Right now, the Liberals are fucked. Can that change? Sure. Will it? Not if this is the best they fucking got it’s not. You know what happens when you refuse to admit you’re wrong and continue on as if you’re right all the time? You end up as either the Leafs or Ferrari. Spoiler; both end with your hated rivals outperforming you.

Nobody views the press with the reverence they did 50 years ago. You know how I know it? You’re reading this site, something that would not exist in the old days of concentrated media, where independent voices were distrusted because the mainstream media was also the only media. That you’ve gone out of your way to find an external source of commentary shows that the traditional media is flawed.

The policy problems this government faces are strong, and that has to be the message they lead with. Pierre Poilievre is odious for any number of reasons, but voters have plainly tipped past the point where they care much about the opposition. Poilievre’s ratings are a function of discontent with Trudeau. If the Liberals spent $10M right now on ads attacking Poilievre, would they gain any in the polls? Sure. Would they gain enough to justify it? No.

The Liberals have to fix their economic and housing issues, but more than that they need a better message about how what they’re doing matters to Canadians. Take the Bell Media cuts last week. Trudeau was mad, fantastic – what’s the government’s solution to the hollowing out of newsrooms? If you want to capitalize on discontent, propose a solution. Maybe that’s reworking the existing subsidy regime for news to fund local news requirements, or to use the Google money to fund local independent news?

If you want to strengthen the news as a dividing line with Poilievre, how about launching a Competition Bureau investigation into the effects of Postmedia owning nearly every big-name daily in this country? I said this in an American context on a podcast that will be out tomorrow, but the fact of holding office means that governments have huge abilities to dictate the policy agenda. Bitching about Poilievre allows him to be the dog that wags the Liberal tail.

There’s a lot Ministers can do to help create useful dividing lines against Poilievre that can pay off contingent on the economy getting better. “Isn’t he so mean” isn’t one of them. You want some dividing lines that are going to work better for you? Launch a quick and dirty revamp into the CBC remit, fire Catherine Tait, give her successor a 40% pay cut and ban all bonuses by legislation for 10 years. Use the new remit to reverse the cuts to local news and quietly bow out of things that aren’t needed (why, for instance, is the CBC paying Rogers for the right to simulcast Hockey on Saturdays).

Beyond my specific ideas, this government does a lot of things and then refuses to sell them properly. They sell them as abstract concepts, as opposed to selling the fact that specific typical suburban parents are saving $900/month on child care. That’s a tangible thing that’s very easy to sell. Vagaries about the role of a free press put people to sleep.

There’s a lot of smart people working in this government who do not seem to get the monumental sales job required to win again. More importantly there’s an ecosystem of people who are willing to put what they like to hear above what will help elect the Liberals, because to some saying nice things is more important than holding office.

What the Liberals need is a complete reimagination of what they’re doing. They need to start focusing on three things if they’re to have any hope of winning again; they need time to let the economy get better, they need to start picking fights with the provinces to remind voters that they are not responsible for all ills in this country, and they need to start selling their accomplishments not in aggregate terms but in terms of the direct benefit. Danielle Smith is trying to kill $10/day child care right now and the Liberals are bitching about his form in a press conference.

I used to think his ability to get through a press conference would hurt him, but I was wrong. The answer to that is not to be mad that Canadians do not care about Poilievre’s tone at a time when everything is crumbling around them, but to accept that fact and fucking adjust to it. The Liberals have an opportunity, if only because the NDP have decided to ride and die with a complete incompetent as their leader.

Is Poilievre sloganeering and simplistic? Of course he is. You know what didn’t save Julia Gillard when Tony Abbott did the same fucking thing? Pointing that out. Governments that solely exist to point out that the Opposition is bad get destroyed. Anthony Albanese backtracked on a major campaign promise in the first part of this year, and yet he took the country with them because he turned that supposed liability (breaking a promise) into a victory (turning scheduled top-rate tax cuts into a broader based cut) by pointing out just how much more regular Joe Aussie would get under him.

You know what Albo didn’t do? A sermon at the National Press Club about generational unfairness or whatever else, he made this a simple matter of retail politics. And the public is responding. The Liberals right now seem to be addicted to fighting issues that the public doesn’t care about in ways the public won’t listen to. It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t a political party I desperately want to win.

Quebec has seen a right-wing government essentially collapse in the polls in the last 16 months, the Ford government is shakier than Scottie Scheffler’s putting, and Danielle Smith is addicted to dumbassery, but the Feds feel lifeless. Things are not good enough now, no matter how many morons in my mentions pretend that everything is fine.

The Liberals can either find a new message that centres real Canadians and how their policies help them or they can rot in Opposition. At this point, it’s really up to them. All I can ask is that they understand that their current path isn’t helping. Jordan Spieth probably shouldn’t have won in Birkdale, but he did. No amount of anger about “should” will change the fact that Skippy’s cruising to the government benches. Figure it out or fuck off and let people who actually have a plan to stop him fight this fight.