Memo To The LPC: Get Your Heads Out Of Your Asses

This Is A Crisis. Act Like It.

The last 36 hours have seen the release of a Abacus poll showing the Liberals at 21% nationally and 3rd in non-Quebec Canada. Quito Maggi, the erstwhile CEO of Mainstreet Research, tweeted that their national poll coming Tuesday will have the NDP in 2nd and the Liberals relegated to third. Go back a bit longer and Leger still has the Liberals down 20%. Precisely zero of the three best pollsters in my eyes in Canada have the Liberals both in 2nd and within 20%. EKOS and Nanos have the lead at 16%, which is not exactly good for the government, and I’d bet my bottom dollar knowing how Nanos works there’s a good Liberal sample about to fall off this week. (Editor’s note: this sentence was originally written Sunday evening. Nanos came out with the Liberals in third on Monday. We have decided to leave it in as originally written.)

I am trying to be constructive these days, but honestly my patience gave out sometime around 1AM on LaSalle byelection night. Whether you think Trudeau should stay or go, whether you think Carney or Anand should replace him, whatever our disagreements, there has to be agreement that is not good enough. It’s plainly not, whatever else we bring to the broader discussion of the party’s future. And I want any sign from anybody working for this party or this government that they get it.

I would like some evidence that there are people at a high level who view these polls as the high level disaster that they are. I would like some evidence that the PMO understands what it will take to claw back even to 75 seats. If caucus are going to sit on their asses and the Prime Minister is staying then I want concrete evidence that they get what they have to do. If they’re going to depose Trudeau, caucus should find every opportunity to walk in front of cameras this week and say so with their full chest.

What I actually want is for anybody inside the Caucus, the PMO, or the power structures inside the party to give as much of a shit about the future of the party as I do. Because right now it feels like there is more strategic thinking about the future of the party happening in the pages of this site than there is from anyone with an official title. I’d say I’m sure I’m wrong, and those strategic, high level conversations are happening and will soon bear fruit, but honestly the stories we’re hearing from inside the bubble don’t exactly make me optimistic.

What we have is a disaster on route of such an epic proportion it will take 3 terms to come back. The price of Kathleen Wynne taking the Liberals to third place is that it will take a Herculean effort for Bonnie Crombie to win government after two bad terms. The chances that Poilievre will be as brazen in his corruption and as comically focused on dumb shit as Ford are low. There’s also every chance that Poilievre will inherit an economy that is primed to solve some problems, as the combination of rate cuts, zoning reforms, and immigration cuts lead to stable or falling rent, better government books, and less pressure on health care systems.

You can agree or disagree with my solutions. You can agree or disagree on whether it’ll take two terms or three if we win 40 seats. You can think my Anand/FPC ticket idea is genius or idiocy. I don’t really care anymore. This isn’t working. I said this to someone Saturday night, but I’d take a Carney leadership at this point. I think Carney is absolutely a sub-optimal choice. He’s also very obviously a better choice than JT right now as things are going.

Marc Garneau came out and said that some cabinet ministers were more valued than others, took a shot at the McGill Mafia running the government, and signaled to a lot of people that the worst fears of Trudeau’s PMO are real - they’re insular, not open to criticism or anything like it, and not going to change their ways. I hope that’s wrong, because they need to change their ways, or we’re all fucked.

One of the things that Liberals are doing instead of any amount of strategic thinking is whinging about whether this is deserved, as if someone just saying that the government deserves better enough times will lift the polls. It’s a comfort blanket for Liberals, the idea that the public are wrong. But it’s irrelevant. The polls are where they are, the country is where it is, we have lost two safe seats in our two biggest bastions. It’s over.

What those who want to litigate the question of deserve want to do is avoid the simple and clear question of what to do from here. It’s like Oilers fan arguing about the Nurse contract or Leafs fans relitigating the decision to keep the Core Four together after the Montreal series (or before Marner’s No Move kicked in, whatever inflection point you want). Conversations about what to do from here that start with “build a time machine” aren’t helpful. What also isn’t helpful is denying reality.

Yes, it is true that a lot of the options are bad. That’s what happens when you go down twenty points in the polls. But endlessly critiquing the people trying to help advocating for solutions, engaging in mindless poll denialism, and engaging in useless conversations designed to take from the harsh reality to fantasy land where we get to pretend that the voters being wrong is enough is not acceptable.

Talk to any American with a passable understanding of Canadian politics and the Liberal refusal to get rid of Trudeau is absolutely insane to them. But the harder thing to explain is what’s being done in lieu of replacing him. “So, if they’re keeping him, how are they going to turn this around?” is one of the most common questions I get asked from American friends in between bouts of freaking the fuck out about polls. I don’t have an answer, because there isn’t one.

The Liberals have tried nothing since the Budget and are shocked that it’s not working. The party deserves better. The country deserves better. And if they don’t get their heads out of their asses and do something, the caucus, the leader, and senior staff all deserve exactly what’s coming.