Ontario: Tell Me Lies Later

A Meditation On An Election

“Well they’re all for Gord but this one’s for Gord”

Probably the single most moving musical performance ever for me is Hey Rosetta’s 2016 performance of Ahead By A Century, the Hip’s famous hit, after news of Gord Downie’s illness broke. It became a right of passage for Canadian artists to play some Hip at their shows – the Arkells added My Music At Work, City and Colour added Bobcaygeon – but that performance of Ahead By A Century was one of the best ever.

Its beauty isn’t in the technical precision or the skill – although I would never seek to dismiss Hey Rosetta’s skill – but it’s in the overwhelming love of that song, that moment, and the soft beauty of the care it is given.

I’ve always been a softy at heart – moved by beautiful ballads, love songs, and stories of overcoming triumph in the face of tragedy. As cynical as I can be, I sometimes find it within myself to be optimistic, but not often. But here, right now, I can’t avoid feeling it, as I type the same words for the thousand time this year.

When I start to panic about Doug Ford, I will tell you. Until then, relax.

…

“Tell me lies later, come and see me/I’ll be around for a while/I am lonely but you can free me/All in the way that you smile”

Sometimes I genuinely think this is what my audience thinks I’m doing, and if you only wanted to look at my US track record, you could almost think that that is an accurate description of what I have done there (even though, I’ve never put out a forecast I didn’t believe fully and completely). Sometimes I think my audience thinks I’m just telling them what they want to hear, because otherwise I have no idea how to explain the notion that so many of them think I’m lying to them when I think Doug Ford is going to lose this election.

Every event is evidence I’m either an idiot for continuing to insist Ford will lose or evidence that I must be changing my mind, and yet, despite all of the screenshots of Fournier’s shitty site, I’m still here, making the case I’ve been making for weeks, and at some point, people need to accept that this is what I believe is going to happen.

Could I be wrong? Of course I could be, but it’s equally as likely – if not more so, given the evidence of the 2021 Canadian campaign, that Fournier is, and yet I am treated to an endless parade of screenshots and quote tweets all about how I can’t still possibly believe what I do, right? No, I still do – and I’m still right.

The problem with people who misunderstand Ford’s appeal is the same as the people who don’t get the trucker’s convoy or the PPC or Trumpian voters, but the problem is, fundamentally, that a bunch of educated social liberals don’t actually want to know who these people are, they’re fine with caricatures and half baked ideas, and so what gets passed off as analysis is infected by that original sin – that the people doing the analysis of the voters hate the voters they’re analyzing. Think I’m wrong? Read any never-Trump Republican who thinks that the GOP could ever again become a party of tax cuts and democratic norms – or at least, that they could do so in the next 3 years, or read leftists who think that Trump cultists will vote for Democrats if only Bernie was the nominee.

In both cases, the disdain for the existent truth – that most US Republicans support an authoritarian who sought to steal a democratically won election from his opponent – is so repellent that these people make up lies about the people who support Trump so they can rationalize it. You see it with Ford supporters and with people attracted by Skippy’s message too – they either claim that the crazies make up a much smaller proportion of the electorate than they do, or they claim that they truly “understand” these people and make wild, unsubstantiated claims about how they’re on the march to permanent power in this country. It’s wild shit, all based around the idea that nobody actually bothers to understand the actual fucking problem.

Doug Ford is not some uniquely skilled politician – any other PC leader wins 90 seats in 2018 against the corpse of Wynne’s government and the shit NDP campaign that couldn’t grab the opportunity in front of it – nor was his brother. Rob won the Mayoralty with less than 50% after a disastrous term from a left wing mayor in a city where the “old city” makes up like 8 of 25 council seats. I’m sorry, barely beating a left-winger after Miller’s garbage strike is not an impressive accomplishment, and Ford doesn’t have some great electability argument.

He won 76 seats and 40% of the vote against the most unpopular Premier of Ontario since Bob Rae, and for reasons passing understanding everyone is acting like he is God’s gift to politics. He’s mediocre at best, bad at worst, and he’s gonna lose seats in time. We’ll have to find out how many in June, but he will lose seats. And yet, we are still subject to these horrible takes about why he isn’t getting creamed, and it has to stop.

You know why Doug Ford is doing decently in the polls right now? People are happy to not be wearing masks and happy to be done with COVID. Are they done with it, in reality? No. But people want to go to Raps games and Leafs games and Sens games (hey, at least some of us do), and they enjoy doing so without masks, and they enjoy not having to stress before they get dinner at their local bar. Life is easier today than it was 6 weeks ago, and people are happy about that, so the Premier gets a bump. That won’t last.

Election campaigns aren’t about the past, they’re about the future – a fact which helps incumbent governments that have done badly and hurts ones with good records. Why did Christy Clark beat Adrian Dix in 2013 in BC? Because when BC compared Clark’s proposals to Dix’s, they realized Dix was a moron who couldn’t possibly be in charge of a province. Why did Stephen Marshall just lose in South Australia, despite an amazing record on COVID and the pandemic? Well, because the Labor plan for the future was better (and an unpopular Liberal government in Canberra, but I don’t have the time to explain federal drag in Australia). People in Ontario think COVID has been handled decently, especially when we’ve done so much better, by every objective measure, than the two countries we compare ourselves to most, the UK and the US.

What happens when we get into a campaign and Doug Ford has to share the stage with Del Duca? Bad things, because the question changes. Caring what the polls say now is ludicrous, even if I get why people do it. When the campaign starts, the free ride ends, and Ford loses control of his message. In a campaign, it isn’t Ford or nothingness, it is Ford or Del Duca, and Del Duca will gain from that choice.

Maybe Tell Me Why, the lyrics at the top of this section, isn’t the right song. Maybe it’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart that best explains it. “But only love can break your heart/Try to be sure right from the start/Yes, only love can break your heart/What if your world should fall apart?” might be the better analogy, because I understand what all of this is – a plea that Ontario not be stupid enough to elect a Premier you all hate. But think about it, and take a second to pause and think – this province is neither as great as you wish to hope nor as hopeless as you fear at its worst, and whenever you forget that, just remember one thing.

At the moments I feel the worst, I just remember that there are certain things that can take me out of the moment, and transcend the worries of the current moment. There will be moments of panic and fear, but find your version of “They’re all for Gord, but this one’s for Gord”, relax, and calm down.

I’m not lying to you, I will never lie to you, and I genuinely believe Steven Del Duca will be the Premier after the 2022 Ontario Election.