Pierre Poilievre Is Not Being Underestimated

Shut Up, I Beg

There’s this weird myth that liberals and progressives are going to “underestimate” Pierre Poilievre, mostly born from the idea that he’s Canadian Trump, and ergo that we will be as dumb as the collective wisdom of both parties was about Donald Trump in 2016, that has no evidence and mostly ignores the actual way that the left is actually responding. Like, if you are of the view that you yourself are properly estimating the member for Carleton, then I am definitionally underestimating him (in the General election), but the idea that there is some widespread malaise to which progressives find themselves unable to take the threat of him seriously just isn’t true, and it’s driving me up a wall.

What happens with Poilievre is simple - he says something batshit insane, and then the commentariat - both left and right - comes out of the woodwork to tell us that actually it’s not an idiotic take, or that it is idiotic but it doesn’t matter because his voters are also stupid, so it doesn’t matter. Take the fact that Pierre Poilievre told people to buy Bitcoin when it was $58K CAD and it’s now worth $26K - it is objectively horrifying that a politician gave financial advice to Canadians that has been disastrous. And yet, talk to many on the left, and it’s a non-story, because it wasn’t actually about Bitcoin, ya see, it was about fuck the system and “his voters” won’t care. It’s a not particularly subtle form of liberal arrogance - that the rubes and hicks will support him no matter what, because they’re fucking idiots - but it also has a broader reading.

Yes, most Liberals and Dippers find Conservatives, and especially Conservative Members, to be stupid. They think the act of voting for a Conservative to be intellectually disqualifying, because to them it is so self evident that the Tories suck that to vote for them is to be of an intellectual calibre beneath them. I’m not saying they’re right, but that is how the average politically active left winger views the Conservative base, especially the western base. It’s condescending as hell, but it’s just a clear reaction to what they think of a party whose goals are anathema to their sense of purpose. But what it’s also doing is infecting the minds of these left wing voters, because they can’t seem to grasp that there’s a wide difference between electability within the Conservative membership and electability within the General electorate.

Jeremy Corbyn won two huge, massive mandates as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015 and 2016, with huge turnouts of members, affiliates, and supporters, and had a huge groundswell of support. With no institutional support and almost no name recognition, Corbyn managed to sign up hundreds of thousands of people to the cause and to the party, and then he got fucking destroyed in the 2019 election. (If you would like to quote me 2017, you’re free to, but he still lost both in seats and votes.) The idea that Corbynism was popular amongst the population because it was really popular amongst the Labour selectorate - or that the party’s 2019 flip flop to become a pro-Remain party again would survive contact with the electorate because the Labour membership demanded it - was a fiction, and the 2019 drubbing proved it. For some reason, we’re stuck thinking that Poilievre’s movement will be electable in a General, despite the fact that everything he’s saying now to win the Membership hurts him in the General.

The problem with the hand waving away of Poilievre calling the child care deals a bad thing because “why should your taxes pay for other people’s kids” or the Bitcoin stuff or him calling retirees in single family homes “gatekeepers” and all the rest of it is that you’re not just saying that the Conservative membership is too stupid to care, you’re saying that 2021 Liberal voters are stupid too! If “nobody will care that Pierre Poilievre pumped up an obvious scam, he’ll win anyways” is true, definitionally a lot of 2021 Liberal voters will have to vote for him. There’s no combination of seats that does not include the Tories having to make some suburban and urban gains to win in 2025. Yes, you can send me a map of 140 seats that doesn’t include a Brampton, a Mississauga, or a Scarborough, but then you need to include 3 Kitchener-Waterloo area seats, Oakville, Kanata, Fredericton, St. Catherines, amongst others. It also assumes that the Bloc wins 30 seats again (no guarantees, especially when the 2025 election will be 7 years into a Legault government and the Bloc has revived itself by being a protector of Legault’s interests in Ottawa) and that the Liberals and NDP lose all of their working class seats, which is unlikely. Will they lose some? Sure, absolutely, but if you’re predicting a clean sweep and that only gets you to 140, you’re fucked.

But, according to these people, the Cons are fine, because plenty of suburban Liberals won’t care, and they’ll vote for Poilievre anyways, as if the last 6 months haven’t happened, as if he hasn’t been wrong about basically everything this whole time. When he filmed his video at Pearson, and Scott Reid came in his pants about how Skippy was a smooth operator who knows how to win, Reid was assuming that the populace was A) paying enough attention to care what Skippy thought, and B) was too stupid to realize that airport delays weren’t and aren’t a Made In Canada phenonomen, but because Mr. “People will use their Child Benefit to buy beer and popcorn” thinks so little of the Canadian people, he thinks it’ll work.

The next election will be fought on Economic competence, assuredly - Trudeau won in 2021 because rightly or wrongly people think he did a big thing well, and in 2025 he (or Freeland) will win or lose on whether or not the Conservatives can convince the electorate that they would handle the next phase of whatever the fuck this is better than the Liberals. That is almost assuredly going to be the ballot question in 2025, given that the Liberals routinely win despite ethical standards problems (see SNC and WE). How is Pierre Poilievre going to effectively prosecute an economic competence argument to Mississauga or Kitchener when he has the “opt out of inflation” quote hanging around his neck?

The story of the 2020 US election, above all else, was that you can’t stitch together both ends of your coalition together at the same time. You can’t make big gains amongst social liberals in Southlake and keep your margins in socially conservative South Texas. This is something that so very much got wrong then, yes. If you think I’m making the same mistakes in a broad sense - aka, overstating the candidate and party I like over the one I dislike - well, I don’t know why you subscribe, but it’s not like I love the Liberals or anything. I just don’t see the actual path for Poilievre, as opposed to just efemeral sense that the Liberals are in trouble.

We all intellectually know Twitter isn’t real life, but we all forget Twitter isn’t real life when Ryan Whitney posts a video of Pearson chaos. My God, 1.3M people or whatever watched a video from a guy with a Barstool tie in? The replies are all #FuckTrudeau? Oh no, whatever could it mean?

Nothing - just like the fact that Steven Del Duca subjectively felt like the “livelier” progressive alternative to Ford ended up being shit. You can play this game with anything, and those inclined to read the tea leaves as favourable to the Cons will always find some evidence to justify it. The problem is, you’re looking for it.

I know Chantal Hebert wrote a column about how Prime Ministers don’t win fourth terms on the weekend, and how the government “feels” in trouble. Fine. It’s a bad column, but not one worthy of the contempt thrown her way for it. It’s an opinion piece, just like this is. Columnists columnize on the basis of their opinions. Do I agree? No, of course not, but that’s not the point. The problem with the article isn’t how dare someone criticize Lord Trudeau, Second Of His Name, the problem is that it thinks the usual rules apply, and they don’t. How in the name of fuck can you look at the last 15 years and think “yup, the historical record of tossing Governments after 9 years” will hold? Look at provincial politics, and you’ll see the BC Liberals, Ontario Liberals, Manitoba NDP, and Alberta PCs all pulled off fourth consequtive terms in office, the Quebec Liberals came two seats away from pulling it off in 2012 (and then won a 4th in five terms 18 months later), Pierre Trudeau came only a handful of seats away from pulling it off in 1979 before winning again in 1980, and most importantly of all, the Liberal Party won four terms the last time it was in power, and the time before that, Pierre Trudeau won elections after 9 years of consequtive Liberal reign and 11 years, because he took over after two election wins by Lester Pearson. The idea that three terms is an auto change of government is absurd.

Pierre is calling for peaceful protests of Government attacks on freedom on Canada Day - a wink and a nudge to the Convoy 2.0 planned for that day (or is it 3.0? How are we classifying the weird April Biker thing?) - because that is who he needs now. My guy, it’s Canada Day - let us just fucking rock out to whichever mediocre CanCon acts show up and get high or whatever. The idea that Poilievre is so unable to see the forest for the trees - you fucking won the leadership already, start focusing on the general election you want to win - is the problem.

Will this matter? No, but the fact he’s a fucking idiot does. The crypto stuff, the Convoy stuff, blaming delays at Pearson on COVID mandates as 14000 flights are cancelled in the US today alone is all just idiocy, but because it’s being done by someone who is winning we are all fucking pretending there’s some fucking genius to it. There isn’t. What there is is incoherence and disaster written all over it the second he gets into a general election.

What was the line about pandemics - “if you properly react, everyone will say you overreacted, because it won’t be as bad as it could have otherwise been?” Like, someone is going to say that here, but let’s be very very clear - Pierre is running a campaign of idiocy and lies, and all that thinking he will succeed does is tell me you think the average Canadian is too stupid to notice.

Spoiler: they’re not.