Poilievre's Press Problem

On Skippy's Real Threat

Name me a single member of the Canadian commentariat at a mainstream Canadian publication or who regularly appears on one of the TV networks who shares Pierre Poilievre’s politics.

Not “is defending Pierre Poilievre now that he is CPC leader”, but actively believes in Poilievre’s politics. The answer? No one I can think of. Rex Murphy was pretty establishment friendly while Harper was in office, Conrad Black literally became a British Lord so any claims he can make to anti-establishment politics is bullshit of the highest order, and your Ivison-Kheiriddin-Coyne class of small-c conservatives are all much more concerned with economics than culture war issues (and all three routinely fight back in columns against the sorts of social conservatism of the right of the CPC).

Go to the TV pundits, and while I can’t claim to remember without Googling all 10 (or 9, I guess, since the Friday Power Panel is usually all journalists) of the Conservative representatives on Power Play and Power And Politics, it’s certainly the case that the staffer poll they regularly pick from are always more socially liberal than the average CPC MP or member. So, unless I’m missing someone at a mainstream outlet, there’s not really a constituency for Poilievre-ism.

This is why even Brian Lilley was repeating in his columns absolute dogshit about how Charest still had a path as of Canada Day 2022, because it’s easier to believe there might be a path when you yourself are deeply uncomfortable with the brand of conservatism being pushed. The fact that the Laurentian Elite conservatives were all for Charest is best summed by Tom Mulcair’s willingness to go on TV and say Charest would crush Poilievre, because Mulcair made the mistake of thinking his group chats were representative of the party and its supporters.

And this, more than anything, is why Pierre Poilievre might face any form of risk from all of this nonsense over Elon Musk, the CBC’s Twitter feed, and a label involving 69%.

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There is no constituency of swing voters who would have voted for Poilievre who now won’t because he’s engaging with Elon Musk about the label under the CBC’s Twitter account. What happens to people who aren’t on Twitter or who are but don’t use it much is their eyes glaze over at any of the details. Same thing with Facebook stories back in the late 2010s around Brexit or Trump – the details never really got captured, because people find internal tech governance stories boring as shit.

The number of people who aren’t on Twitter who will hear about this is infinitesimally small, because the kinds of people who will actually click a link to this story who aren’t already on Twitter is tiny. If you care about Twitter, you’re on Twitter. So as a direct consequence, there’s no pain to be suffered. Indirectly, though, I’m not sure. I’ve written that the defund stuff could be an issue, but I do think there’s a world where there is a consequence of the shitposts – and that’s how it infects the rest of the coverage, mostly from people who let’s be really brutally honest here, do not like Poilievre or his politics.

What could matter is whether this incident – that is mostly an irrelevance to the country at large – has a bigger, disproportionate impact on the commentariat, which could change the tenor and tone of the coverage of Poilievre. I’m not saying this will happen, or even that it necessarily should, but what happens if Don Martin’s column next week or the next Tom Mulcair TV appearance becomes about temperament, and whether Poilievre is calm and collected enough to lead a G7 country. What if the columns about why is Poilievre not winning by more against such a weak government pop up?

We know that the commentariat has a willingness to try and build out narratives and that a lot of people find their inspirations from each other. Remember the week of Fall 2022 election talk? Once an idea gets into the bloodstream, it takes up oxygen. And there’s a risk that a press that isn’t friendly to Pierre will use this as their way to do a little Conservative bashing, either because they sincerely believe it or just because it’s a useful way of showing they can be equal opportunity attackers.

In the same way that the Government Funded label is both a needless attack on the CBC because of why it’s being put on but also factually accurate, it’s not great that the thing that might cause a change in the press’ tone on Skippy is Twitter drama, but it’s also fair to point out that this Twitter drama is really fucking childish. At some point, the instances of Poilievre being childish and unable to get through a press conference will add up, and while there’s no reason to think that any of these instances in themselves will move votes, every time Poilievre gives the press and the commentariat a chance to focus on him negatively is a day the government isn’t being hit with stories on their sore spots.

If we fast forward to the night of the next election and the Liberals have won a fairly status quo fourth term where them and the NDP have a clear majority together, this won’t be why Poilievre lost. But it might be one of the barnacles that helped move the press and the commentators against him, and those are dangerous. You can win without any institutional backing, but the idea that it’s likely is absurd. Poilievre’s whole thing is that he’s focused on delivering for normal/regular/non-elite Canadians while the Liberals are in their ivory towers of elitism, but the problem is if the commentariat starts calling you out for being reactionary, jumpy, and easily baited, it’s not hard to turn Poilievre into the guy focused on nonsense while the Liberals are focusing on delivering child care and dental care.

If I’m Poilievre the two priorities from here have to be turning down the heat on the relationship with the media and finding his way to yes on supporting dental care and child care for the 2025 campaign. He needs to re-pitch himself as a slightly calmer, less flappable leader – a change in tone more than focus – and he needs to take the cudgels of dental and child care off the table from the Liberals to use in the next campaign. If he shows any willingness to do that he can win, but if Poilievre continues going down culs-de-sac of shitposting and pissing off the press, he’ll just incur more and more negative coverage that will over time help destroy him.