Political Solutions And Policy Problems

On The Disconnect Between Trudeau And Ford

Why are Justin Trudeau’s poll numbers so much worse than Doug Ford’s?

It’s a throwaway question, sure, but why is Doug Ford more Teflon than Justin Trudeau? Some of it may be quality of opposition, sure, but it’s gotta be more than that, right? They have the same failures on housing, Ford has a hospital system that’s falling apart at the seams, Ontario’s post-secondary institutions are fucked, and ethical scandals popping up once a month at minimum. So why is he Teflon, while Trudeau is magnetic?

At some level, I think it’s because of how Ford is attacked. Justin Trudeau’s problems before were decidedly political in nature – almost nobody in the country was actually affected by whether or not his conversations about SNC crossed the line or not, nobody could or couldn’t make their mortgage because he did Blackface. They were scandals, sure, but they were political stories at a fundamental level. This? This is different, this is a series of policy failures having a material consequence on voters.

The problem is, we don’t talk about Ford this way. Everytime he’s in the news, it’s for Doug’s Comical Corruption Story Of The Month. January’s was Staples, February’s is likely going to be private colleges related, if I had to guess. Because of the way the media focused on these absurd stories more than they do the structural failures of Ford and Fordism, we’re at this place where Ford’s numbers tank when he’s in a scandal and then fade when he apologizes for it.

So what does it mean? It means the Federal Liberals aren’t an ad blitz away from saving themselves, but the provincial opposition should probably attempt to focus less on the Story Of The Day and more on the structural problems.

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Think back to the Harper era, and then think about all of the things that ended up proving inconsequential at election time that progressives desperately wanted to matter. Remember In And Out and Robocalls and the fact that they were held in contempt of Parliament to cause the 2011 election or Bev Oda’s Orange Juice or muzzling scientists or take your pick of what I’m forgetting? None of it mattered. What did move votes in that time? The GST cuts and the sense Harper handled the GFC well, and then the fact that by 2015 the economy was sputtering.

The reason 10% of the country wasn’t willing to vote for Harper in 2004, was willing to vote for him in 2011, and then mostly didn’t vote for him again in 2015 is simple. In 2004 they didn’t trust Harper to manage the economy well and to avoid lurching us to the right on social issues. By 2011, he had proved to enough voters’ satisfaction that he could handle the economy, and that a Tory government wasn’t an end to marriage equality or a woman’s right to choose. When the economy soured again, so did voter sentiment.

Why did Danielle Smith win last May (beyond the bad NDP campaign)? Because despite all the scandal of the past four years and the crazy statements voters were reasonably content about their own situations. Why did the scandal plagued McGuinty-Wynne governments survive as long as they did? Because political scandals don’t take down governments on their own.

We saw with Ford that none of that mattered last election, and the Abacus polling during the height of the Greenbelt scandal showed the problem with attacking him in a Scandal Of The Week way. The PC vote share went from 41% all the way down to 34% at the peak of the scandal. By the end of November? Back at 41%. Quite literally no lasting damage.

So what will do lasting damage on Ford? The same shit that’s doing damage to the Liberal vote right now. What’s Poilievre’s line, rent’s doubled under Trudeau? Average rent for a 1 bedroom in Ontario in October 2018 was $1105. Now? $2238. It’s doubled in less just over five years. Instead of being sucked into sending open letters about the Staples disaster why isn’t the Opposition holding a press conference about this on a daily basis? Repeat this with hospital wait times and students taught in non-permanent classrooms and you have a message that won’t be transient.

A lot of people dislike the fact that Justin Trudeau is being blamed for the housing crisis, but there’s a reason for it – someone is blaming him. Ford actually has a lot more blame for this, but there’s nowhere near the chorus of people pointing out his failures. The Opposition needs to stop trying to beat Ford with scandal, but with the actual costs of conservative government.

How many more of these Staples/Greenbelt/Stag and Doe scandals do we need to see that the voters aren’t connecting with it? The honest truth is that voters will elect corrupt scumbags if they think that they do a good job when they’re not being corrupt. Hell, that was kind of the Liberal Party of Quebec’s whole implicit pitch for a few decades.

Trudeau is hurting because of policy problems, not political ones. There isn’t an ad blitz or a comms strategy that can solve his problems. However, because we keep letting Ford’s problems be seen as political, he can get his way out of them. Which is why the Opposition needs to let some of these Scandal Of The Week pitches go, and start focusing on the broader fucking attack, which is that the policy itself is rotten.

I would say I want the scandal stuff to matter, and to an extent I do. I didn’t vote Liberal in 2019 or 2021 on the basis of SNC and WE. I actually did withhold my vote on the basis of giving a fuck about morals and ethics. But the truth is that is a minority opinion. There just are not enough people who will actually change their votes at the ballot box because of a political scandal. There are many fucking more who will because it takes them 12 fucking hours to get seen at an ER or because rent is double in just over 5 years.

If we want to end the Ford government, let’s pay attention to what is ailing Trudeau right now, and recognize the lesson. Political problems go away; policy failures cost governments their jobs.

Let’s start attacking Ford’s policy failures.