#ScrimshawSix, Durham Edition

Six Thoughts On The CPC Landslide

We had a federal byelection tonight in Durham, and I know that even though this is not the world’s most exciting race ever I know people will click on this article, so let’s go. #ScrimshawSix, Durham Edition.

Will The Last Liberal Optimists Please Turn Out The Lights?

Without massive changes the Liberals will get destroyed at the next election.

Now, the “without massive changes” caveat is big enough you can run a tolled highway through, but there has been a kind of person in denial about what this government’s polls mean and what they say about the party. But right now, there can be no doubt they’re on track for a disastrous outcome. I have long said if you engage in poll denialism you’re an idiot. After tonight, anyone still engaging in it should have their driver’s license revoked, because they’re not of sound mind.

There is a lot of time before the next election and yes, lots of things can change. I plainly don’t think the kinds of polled outcomes we’re seeing right now will happen at the election, as I tweeted about Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak at various times in the UK. My general instinct is a government that is badly behind will rally support between their low point and the election. I still expect this here. But that’s a very different thing than claiming that the polls right now are wrong.

I want the Liberals to win the next election. I don’t know if many of their supporters actually want them to, because if you want a Liberal government after the next election you need this government to get its head out of its fucking ass and it seems like many are content to live in the delusion that everything is fine. Tonight should kill that thinking, because everything isn’t fine and this won’t just go back to normal.

Pierre Poilievre Is Not A Liability (Yet)

I want Pierre Poilievre to be a liability. I want his support for the Convoy and Leslyn Lewis being in his Shadow Cabinet and AFD lady meeting MPs and all of it to be controversial and a vote loser. It’s not as of yet. We can all want it to be, but it’s not. The honest truth is that right now Poilievre is exactly what a good opposition leader should be – not a negative.

He might end up being one by the election, but he won’t become one by pretending that he’s Donald Trump and that his election poses the kind of actual danger to democracy that Trump does. Poilievre believes a lot of odious things and would do a lot of bad things. The Trump comparisons just make normal, 2021 Liberal voters who don’t love Trudeau and co. look at them like they’re mentalcases. It’s nonsensical.

If the Liberals spent $5M tomorrow on TV ads, would his ratings drop and maybe knock Skippy south of 40% nationally? Maybe, but at the end of the day without recovery in the Liberals’ ratings there’s no point. If the choice in the election is the Liberals are incompetent morons and the Conservatives are heartless assholes the Conservatives will win; theoretical bad beats lived bad any day.

Jagmeet Should Resign

Eric Grenier did an analysis at the time of the June byelections that the NDP vote being bad at byelections isn’t actually relevant for future election performance under Jagmeet. It’s a somewhat persuasive case, albeit one which tilts to the majority Parliament, where the Green vote was high all throughout the Parliament and came back to the NDP by the election. The other thing, of course, is that those were with strong Liberal polling. Now, the Liberal polling still sucks, and the NDP are still nowhere.

Everyone knows that I think Jagmeet needs to resign, but this is yet more proof that the NDP as currently constituted are about as useful as using a croissant as a dildo. Resign.

PPC Holding Up?

The underrated part of this night for the Conservatives is they’re going to exceed the benchmark for a good night without really eating the PPC. Right now it looks like the PPC are going to hold their vote within a point of 2021, which is a credible result for the party against a leader with a much more friendly profile to 2021 PPC voters. Getting above 55% without eating the PPC makes Poilievre’s performance even more impressive.

Freeland’s Time Up?

Justin Trudeau, for good or for ill, will lead the LPC into the next election. Given the only place the LPC vote is holding up best is Quebec (ignoring last week’s Leger crosstab until someone else replicates it), I don’t think there’s a better name out there for them. Therefore, if the Liberals are going to save their asses it has to be by making this April’s budget Chrystia’s last.

Do I love calling for the firing of the female deputy to save the male’s government? No, but then again I hated Bill Morneau for years and called for him to go during WE so I’m not that worried about being called a sexist by people acting in good faith. (Also, for the record, I’d make Anand DPM and Finance Minister.)

Freeland is a crap communicator in a government that comes off tone deaf on a daily basis, she’s inextricably linked to Trudeau, and on merits she probably does have to take a lot of the blame for the underlying economic maladies that the post-COVID recovery have shown. It’s the logical move.

What Does It All Mean?

I know I am sounding like a broken fucking record at this point but the left in this country is facing an inflection point and it seems like a lot of the fellow travelers I have are content to either pretend everything’s fine when it’s not or blame the fact that things aren’t fine on a series of nonsensical arguments that refuse to accept that this is a bad economy, it’s a really bad economy for two specific cohorts of people (20-something graduates who have to choose between living at home after school or overpaying for shit accommodation and 30-somethings who bought in the last 5 years at elevated prices and now face mortgage bills double what they originally bought for), and that those two cohorts are why Justin Trudeau won the last three elections.

At some point the broader left needs to understand that solutions to this problem is not going to be found in more loudly denouncing Poilievre or whining about left wing vote splitting or whatever else. It’ll come by applying collective pressure to the Federal Liberals and the various parties of the centre and left across the provinces to get their shit together. Whether you agree or disagree with my various musings on how the left should position themselves to win at least someone with at least some influence, however small, is trying.

Plainly, as an Ontarian, we are staring down the barrel of a third Ford term and a Poilievre landslide. I’d like for evidence that anyone else sees this and is ready to fucking act like it. Hell, as annoyed as I am about the fact that they dropped it on a Friday, it seems right now like Bonnie Crombie and her team are the most serious left wing party between the quad of Federal and Ontario Libs and Dippers. That I’m saying this after everything I’ve written and said about Crombie tells you everything you need to know about the visceral anger I feel at the other three.

The Liberals got their asses kicked tonight. If you want this government to do anything more than limp aimlessly to the next election you should be happy. In their delusion they have no chance of winning. If they realize how bad it is, maybe they can come back. I doubt it, but now they can’t pretend they don’t know for sure how fucked they are.