The Cards You Have

On Poker's Lesson For The Liberals

The worst kind of person to argue with – and I have absolutely been this way in the past – is the kind of person who thinks that someone disagreeing with them means that they don’t understand the argument being made. So self-assured of their correctness, the idea that someone could be in receipt of all the facts and just come to a different conclusion doesn’t cross their minds, and so their argument ends up becoming just repeating their argument in slightly different (and generally more condescending) ways. It’s the logical consequence of arrogance, but also of snobbery.

This week, my mentions have been full of a version of it, as I use what influence, real or imagined, I have with the Federal Liberals to get them to Build Some Fucking Housing. In the world’s least shocking twist, calling on the feds to step up has led to the Jurisdiction Explainers to (not so) patiently explain to me that actually it’s Doug Ford and Danielle Smith’s fault, and the Feds shouldn’t be blamed. Given I’ve spent far too much time fighting about this on Twitter, it probably deserves a column, so here’s my official response to people saying who should be blamed for the housing crisis, courtesy of Grandpa Scrimshaw:

Doesn’t matter if you’re dead right if being dead right makes you right dead.

…

This site, and my analysis generally, is an attempt to deal in what will happen. That’s not always the case (certainly with regards to the Ontario Liberal Leadership race I am attempting to advocate for what should happen), but this is, at its core, an attempt to live within political realities. Is my interpretation of political realities always, how you might say, correct? Fuck no, but at least I try to stay in the realm of what will happen.

People who want to get mad at voters when it’s pointed out that voters are actively blaming the Federal government for the problems in the housing market are missing the key point – the Feds will get blamed whether they should or not. This is a verifiable fact at this point, with the legion of polls (both phone and online) showing real swings against the government amongst the young. And explaining on Twitter that actually the young (and hell, not even particularly young) who can’t find anywhere to live that isn’t way too fucking expensive are blaming the wrong people isn’t going to work.

The problem with arguments about should is that they’re fundamentally a refusal to live in reality. You can rail at the fundamental unfairness that the Federal Government is being blamed for something that they don’t explicitly have carriage over, or you can accept that they are being blamed and focus on how the fuck to respond to that fact. But so many would much rather blame the media (including some who very obviously overplay the reach of this humble offering) than reckon with reality.

If the Federal Government has no role in Housing why’s there a National Housing Strategy, again? The jurisdictional understanders don’t want to reckon with that fact, nor the history of the best things in this country being overriding provincial jurisdictions to make this country better, as we did with health care. The Feds just got 8 conservative governments to sign up to child care deals, so the idea that these Premiers will sabotage to elect Poilievre – especially Ford, who needs good Housing stats to try and win a third term – is ludicrous.

All of this makes me think of why I don’t play poker very much – I don’t have the patience to only play optimal hands. I like playing hands too much to wait, and I don’t have the patience to sit there indefinitely folding every hand. But it also reminds me of the lesson of poker – if you want to play it well, you have to play the cards you have, not the cards you want to have. And the same is very true in politics regardless of what some wish it were.

The question of media culpability is semi-interesting, I guess, but it’s also a distraction – politicians always take credit for things that happen even if it’s not their responsibility (see Joe Biden touting his huge, amazing, incredible job numbers compared to Trump’s, as if he didn’t walk into a reopening economy for reasons entirely separate to his election), and they get blamed for external factors too. When Trudeau stops comparing Canadian inflation to European inflation (which is higher in part because of factors outside of their control, aka Russia invading Ukraine), that’s when Liberals have a leg to stand on on not getting blamed for factors outside their control.

If you’d like the Premiers to get more of the blame, the solution to that isn’t going to come in pedantic tweets at me, but at supporting independent and local media that is keeping an eye on provincial governments. But solving the crises of legacy media and the gutting of broadsheet newspapers by Postmedia is difficult, and blaming people who are trying to get the Liberals to acknowledge reality so they can win again is easier.

At the end of the day, there’s two paths from here: the Liberals using all of their soft power to bribe the provinces and cities into pro-building positions, using federal lands (including forces bases) to build directly, and yes daring someone to attempt to stop them for overreaching, or the Liberals continuing on the current path and losing the next election.

I have long since abandoned my concern for litigating how things should be, because at the end of the day it is the job of politics to respond to what is, not what should be. The right time to lecture your neighbour about his decaying and not up to code front steps isn’t when you hear him fall and hit his head, it’s after you’re checked he’s not unconscious. We have a crisis right now that needs solutions, and it’s not gone unremarked that the generation who has been fucked by this crisis are the ones who are more willing to accept aggressive measures in response to it. You don’t like it, you think that jurisdictional respect is paramount? Then feel holier than thou as Poilievre wins 250 seats.

There is one path forward for the government and its defenders: acknowledge reality as it is, not as you wish it, accept that this is both a governance and a electoral crisis, and Build. Some. Fucking. Housing. Play the cards you have, not the ones you wish you had, because if you don’t, you’ll be pure of heart and mind and watching Prime Minister Poilievre dismantle your legacy.