The Case For Carney Winning

On Poilievre’s Bad Tariff Day

There’s been a lot of talk about why the Conservatives will win the next election, and somewhere between likely and probably win it at a majority level. It’s a case that’s easy to make - Carney’s untested, the Liberals are in a honeymoon, Carney’s not a God-tier orator off the cuff, the government has plenty of weaknesses to exploit. It’s a case I believe - gun to my head I think Poilievre wins a very narrow majority next time, right now - but there’s been little examination in public of the other side.

The case for the Liberals winning is in a lot of ways a case against Pierre Poilievre, a case that Poilievre’s big lead was always a function of Trudeau’s failure and not any affection for him. The reason I’ve been hesitant to make it is because it will seem like grandstanding. In many cases the case for Carney boils down to the idea that the things I wrote about Poilievre in 2022 and 2023 were correct, and that Trudeau needed to leave to expose that. I’m trying desperately not to make an argument just because I want it to be true. But at some point somebody should make it. After the latest update to my Federal model, the Liberals are now ahead in seats, so it seems fitting.

(To indulge a wonky point: the reason this week’s Leger didn’t hurt the Liberals much is because last week’s didn’t really help them. There is a plateau in Liberal seats in BC - there’s no real seats to win outside Victoria and the lower mainland - and the elevated and clearly wrong Prairies numbers didn’t move seats either. A lot of the swing week on week merely swung safe Conservative seats bluer or safe red ones closer to competitive. If everyone shows swings like Leger, then it’ll go back the other way. But the vast majority of the competitive seats are in Ontario, and the Liberals got a 1% swing there. Not a shock the model barely budged.)

Yesterday’s speech from Poilievre was a shocking failure on two levels - a crass and partisan speech that failed to meet the moment, at a time when Trudeau gave the indisputable speech of his Prime Ministerial tenure. It was needlessly divisive at a time when Canadians want unity, a fighting stance at home at a time when Trudeau had just spent his time talking about the value of unity and cohesion here at home, and a stunningly weak attack on Donald Trump at a time when Trudeau was speaking directly to him and saying it was a dumb idea from a smart man. It was a complete misread of the room from the Conservatives.

But what was even weirder was when they had Poilievre speak - they had him start during Doug Ford’s press availability, getting soundless mini-box coverage on CBC and ignored by CTV until Ford finished. Poilievre’s speech and Q&A was aired on CBC in full after, but without the on air buildup of what he might say or much analysis afterwards. He allowed himself to be the third most important set of comments of the day by a completely avoidable fuckup. It was incompetence.

Does it matter? No, not really. The timing of when a press conference is held will not materially impact the polls or any voters. But it’s a basic question of competence that’s important as a signal. There are moments when getting the small shit right will matter, and if you can’t do something so basic like “turn on CBC and wait until Ford is done talking”, there’s no real reason to think they will be able to land the bigger hits. But this isn’t the only fuckup.

Take something like Carney’s endorsement of Catherine McKenney, the former councillor turned Mayoral candidate in Ottawa, during the 2022 race. McKenney, who won a seat for the NDP at Thursday’s Ontario Election, is a no-name nationally and even in much of Ontario. But where they are a name is amongst New Democrats and progressives. I voted for them in 2022 proudly - they were the right choice for the city and every day of Sutcliffe’s shit reign I pine for a better Mayor. The only people who will know who they’re talking about are people who are terrified Carney’s a neolib Chretien 2.0. A Conservative attack line strengthened Carney’s NDP bonafides without a dime or dollar from Carney.

The honest truth is that the Conservatives have been a flawed political operation held together by a leader with better instincts than his predecessor (not that that’s saying much) and a Prime Minister who shrunk from the moment repeatedly before his resignation. There have been moments of Conservative insanity that have been remembered and then forgotten - calling Ukraine a far away land, calling the 2023 border near-miss a terrorist act based on one Fox News report and then lying about it being Fox News, (seemingly drunkenly) wandering into some trailer set up to chat with nutters - that shouldn’t have happened.

This is not some anti-Conservative bias - ask me for my thoughts on the 2025 Conservative campaign provincially and I’d basically build a shrine to Kory Teneycke. For all of my ideological problems with him and Nick Kouvalis, I have no problem admitting they’re the best in the game. In comparison to Teneycke, Byrne is less genius and more a Liberals’ dream, someone combining the arrogance of the successful and the resume of the impotent.

In a vacuum, her decisions are fine, even defensible somewhat. But when compared to what we just saw in Ontario, either she is running a significantly worse operation than Teneycke or Poilievre is a significantly worse candidate than Ford. That, or Carney is actually extremely good at politics, one of the three.

At its core I’m worried about getting too ahead of myself on Carney actually winning because I want him to, desperately. What I know, for whatever jokes about my past that I make, is that I have erred before by letting myself construct plausible-sounding arguments that just happened to be what I wanted to happen. I’m a smart guy, for all my false modesty, and if I want to engage in partisan hackery I can do a damn good job of making it sound coherent and believable - or at least more believable than many others.

If you think that this isn’t looming over me, it’s sometimes all I think about. I spend more time than I can count trying to balance whether I genuinely think Carney can win. And when I get pessimistic, when I think my optimism for him is mere partisan hackery, Pierre Poilievre has a day like yesterday. A day that reminds me if Jenni Byrne is your answer to a question the question isn’t “who’s going to get the Tories back into government?”

Mark Carney can win the next election. I don’t know if he will. But he gives us one hell of a shot. And compared to where we were 2 months ago today, the day before the PM resigned, it’s worth remembering just how distant this felt then.