The Two Poilievres

On The Enigma Of Politics

Two things happened this weekend that seem relevant to the next election – Pierre Poilievre released a video that firmly reiterates himself as a leading advocate for more housing, more dense housing, and a greater Federal response to the crisis, and Roman Baber was nominated as the Conservative Candidate for York Centre.

The Poilievre video was genuinely impressive to see – Poilievre came off as authentic, interesting, funny, and was also advocating and embracing a set of values that Tories haven’t always done. By telling a story of his University days, showing he was a transit user, he’s honestly showing himself to be less uniformly hostile and more understanding of voters the Tories often fail to win. And then it came out that Roman Baber, a former Tory MPP whose views on vaccines and COVID were too extreme for Doug Ford, is the candidate in York Centre.

I’m not going to relitigate COVID policy and the choices made or not, but Poilievre has been attempting a pivot in recent weeks – the ad from his wife with the B-roll of him puzzle building with his kid, the Housing video – that is undercut by Baber in specific and the general continuance of the Tory right’s influence. What Poilievre is at his core is irrelevant to the politics of this, which is clear, and probably on some level election defining.

Can Conservatives convince Canadians that Poilievre is the slightly wonkish, maybe a bit of a dork, Different Kind Of Conservative they’re clearly trying to pitch him as, or will the WEF shit and Roman Baber and Leslyn Lewis meeting with a German Nazi and all that win out?

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Obviously Poilievre is going to do better than normal with old, culturally conservative Dippers who think Jagmeet’s a urban elite fuck who doesn’t care about the working class and win over some rural Liberals in the Atlantic who think that the Liberals are too wrapped around the axle of Central Canada and have lost their ways. Those aren’t the voters I’m talking about here, because even O’Toole gained with them, and frankly any Tory leader would gain with them right now given the (say it with me y’all) Global Fucking Realignment. Those voters exist, but there’s a second, much more Poilievre specific group of voters suddenly considering the right.

These voters are the victims of the housing crisis, and they’re broadly a group that should be defying appeal to the right. They’re socially liberal, pro climate action, pro immigrant (even if increasingly wondering if we need to pause the high levels of immigrant for now), and hugely pro gay rights. These voters are faced with a choice of two options they don’t love – a government (and their NDP partners) with wildly insufficient and occasionally downright offensive answers on housing, and an Opposition saying all the right things on housing that they don’t trust at all on the other stuff.

For some people, the economic interest will win out easily, and for some, their commitment to their social liberalism will mean they can’t vote Tory under any circumstances. How to weigh that choice, what matters more, will be a personal choice and people under the same set of broad circumstances will come to this decision very differently. But a lot of people are now considering voting for Poilievre who hadn’t even considered O’Toole or Scheer, which is great for the Conservatives.

The problem is, the bar to get people to say they’ll vote for you is much lower than the bar to actually vote for you, as every Opposition essentially ever learns at some point. The voters they’re trying to win on housing would uniformly be Democrats in the US and reluctant Starmerites in the UK. They’re instinctively liberal, and they’re weighing the threat of the CPC on the other issues they care about. Which is why Roman Baber and the WEF shit matters.

Baber was booted from the PCPO caucus for holding views too extreme for Doug Ford’s liking. Whatever you think of the propriety of his views on COVID, vaccinations, and the like, he is an odd fit with a Tory Party trying to win over the views of people who were banging down the doors to get vaccinated and then boosted. Now, it’s not some electoral silver bullet – the number of people who know who Roman Baber is is probably sub 1% of the country – but it’s illustrative of the choice facing the CPC.

Every time the CPC tacks right – by attacking the CBC, by attacking action on climate, by sucking up to big oil, by denouncing the WEF and “globalists” – they make the voters they’re trying to win on housing wary. It’s a struggle for the party, trying to win and keep culturally conservative voters who think that one of the biggest issues facing this country is wokeness and the priorities of the urban elite who don’t have real issues (mostly in places not particularly close to a major city) and these prospective urban and suburban social liberals who just want a fucking house to not cost all their money.

If the Tories really want to win, and win big, they need to de-toxify Poilievre to the voters who are open to hearing a pitch about the Tories as anti-ideological, essentially technocrats who will look at what needs to get done without the litany of bureaucrats and consultants who slow down necessary change. If the Tories could focus their message on good government, anti-corruption, and housing – and shut the fuck about the other shit – they would win 200 seats. The fact that Poilievre is featuring his wife and showing that B-roll of his as a father shows they know they need to soften him.

Whether they can win the next election or not will in many ways come down to how effective the Liberals are at finding some form of mechanism to show progress on housing, and how toxic the Liberals can make the Poilievre brand. If Poilievre goes into that election seen as a threat to the socially liberal consensus and the Liberals have something even remotely tangible on housing, he’ll lose. If the Liberal attacks that he’s some threat can be disarmed, then people who aren’t usually Conservative voters will vote for him fairly comfortably. How toxic that brand is by election day will determine how many people can cross their personal rubicons and vote for someone they never thought they’d support.

The reason Baber matters is because Poilievre has already done what he’s gonna do on the PPC. If the voters who are still saying they won’t vote for him, there’s nothing they can do to get those votes anymore. Therefore, any more bozo eruptions from the right of the party will solely go to hurting the other side of the party’s electoral equation. By all means attack the Liberals when they say hilariously out of touch things, as they’re want to do, but maybe just maybe shut the fuck about the WEF and globalists. All it does now is make those who look at Poilievre with mixed feelings doubt whether they can vote for him even more. And keeping Baber and Lewis and whoever else from making headlines that cause headaches is gonna be crucial.

The Tories seem to get what they need to do to rectify things, but they’re stuck. There’s two Poilievres, the most enigmatic leader I can think of in modern international political history. He’s both a technocrat and a true believer, because he is trying to be everything to everybody. If Poilievre can continue to detoxify the brand, he’ll win and win big. If he can’t get his right flank to sit down and shut up, the voters impressed with his housing offer will still find the CPC a bridge too far. How Poilievre handles his newly nominated candidate in York Centre will be telling, because if the CPC wants to win, they can’t let their right run the show, and Baber has form of not letting electoral considerations get in his way.