Time To Dig In
On The Dual Crises Of Poilievre And Ford
(Nathaniel Arfin swung by the Scrimshaw Show today to talk responding to Trump, the politics of recovery, security clearances, Bonnie Crombie’s tax cuts, and more!)
One of the impulses it’s clear that many on the left, both in Canada and in America, are reaching for in the aftermath of Trump’s victory is the idea the voters are wrong. They are, obviously, and it’s not really worth policing what individuals say or think in the aftermath of a traumatic loss. But it is worth being clear on one point: the voters, even those who voted for a fascist, are not all irredeemably endorsing the views of the person they elected.
It’s worth keeping this in mind for a simple reason - you’re going to need the votes of some number of people who voted for Trump to win power someday. There’s no shortcut to power that doesn’t require a number of people currently voting for Trump, or in a Canadian context Poilievre or Ford, switching back to voting for Democrats or Liberals. There just isn’t.
Canadian Liberals in specific need to remember this, because there is no way to magic the opposition together to either Poilievre or Ford and solve the underlying problems of both of them being popular. It will not work, and if we are serious about winning we need serious people proposing ideas to beat them and not advocating for deals that won’t work.
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A February Abacus poll had 34% of NDP voters wanting Pierre Poilievre as PM over Justin Trudeau. Even if you dial that number back to 30%, that would assume that in some hypothetical where the Liberals and NDP did a deal, the Liberals would only actually net gain 40% of the NDP vote. Far from being able to add together the Liberal and NDP votes, you’d only be able to add 40% of the NDP vote to the margin.
Let’s take my home seat of Kanata as an example. Right now, Fournier has the CPC lead at 14%, with 15% for the NDP and 5% for the Greens. Under a certain theory of politics, this seat could be lineball if only the Liberals and NDP could do a deal. Except, at best, the NDP dropping out would maybe cut the lead from 14% to 8%, assuming a 70/30 split. And that’s in a seat where there’s a 15% vote for the NDP. In much of the GTA, that number is already at or below 10%, as years of strategic voting campaigns have worn down all but the truest hard core New Democrats. In the same way, Liberals in Skeena and Comox who desperately want a non-Conservative candidate already know that they should vote New Democrat. A formal deal won’t change the fact that many of those people do not want to vote NDP.
The problem for progressives is that there is not an enduring “progressive” majority that are actually willing to vote in an enduring way for progressive politics. There are majorities for some progressive ideas - namely gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose - but those issues do not cleanly map onto vote intention. The dirty secret is that as a gay man, I would feel safer being out and open at a Conservative event in St. Paul’s than I would in many small towns currently represented by the NDP. Plenty of people who have made up the backbone of winning NDP coalitions in Timmins and Skeena and Kootenay hold views that, plainly, the average New Democrat in Toronto or Ottawa would find appalling.
There are also, yes, plenty of Liberals who view the NDP as fundamentally unserious and unfit to lead. That is a view I find ludicrous, but it is a view with considerable purchase inside the Liberal tent. There are reasons that the collapse in Kathleen Wynne’s vote was a boon to both PCPO and NDP in 2018 - there are plenty of people who don’t think the NDP have their shit together enough to govern. Given the ONDP’s current trick of claiming to have a housing plan that you can only see the details of with an email - and that plan completely falling apart when you ask the basic question of “how will it be paid for?” - and the Federal NDP’s general disaster of a leadership, who can blame them.
What progressives need to do is admit that the country has a legitimate grievance with the Federal government, and that the public are not voting for the Conservatives out of idiocy or ignorance. Treating the voters with respect is a better answer than condescending about how the solutions to their problems don’t exist at the Federal level. The Feds are willing, nay eager, to trample over provincial jurisdiction for political and policy benefits all the time. This week, Trudeau flew to New Brunswick to celebrate another province signing up to the national lunch program, a policy that is both a complete federal intrusion into provincial policy and completely fucking awesome.
The solution is to trust that the voters can hold two ideas in their minds at the same time. Kamala Harris failed this test by trying to be both Biden continuity and a change candidate at the same time. If she had just been more honest, it’s possible she’d have been in a better spot. Here, the government has an opportunity, and Crombie does too. Just admit you fucked up in the past.
There’s nothing wrong with being wrong before and right now. Telling the voters the truth - that we let in too many immigrants, that we took too long to prioritize supply side housing policies, and that we’ve prioritized the equity of boomers for too long - will A) make the country believe you when you say the corner is being turned and B) makes you look in touch with reality. “I was wrong then, I’m right now” is an underrated political answer even though it’s an answer that people will hear.
Progressives need to dig in right now. We need to stop focusing on flights of fancy and start focusing on how to solve problems. We have too many problems that need progressive politics to solve, and what we need is better from our politicians. The voters may be wrong, but that’s not how a democracy works. We need to dig the fuck in. Because I refuse to believe we’re just gonna keep going the way we are.
I watched Poilievre’s axe the tax rally in Castlegar earlier this week. He made the argument that the amount of funds in the economy had grown disproportionately to the economy itself. Any real economist would immediately explain to you that this is complete nonsense and would be a failing grade at high school economics.
However, his supporters are responding to this speech on Twitter with statements like “finally somebody that explains what is wrong with the economy” and “clearly it is all Trudeau’s fault because he does not understand economics like Poilievre does”. 50-70% of the population does not have the ability to recognize the stupidity of the Poilievre’s economic theories, but they really like that he talks about the economy with them and offers a simple explanation (which of course is entirely incorrect).
It is hard to compete with politicians that present very simple (and completely wrong) solutions for complex problem. But there is no alternative. If the Liberals want to win elections, they need to go out there and engage with the voters. And with everything that is going to play out south of the border in the coming months and years, there is ample space for an adult conversation on what went wrong (and right) and how we can correct and improve further.
As much as Conservatives get stereotyped as having no ideology beyond opposing anything the left supports, a lot of “progressive” policies that get lumped together don’t actually have much in common beyond being things Conservatives hate
There isn’t actually very much inherent common cause between, for example, LGBTQ rights, environmentalism, and workers rights. They have made common cause over the decades due to having the same opponents, but if that predator pressure went away it’s not a coalition that would hang together without active effort, and maybe not even then.
If the right wing ever embraced a neutral or positive position on LGBTQ rights, there’s many in that community who would otherwise feel right at home with the rest of the Conservative platform.
Environmentalism is in many ways a more natural fit in a Conservative ideological framework to start with, and the only reason it’s ended up as a “progressive” position is the right’s close ties to the oil industry. If the green energy transition ever really breaks through, I wouldn’t be surprised if large parts of the environmental movement gets co-opted by the right wing within a decade or two. There’s always been some classist and exclusionary undertones to parts of the Green movement that would respond very well to right wing messaging if they weren’t so completely owned by the oil industry
I guess what I’m saying is that “progressive” parties can’t take any votes or voters for granted. There are no interchangeable left wing blocks that can be shuffled around like game pieces. The parties can’t simply run on being “good” and checking a couple boxes on the list that we’ve decided is progressive and then deciding we deserve to win.
We need to actually solve problems for people, and stand for more than simply being all the groups the Conservatives happen to dislike at the moment