It’s Father’s Day weekend, time to sit back and talk politics over beer. I do that from my deck this week as I explain what is happening with Mulcair, Trudeau & Harper. I talks polls and strategy with Warren Kinsella. There is an extended chat with Jessica Murphy on what it is like to cover Washington and Ottawa. Finally, I explain why the reaction to the horrific shooting in Charleston should give us all hope.
Thank you Brian it was an enjoyable hour. It’s good that Warren Kinsella pointed out that there are Liberals that aren’t socialists. By the way, was that really Kinsella AKA “the jackal” or an impersonator? He sounded downright sensible.
I agree with your comments about first-past-the-post (FPTP), it may not be the best system but it’s better than all others that have been tried (to paraphrase a wise man).
Jessica Murphy was also an excellent guest, particularly with her recent experience in the land of Manifest Destiny. She reflects my impressions garnered from much traveling in the USA. They think bigger, they play (risk) bigger and sometimes they fail bigger. But I disagree with your contention that in the US the “Parties” are not all-controlling as they are in Canada. In my observation that may be true for mundane routine legislation, but on the biggies they’re totally whipped, and the recent vote on “fast-tracking” demonstrates that they can be whipped against their own (democratic) president.
You suggested that labour unions in Canada could learn some moves from those in the US. Perhaps tactically they could learn to be more violent, but legislatively the Canadian unions are sitting pretty. While in the USA right-to-work legislation seems to be flourishing, in Canada we’re stuck with the Rand Formula, meaning public sector unions own the country.
Mulcair and the NDP call Bill C-51 a “non-starter.” This, along with their opposition to any Canadian cooperation with collective security, and their love of Kyoto crap and hatred of capitalism, particularly oil companies and banks, makes their chances of government a “non-starter” IMHO. The voters are not Toronto, and Harper is not the foolish Prentice. It’s easier to have positive PM ratings when you’ve never had to actually do the job, as Harper has, as neither Mulcair nor Trudeau ever have – or will in all likelihood. Recent polls has not detected this, but they will very soon.
I agree with Lilley that Mulcair has peaked “too soon,” though indeed he has peaked. He’s only eating into the Grit vote though, as EKOS/Graves have observed. Very few votes migrate between NDP and the Conservatives. Harper apparently hasn’t “room to grow” but that will change when “decided” free-enterprise “classical” Liberal voters migrate to him to strategically block Mulcair &/or to express their disappointment with Trudeau. The idea of the “progressive alternative” is now officially dead.
That will be the tone from now until election day. Who do you want as you PM. What will be the result of your vote? Does defeating Harper get you the PM you want? Not really.
Liberals are clearly in an existential battle. They never envisioned being second fiddle to a Mulcair minority. That or a NDP majority spell the end of that party, as happened to the British Liberal Party who became irrelevant when Labour prevailed there.
There are many smart party who are/were Liberals who understand this. Justin Trudeau is not one of them.
Sorry Brian had to shut it off when you started to validate the”voter fatigue” meme regarding Harper. This is the thinnest of gruels the media tosses out for LIVs to lap up.
Anyone who votes for the Libs or NDP because they are “tired” – not able to verbalized any other reason- of Harper, have the potential to turn this country into a basket case through the collective force of their unfettered ignorance of any metric by which to judge good governance and fiscal policy by.
This is what the media count on when they play the fatigue card.
So it is galling to me Brian that you would validate it.
Why not talk about the ongoing indoctrination of the average voter via push polls instead?
Nailed it on race relations!
It’s about time Canadians started to speak openly about Islamic and Liberal racism against Canada’s Jewish community.
What the hell is voter fatigue? Where would that come from aside from the opposition, including the media with nothing else to offer up as reasons to oust the current government.
We only vote every four years, people who live in this great country who complain about “voter fatigue” really need to try living in a place where they don’t get a vote. Time to find some new jargon, something that makes sense, something that inspires.
Grrrrrr Brian, please can that phrase.
I figure Kinsella is just adjusting well to the new reality.
He is talking as his belly guides him (as me ma would say)…..
Having his wagon hitched to a dead end party, like the LIBRANOs, is a dead end.
He is not welcome in the CPC but Sun News/Rebel is a good halfway house.
Regardless of what one thinks of the Harper government I can say voter fatigue is setting in. Basically there are three groups in Canada
1. Those left of centre who represent about 60% of the population and while they never liked Harper, the degree of their anger is quite strong meaning they are more motivated to vote as well as vote strategically. While Harper hasn’t done anything too extreme, most of this group generally believes in a stronger society as a whole and is fairly communitarian thus they favour a more activist government which we haven’t had from Harper.
2. Swing voters which are around 10% – 15%. Most of them never were really fans of Harper, but didn’t dislike him either and at this point since Harper doesn’t have many major achievements most are looking elsewhere but could easily swing back to the Tories. A lot will depend on whether Mulcair or Trudeau are able to make the case to them or not.
3. Conservative base which are 25-30%. That group has largely stuck with Harper meaning you won’t likely see a blowout like 1993, but the party will need to bring some of those in #2 into their column if they want to win.
Off course it is possible that since being a Conservative brings up negative connotations such as greedy, uneducated, angry, stuck in the past etc. there may be a fair number of shy Conservatives. That has happened in some British elections most notably 1992 one where many who privately supported the Conservatives refused to admit publicly to it. Note I am not saying the Conservatives are any of those things, far from it, but there is a large segment of the population who do see them that way and if most the people around you believe that, you are probably going to keep quiet about your views.
This whole “voter fatigue” business tells me that the liberals have no chance. They are still playing the game that worked fifty years ago, when everybody watched tv and most educated people read the papers: flood the papers and the tv with your point of view and everybody will swing round to it. Do you recall the voter fatigue push of 1979, when every news outlet in the country assured us that we were tired of Joe Clark and needed a change – after 6 months? It worked then, but only a fool would imagine it working today. The mass of voters pay absolutely no attention to the papers and they catch the television news only by accident. They like Harper, they can see that he never causes trouble, and they see no reason to replace him with some doofus. Something substantial will have to happen that changes one of the three clauses in that last sentence before there’s any possibility of Harper losing. No media campaign can do it.
While polls should be taken with a grain of salt, I get the impression most Canadians do not like Harper. They maybe don’t know why but the general view is we need to change direction. While I certainly don’t like this, after watching the Ontario and Alberta elections, I believe left wing ideas of taxing the rich and big government are back in vogue and unfortunately that is bad news for the Conservatives. I agree it may not help the Liberals, but it could mean an NDP government. The problem is many on the right have buried their heads in the sand and rather than debunking many of the left’s arguments they just naively assume most Canadians do not buy them. The issue of income inequality and declining middle class is an issue that has reasonated amongst many and instead of showing facts we still have a strong middle class and income inequality is not rapidly growing or as bad as the US, there has been no rebuttal thus why the left is succeeding here. After all emotional arguments often win and since most people aren’t as wealthy as they would like to be and making a lot less than an average CEO, its easy to make such argument on an emotional level even if the evidence goes against it.