The First Couple of Days of the Election

So the first three days of the election are behind us and these are my first impressions.

It is boring as hell.

The media is doing what I said they would do and pumping up Erin O'Toole and using paid pollsters to provide the "data" to "prove" he actually has a shot at winning.

As well, predictably the media and the Opposition parties screamed about the "unnecessary" election even though they had been speculating about one for months. The stated reasons for their consternation are ridiculous at all levels. 

Although my favourite is their claim that the PM only called the election because he believes he can win a majority government. What stupidity. Of course he did. That is what PMs in this country do when they are leading minority governments. I always get a chuckle out of people when they complain about politicians acting like politicians. That is like complaining about a snow storm in January. Certainly, it might make you feel better but it is a pointless exercise otherwise.

All elections outside of the regular election cycle are risky so Mr. Trudeau would not have called one unless he was confident that he could win it and win a majority government besides. I believe the media and the Opposition believe the same thing, which is the real reason for their upset.

In all likelihood the Liberals have discovered that their support is baked in. Their base is secure and not going anywhere so they only need to find seven more percentage points of support and they will achieve their objective. With their handling of the pandemic and what is probably going to be the most coherent election platform of all of the parties they should be able to achieve that. However, when the final week of the election is upon us we will see if they are successful because that is when the non-aligned late breakers will make their decision.

The Conservatives are a mess. I am not so certain that their base is as secure as it has been for the last few elections and they seem to be totally unprepared to actually fight a pandemic election. Coming out against vaccine mandates when they are extremely popular among Canadians seems counterproductive. The same is true of baldly stating that they would cancel all of the Child Care agreements with the provinces, which may include Ontario before the election is over. Perhaps Mr. O'Toole is hoping to do what Mr. Harper did in 2006 when he announced a few very unpopular policy proposals at the very beginning of the campaign and counted on voters to forget about them by e-day. It did work for Mr. Harper but he was also up against a Liberal government operating under the weight of Adscam and the Gomery Inquiry.

Their election platform document is a thin gruel of the Conservative Party's greatest hits from elections past. There is not an original thought or policy idea in the whole document. They have not resorted to the dog whistling yet but it would not surprise me when they do.

Then there was the Willy Wonka video. It was widely panned but there seems to be some school of thought that it was actually planned that way. People point to the two Kiwis that helped to get Boris Johnson elected but they seem to forget that particular election was a referendum on Brexit, which by that point was widely popular in key parts of the soon to be DisUnited Kingdom. No such issue exists for this election, except for the pandemic and the Liberals have built up a great deal of goodwill among Canadians for their handling of the health and economic impacts of the pandemic. Maybe there is some deeper strategy in that video or maybe it is just more of the same from the Conservatives who have been personally attacking and insulting Justin Trudeau since it became apparent he would become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. At some point they may figure out that such an approach is not working and change tack. 

For the Conservatives the wild card is the other conservative parties. If they do reasonably well they are screwed. We will not know how well or how poorly they do until September 20 but it should be noted that they do not need to win seats to screw the Conservatives. They just need to siphon off enough votes from the Conservatives to cause them to lose close races against the other major parties

I am not seeing much from the Quebec media about the Bloc so I cannot say anything about them. In 2019 they were invisible until the debates so that will probably be the case again. We will have to see how Quebecers react to the debates to see just how the Bloc will impact the election.

The NDP is invisible. I suspect this election is going to be like most others and focus on the two main parties. The NDP will struggle for air time and attention. As per usual they will get more attention at the debates but I am not certain it will mean much by then. They received more attention in 2019 and they still lost half of their caucus.

The Green Party is a dumpster fire on a train wreck sitting on the deck of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Elizabeth May might win her seat but that will probably be it.

The situation in Afghanistan could have an impact but I doubt the media will be able to focus on it for the next six weeks. It will eventually be forgotten by them as they inevitably move on to something else. However, stories of some Afghans, who helped Canadian troops when they were there, being murdered by the Taliban will not be a good look for the Liberals but I doubt it would move many votes. Canadians will have sympathy for those poor souls but not enough to really motivate them to vote one way or another.

As with all elections there is room for surprises and I am certain we will have a few before it is all said and done. However, it is widely believed that the Liberals are going to win and probably win big and so far I have not seen anything that would change that belief.