Delusional Dippers

During the election campaign I found myself in an argument with some NDP partisans. These are the "NDP or bust" types who believe that the NDP deserves to govern just because the Conservatives and the Liberals have been governing for so long it is now the NDP's turn, regardless of how Canadians vote. Naturally they are all supporters of Proportional Representation because they believe it will make the NDP the kingmakers in every election. They are wrong of course. Right now our politics is geared towards the FPTP voting system. If we change that our politics will also change which will lead to a change in the Canadian voting patterns. That is the first delusion of these Dippers. I have written extensively on this and I will not repeat it here.

I discovered a second delusion among this group during the election. Essentially they believe that if the Conservatives would have won the most seats in the election but not a majority the Liberals could still govern. Their theory was that in such a situation Justin Trudeau would still be PM so he could stay in that position, even though the Liberals had less seats, by convening the House and having a confidence vote. The NDP would support them and things would go on as if no election really took place.

Their argument is technically true. Justin Trudeau is the PM and if the Liberals would have lost the election on Monday he would still be the PM unless he resigned. In the extreme, if a sitting PM were to be crushed he could technically not resign, convene the House and see if he could gain its confidence., lose that vote and ask the GG to drop the writ again.

However, all of that goes against 150+ years of Parliamentary convention in this country. Simply put, which ever political party wins the most seats in the House earns the right to form a government and seek the confidence of the House. This time it was the Liberals but if it would have been the Conservatives then Mr. Trudeau would have resigned and Mr. O'Toole would be on his way to forming a government. When the time came in a few weeks they would seek the confidence of the House and Mr. Singh, who has already said that we would be able to work with a Conservative government, would have probably voted confidence in that government.

All of this was denied by these delusional Dippers. It is was a pretty convenient argument for them though. If Mr. Trudeau did not go against 150+ years of Parliamentary convention and the Conservatives formed a government, with the NDP voting confidence in that government in the House, then Justin Trudeau would be the reason why all of the regressive policies of the Conservatives being implemented, not the NDP, because he did not exercise his right to seek the confidence of the House. It is very twisted logic but it goes back to Jack Layton's role in the destruction of the child care agreements and the Kelowna Accords in 2006. They become really prickly if you bring this up.

The more insidious part to their argument is if Mr. Trudeau would have done what they suggested it would have set up a 2011 scenario for the Liberal Party in the subsequent election. I am certain that such considerations did not come into play in their arguments. (If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.)

All of this was based on the third delusion that the NDP would gain win more than 30 seats, as the polls were saying they would at the time. That was not going to happen and it never was going to happen. The pollsters always overestimate the NDP support during the writ period. Simply put, take the average poll estimate for the NDP and subtract three and you will get the actual number they will receive on e-day. That is exactly what happened. So if Mr. Trudeau would have lost the election and tried to hang on he would have needed more than the support of the NDP to maintain government. He would not have received it.

Of course, their Trudeau defying 150 years of convention gambit is not really a delusion. They know the reality. The argument was calculated to provide cover to any role the NDP had in implementing a Conservative agenda and to set up a 2011 scenario. 

In short, they were playing political games. I have no problem with that. They are acting like all of the other partisans for political parties.

However, as I have stated before my problem is with the sanctimonious self-righteousness of their beliefs that they are still the "conscience of Canadian politics", that they do not play politics like the other parties do and that they are the only real "progressive" option for Canadians. 

None of the above is true and it has not been true for quite some time, although they still believe it is, and that is why they are and continue to be delusional.

Election 2021: The English Language Leaders Debate

Unlike me my wife is not political and I often find she is a good sounding board for hearing what ordinary people, those who do not live and breathe politics, think about the political events of the day.

Each election my wife always invites me to watch the English debate with her. That is when she becomes most engaged in elections. I always turn her down because I learned a long time ago that they are a pointless exercise but she still watches them. In most cases she watches them to the end but this time she called me and asked me what she was seeing. Like alot of other people she was having a hard time following the action because of the format and because the candidates "don't seem to saying much". After about 45 minutes she turned it off, which is the least amount time I have known her to watch a debate since we became a couple. 

As with all of the debates I asked her what she thought. I never ask her who she thought won the debate I ask her what she thought about each candidate. Usually, she gives me impressions and then asks me questions to clarify what each said. This time she could not do that because she really did not understand what was being said by the candidates.

I will spend the next few days educating her on what each party platform says. She is generally progressive so she will either vote for the NDP or the Liberals (she has voted for both in the past.)

That got me thinking about the impacts of the debate on other "ordinary voters". For many the debates are when they start to become engaged and when they begin to form an opinion of who they want to vote for. If other Canadians had the same reaction as my wife it could be bad news for the Opposition parties.

As I have stated in past posts I do not believe this is a change election. However, if I am mistaken then voters would want to be looking at the alternatives to discern if the alternatives represent the change they want. The debates are usually when they begin that process but if the debates do not allow them to do so because they were unwatchable then many of these voters will default to the "devil you know". 

I know why the moderators did what they did yesterday. Erin O'Toole screwed up both French debates in a big way, so the moderators for the English debates decided to shield him this time, to prevent any big screw-up by him. The problem with that approach is it also prevented him from presenting a viable alternative to the Liberals.

Justin Trudeau is trying to convince Canadians to give him another shot. Erin O'Toole is trying to convince Canadians to so the opposite. As voters generally do not vote for change Justin Trudeau has the easier task. All he had to do yesterday was end the evening without a major misstep while Erin O'Toole needed to impress enough people to have them consider voting for the Conservatives. Mr. Trudeau succeeded in his goal last night. I am not certain that Erin O'Toole succeeded in his.

Election 2021: The Focus on Process

I actually hate modern election campaigns. I have for quite some time. 

I am old enough to remember when election campaigns were about policies and no one was trying to parse what the release of this advertizement or the fact that a party leader was insulating himself by having press conferences in empty bowling allies meant to the election. In those elections the leaders had to know their party platform backwards, forwards, up and down because they would be questioned on them relentlessly.

That is no longer the case. No longer do we see real debate on what the parties are promising. No longer is the news talking about those policies. This could be because political parties have shown that their promises are not worth much but it is also because most political journalists are political operative wannabes. Here is a hint for all of those journalists who play at political strategist: if you were any good at it a political party would hire you. They are always looking for talented people.

I know that I am guilty of spending way too much time on process myself when I write these posts. That is because I know the difference between the policy platforms because I have read them. As well, the few people who actually read this blog have probably read them too so me talking about them would be kind of pointless.

However, let's look at them anyway.

The Liberal platform is more of the same. It essentially promises to build on what the government has been doing for the last 6 years, once we put the pandemic behind us. It is very detailed. They pack alot of information into its 80+ pages.

The Conservative platform is less precise and less detailed. Several of its key planks are what I would call gimmicks, the GST holiday being the best example. The other planks are just watered down versions of what the Liberals promise to do. It is true I am biased but really there is not much there.

The NDP platform is a typical NDP platform. Alot of good ideas but no mention of how they would implement them. 

The other platforms do not really matter because they have no chance of winning a significant number of seats, although I will say that the PPC platform is a piece of work. (And not in a good way).

Through all of this it is up to the political parties themselves to push their platforms as best they can. Through advertizing and through the local campaigns and local media, which is much less infested with political operative wannabes. 

I have detected a general decline in the living conditions of ordinary people. They have detected the decline as well because some of them have decided to do some rather extreme, but wrong headed things to reverse it, including voting for Brexit and Donald Trump. In both cases people actually harmed themselves more. The reason for this is because election campaigns in particular and politics in general has become less about policies and ideas and more about personalities, political strategy and process. Democracy and society are diminished as a result.

Election 2021: The Halfway Point

We are now almost exactly half-way through the 2021 election so what can we say about the first half?

My first thought is social media distorts reality to the extreme. The political side of it has been dominated by polls saying that the Liberals are in trouble while the Conservatives are on the rise. This of course is based off of two pollsters who release their results on social media on a daily basis, which then takes off with social media examining and analyzing every half point change with all of the effort and passion of Stephen Hawking trying to figure out the universe. This behaviour is being enthusiastically copied by the MSM who spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the "horse race" while giving the announcements by the party leaders short shrift.

The thing is the pollsters are actually all but admitting that their polls do not reflect reality. They are saying they are crap. As well, several pollsters have stated that they are not reaching all of their polling populations for a whole host of reasons, which adds further doubts to their polls. Finally most are at least hinting that people are not yet engaged in the election and they will not be for a few more days

However, the one piece of useful information I saw yesterday was from the Abacus and Leger polls. Hidden in all of the data they presented were estimates that indicated, on average, more than 40% of respondents to their surveys believe that the Liberals are going to win the election while only around one-quarter believe the Conservatives will win. So, after two solid weeks of social media and the MSM saying that the Conservatives could win this election it would appear that a very large chunk of Canadians have not received that message. I would add my usual caution about public polls but these estimates combined with the statements of the pollsters described above would seem to indicate that there is some validity in the assertion of the low level of engagement by Canadians.

Social media, the MSM and the political parties and their partisans are certainly engaged but the rest of the country? They are squeezing every last bit of pleasure they can out of the summer.

So how about the parties?

The Liberals have been running the campaign they wanted to run. This slow roll-out of their policies, culminating in the release of their full platform the day before the TVA debate was planned. The fact that they did not stray from that plan would seem to indicate that they believe they can meet their objective on September 20, despite what social media has been saying for the last two weeks. They will switch gears after today and we will see just what they are made of between now and e-day.

The Conservatives have also been running the campaign they wanted to run. Their whole strategy is to present themselves as non-threatening. Really, yesterday when the Liberals were announcing more funding and program ideas to address mental health the Conservatives were talking about puppies. Their thinking must be to say: "Hey, yes, we are going to cancel cheap daycare, allow for the privatization of health care, allow industries to continue to produce GHGs at a terrible rate and allow a whole bunch of slack jawed anti-vaxxers take us back into restrictions and lockdowns but hey we love puppies." I like puppies as much as the next guy, I absolutely love my dog, but this to the Conservatives was a serious policy announcement? This is the kind of strategy you run when you are trying to prevent your party from being crushed on election day. 

The NDP is running a typical NDP campaign. Accuse the Liberals of not being progressive enough and hope that they can win enough seats to stay relevant. Their preferred outcome is a minority government where they are the kingmakers and yes they would support the Conservatives in a minority government if it came to that. Unfortunately for them this election has become a two-way contest, so e-day could be rather disappointing when voters decide on which of the two big parties they want to govern the country.

So now we enter the second half of the election campaign. We will have three debates and the parties will focus their messaging and their campaigns. The Liberals have given themselves alot of ammo with which to convince Canadians they deserve another mandate and they may be helped by anti-vaxx protesters. As well, the Conservatives have come down on the wrong side of at least a half a dozen issues so I am certain the Liberals will begin to point that out more and more. 

Erin O'Toole is already repeating himself on the campaign trail because his platform is so thin. They are pointing to some of their most insignificant policy ideas just to have something to say on a daily basis (We love puppies!). They have been blessed with a Liberal campaign that has been busy setting up their second half so they have not yet been seriously challenged. That is about to change and you have to wonder how they will react. If they are true to form they will go personal.

I have stated for quite sometime that the ballot question is whether Canadians want a change in government or not? I still do not believe so. They may not be totally enamoured with the Trudeau government but most will also realize that the reason why we seem to be seeing the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel is because of what the Liberals have been doing for the last 18 months. As well, many will just not want to change the government after all of the upheaval we have been going through for the last year and a half. There is still half a campaign to go but at the end of it I still expect a Liberal government, with a very high probability of it being a majority government.