Election Assessment: Liberals

The Liberals won the election last night. That cannot be disputed. However, you cannot shake the feeling that they squandered an opportunity for a majority government and they only have themselves to blame.

The Liberals had the best conditions for winning a majority government since 2015. They had the orange gas bag in the US making threats against Canada. They had a brand new leader who seemed uniquely qualified to deal with that very same gas bag. Their chief opponent ran a terrible campaign. (More on that in my next post.)

So what happened?

First of all, Mark Carney has very little charisma. He looks and acts like the technocrat that he is. Part of the job of the leader of a political party is to connect with Canadians on an emotional level and he failed to do that. It is true that he came across as the most competent but that was not enough. It is rarely enough. The campaign that he ran was boring and uninspiring. 

Second, the Conservatives ceded the Donald Trump issue to the Liberals and they did not take full advantage of it. At the beginning of the campaign Donald Trump dominated but that faded after the phone call between him and PM Carney. Although the issue never went away it dropped off as THE issue of the campaign, thus letting the Conservatives off the hook for their woefully inadequate response to Donald Trump's threat to Canada. I compared this campaign to the 1988 election. The big difference between that one and this one was the Liberals never relented using the perceived threat to our sovereignty that was represented by the Canada/US Free Trade Agreement. The Liberals should have done the same thing this time. They did not have to be over the top and they did not have to go into any histrionics. All they had to do was remind Canadians of Mr. Trump's actions and words for the whole campaign. Instead of that we had the Liberals talk about Trump's action impacting the global economy, probably creating a global economic crisis. Great, that is all true but that does not hit you in the gut like Donald Trump's direct threats against Canada. 

I was not impressed by the Liberal campaign and it would appear a large number of Canadians agreed. While I still voted for them anyway it would appear that millions of Canadians decided not to. That is on them.

So what does it mean for their ability to govern?

For now not much and there is a chance that they could govern with their near majority for quite some time. The NDP is going to be addressing a potential existential crisis. This happened to them in 1993 and it took eight years and two elections for them to come back. It could very well that as long this time which means that they may not want to force an election during the next four years. They could very well prop them up while they get their own house in order. That could last anywhere from 18 months to four years.

As well, their chief opponent is going to be going through some stuff in the coming months. I would imagine infighting, while they deal with it, will leave them unwilling to force an election, even if they could get the other parties to agree, which they would not do.

So the Liberals probably have a guaranteed window of about 18 months to push through their key election promises. After that they will be operating on borrowed time and their opponents will probably ramp up the shenanigans to disrupt their ability to govern. So they better move quickly.

One final note, it is very likely that this will be the Liberals' last term for quite sometime. This should also motivate them to move quickly.