What are the trolls trying to accomplish?

As can be expected with the election the blogsphere has been humming.  More people have been posting their ideas in their blogs and more people have been commenting on them.

One thing I have noticed with these comments is the number of Conservative trolls who have invaded Liblogs.  Sometimes their comments make sense and are even insightful but most of the time it is just drivel I can only conclude is designed to agitate and often their comments are out and out lies.

What are these people trying to accomplish?  Do they believe that their comments will be seen by anybody else besides partisans from other political parties?  Do they seriously believe that they can sway those partisans to change their support for their parties?

I visit the blogs of supporters from other parties to see what they are saying but I rarely feel the need to comment on them because I know that none of my comments will sway that person's opinion.  I really do have better things to do with my time.

So why do Conservative supporters insist on commenting on Liberal blogs?  Are you really getting paid for it?  If so, what a colossal waste of money that is.  Do you really have that much time on your hands?  If so, get a job, unless commenting on Liberal blogs is your job, in which case carry on I guess.

But if you are not getting paid to do it might I suggest that you could be something much more useful with your time.

Rise Up Video

I have been watching the reaction to the Rise Up video.

As expected that reaction depends on your political bent.  Conservatives pan it and Liberals love it.  As for the media pundits I really could not say.  I concluded they were idiots a long time ago and stopped reading or listening to them. 

What everybody seems to forget is that you cannot always predict what Canadians will care about.  As well, you cannot always predict how they will react at any given point to any given situation or statement.

Will this video and the sentiment it hightlights resonate with Canadians?  Who knows.  The Conservatives hope not, the Liberals hope so and the media pundits will try to tell Canadians what they should think but it will be ordinary Canadians who will have the final say.

Use Humour in advertizing

Today is was revealed that the $30 billion dollar cost for the new F-35 jets may not include the engines for them.  I hope that the folks doing the ads for the Liberals are on top of this and that they use humour because really this whole situation is side splittingly funny.

Here is an idea.

Take the photo Stephen Harper is his silly leather Calgary Stampede getup.  Animate it like South Park.  You know those characters where the top of the heads bounce up and down while speaking.

Give this animated Stephen Harper the classic used car salesman voice and then have it "sell" the F-35 to Canadians using all of the information that has come out showing that these are the wrong planes for Canada. 

At the end of the sales job have the animated Stephen Harper make the statement:  "And you can have all of this for the low, low price of $30 billion, (pause) engines not included."

This whole F-35 situation is absurd and one of the best ways to show absurdity is to use humour to mock it.  The Liberals should use that to their advantage.

Oh yes, the Liberals need to make certain that they run it as much as possible in the last few days of the election as well as on Youtube.

Week Three in the books: Now the real election begins

The debate week of the election is now over and the real election campaign is underway.  How do we assess the week gone by?

For the Liberals they had both positives and negatives.   The debates did not help them as much as they would have liked but at the same time they did not hurt them either.  They can take some solace from the fact that 10 million Canadians tuned into watch the debates and that was probably their first look at Mr. Ignatieff without the media or Conservative filter.  Although he did not blow the doors off I would imagine that he did make a reasonably positive impression, one that he can build on for the next two weeks.

The Liberals are showing signs that they are focusing their message with the new healthcare ads.  That is a good start.  Now I would like to see four other ads before the end of the election.  One to tie all of the undemocratic actions of the Conservatives together, including the attempted disenfranchizement of those students in Guelph.  The other three each focusing on jets, jails and corporate tax cuts and contrasting them with the Liberal family plan.  One ad for each of those Conservative priorities.  Then blanket the airwaves with them from now until E-day.

Mr. Ignatieff is still packing them in at rallies and the enthusiasm of Liberals has not waned since the beginning of the election.  That bodes well for the GOTV efforts on May 2 and it could mean those 800,000 or so Liberals who stayed home in 2008 will come out this time.  If they do that will have a profound effect on alot of ridings in this country.

Finally, if you believe the public polls the Liberals have cut the initial Conservative advantage, at the beginning of this campaign, in half.  Not bad when you consider that voters were not really paying attention during the first weeks.  Now that they probably are the Liberals have a great opportunity to keep moving up if they can continue to run a good campaign.

The Conservatives began their week with a controversy and ended it with two more.  In between the debates did not help them or hurt them.  It seems they just cannot run their campaign without stepping in it.  Their position has been on a steady and slow decline even though voters were not paying attention.  If they continue to suffer from more controversies in the next two weeks their fortunes would probably continue to wane, possibly beyond the point of no return.

Of the two controversies today watch the effects of the Guergis controversery.  Her experience could reinforce the notion amongst professional women in this country as to why they do not like nor trust Stephen Harper.  They contributed to costing him majorities on two other occasions and they could do the same thing this time, or worse. 

The NDP had a good week.  The polls tell me so, if you can believe the public polls.  However, one good week out of three is not nearly good enough and it is doubtful that they can sustain it over the next two weeks.  It would not surprise me one bit to see them fade in the coming days and weeks.

The Bloc also had a good week.  However, they are still not doing nearly as well as they did in 2008.  It is an open question as to whether they will be able to sustain their post-debate bounce for the next two weeks.

For the Green Party the debates gave them another opportunity to get noticed by complaining that they were not in the debates.  However, while that might get them some sympathy I doubt that it will get them any votes.

At the third week mark of the campaign it is still a toss-up as to who will win it.  Certainly, the Conservatives have the advantage in the public polls but their campaign is still being beset by scandal and controversy while the campaign of their chief opponent is being run smoothly.  The campaign is still the Conservatives' to lose but they are alot closer to doing so now at the beginning of the real election campaign than they were three weeks ago.

No knockout

As much as we would all like to see Mr. Ignatieff reducing Mr. Harper to a pile of goo during these debates it is not going to happen.  Neither will it happen in reverse.  There will be no knockout blow during either debate.  There are two reasons.  One, each of the participants will be too well briefed and prepared.  Two, the debate format is not conducive to knockout blows.


So, with this in mind the mindset of Mr. Ignatieff going is should be to focus on what he can control, namely delivering his message with passion and resolve.  Being a former TV journalist he should have no problems in front of the cameras.  If he just falls back on that experience he should be fine.

Week Two in the Books: Liberals with momentum and Conservatives in trouble

So week number two is pretty well over and if we are to assess the results from it we can say that the Liberals seem to have a little bit of momentum heading into debate week and the Conservatives have some real troubles in the present and probable future.

The sense of momentum for the Liberals can be felt in the polls with most of them seeming to indicate that the Liberals and Mr. Ignatieff have made up alot of ground on the Conservatives in week two.  As well, they seem to be taking support from the NDP, which is a necessary step in gaining power.  Reducing vote splitting and convincing soft Conservative supporters to switch sides has always been the key to victory for the Liberals.

However, the real momentum can be seen in the campaign itself.  Mr. Ignatieff is playing to packed houses.  As I stated in a previous post in most cases these people are Liberal partisans.  So, if Mr. Ignatieff can attract 1200 Liberal partisans in Hamilton that probably means that the candidates in Hamilton and surrounding areas are attracting alot of volunteers.  That bodes well for the GOTV effort on election day.  As well, all reports seem to indicate that fundraising is going very well which would seem to indicate that Liberals are engaged in this election.  Remember folks that the Conservatives lost votes during the 2008 election but still won because almost 1 million Liberals decided to sit out that election.  If they decide to come back things will be very good for the Liberals.

The Conservatives are having real difficulties.  Week two of their campaign was just a brutal, if not more so, than week one.  They stomped on their own message with three days of reports of their tactics for keeping undesirable young people out of their rallies, the illegal use of the RCMP in doing so and the ongoing Carson saga.  It is starting to rattle Stephen Harper.  That is the only reason why he would release the Conservative platform in the setting he did today.  The bubble boy campaign claims are beginning to hit home and he desperately wants to appear to be reversing it without actually doing so of course.  Then there is the content of the platform.  Only a party that is feeling the heat would stomp on their own budget 17 days after tabling it in the House.

The Carson Affair is the real danger for the Conservatives.  I know that Conservative supporters and their apologists in the media have been trying to downplay the whole thing and they have had some success so far.  However, this affair just does not seem to end and with every new revelation more Canadians are wondering just what is going on there.    

Further the elements of the affair can be very easily stitched together into a nasty narrative for the Conservatives.

"Stephen Harper appointed, as one of his senior advisors, a man who was convicted of a felony five times and who seems to have had links with a money launderer, a man who is now under RCMP investigation for allegations that he illegally lobbied the government for government contracts that could have kicked back 10s of millions of dollars to him and his fiancee, who happens to be a former high prices prostitute."

Do you think such a narrative could be nicely explained in a 30 second spot?  One that is run, alot, from the end of the debates to the end of the election.  As the Adscam ads the Conservatives used during the 2006 election demonstrate, they do not need to be totally true.  They just need to tell a plausible story. 

Mr. Carson could very well bring down the Conservative Party on May 2.

The Liberals are exactly where they want to be going into debate week.  They have the momentum and they are facing a chief opponent that is showing signs that they may not be able to turn things around before election day.

The genius of Stephen Harper

I now believe I know Stephen Harper's plan for winning this election.  It is to run a campaign filled with so many gaffes, mistakes and errors that the war rooms of the other parties will not be able to keep up.


Afterall, just in the last two days the Conservative campaign has had revelations that it is using Facebook to screen out undesirables from their rallies.  This is still ungoing as more people who have been victimized by this are coming forward.  Then there is the ungoing Bruce Carson saga and the questions of if Stephen Harper knew he was a five time convicted felon when Mr. Harper tagged him as a senior advisor.  These two events are on top of the other stuff we saw during week one.


This is very clever of the Conservatives.  In fact it is genius.  Keep your opponents off balance by running a lousy campaign.  It is so crazy it might just work.  As well, it gives the Conservatives the added benefit of hiding the fact that they do not have anything they can campaign on, at least not for this campaign.  The 2015 campaign, they have it covered, but this campaign the cupboard is bare. 

Genius I tell you. 

Note:  In case anybody does not realize it my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek for this post.  So, on a more serious note has anybody noticed that the media are no longer talking about "coalitions" and they are no longer using the phrase "Conservative majority government"?  The two key messages of the Conservatives have beem stomped on by their own ineptitude.  Can the Conservative advantage in the polls be maintained if this continues?

Plunging

The title of this post is not referring to a poll.  It is referring to the moral of the members of the Privy Council Office (PCO) after they found out that Stephen Harper threw their whole department under a bus in yet another attempt to distance himself from the smell wafting up from the Carson Affair.  You could only imagine their chagrin at being accused of not doing their job and being unable to respond to defend themselves.

I have disagreed with many conservative politicians over the years but I never had a personal dislike for any of them.  The same cannot be said of Stephen Harper.  I think the man is despicable.  The PCO's function is to serve the Prime Minister.  They are his very own department.  These people bust their butt each day to serve him, which in many cases means watching his political back.  You would think that he would appreciate that enough to do the same, after all that is what leaders do.

Canada is blessed with one of the most professional public services on the planet so Mr. Harper can rest assured that the PCO will not respond to his outrageous claims of their incompetence.  Indeed, Mr. Harper probably took that fact into account when he came up with his latest defence. 

However, there would be some justice if some damaging leaks began appearing in the media about some of the more controversial decisions this government has made over the last five years, which I will bet a large amount of money will not happen.

Politicians do not call elections unless they think they can win

An obvious statement I know but one that needs to made because of all of the BS we saw leading up to this election.


Many in the chattering classes were on Mr. Ignatieff because of his desire to have an election.  They pointed to the public polls and stating he had no chance so why force one now?


The obvious answer is he believes he can win and he is proving that by his performance this past week.  He knows that the Conservatives are vulnerable in a number of fronts and that their expressed desire to not have an election was genuine.  In politics it is generally a good idea to force your opponent to do something they do not want to do.


As the last week has demonstrated all of the reports in the media on how Mr. Harper wanted this election and how he maneuvered the opposition into bringing him down to force one was unadulterated bunk.  Mr. Harper is not performing like someone who wanted to be campaigning.  Quite the opposite is true.  Many have noted that he does not seem to be campaigning to win.  That is not true, of course he is campaigning to win.  The problem is he did not want this election and he was not ready for it.

Of course, these men did not come to their decisions at random, they did seek out data and one source of that data in internal polling.  Political parties poll to assist in their decision making and as a result they ask many questions the media do not think of or just refuse to ask.  The "desire for change" question happens to be one that we used to see all of the time but has now disappeared from the media polls.

Armed with this data, the knowledge of the progress of their election planning processes and some political instinct the two party leaders determined whether they could win an election.  Mr. Ignatieff believed he could and Mr. Harper could very well believe the same thing.  We saw the result in Week one.

Are they correct in their beliefs.  That question will be answered on May 2.

This election will be decided on the ground

I went to my local Liberal candidate's campaign office this morning to give her a big fat monetary political contribution.  I no longer have the time in my busy life to actually volunteer so I now just give them money.  I will be doing the same for the national campaign.

I arrived at the office just before the candidate was heading out to do some canvassing.  She had a good team to accompany her, she also had other teams that were going canvassing without her and the telephone canvassing stations were all occupied.  Since I was there, and not being a stranger to campaign offices, I took a quick look around and noticed that she already has over two dozen volunteers for e-day.  Just a week in and already that many have decided to take part in the GOTV effort on May 2.  Impressive.

This is just one local campaign but we may be seeing signs of it being more widespread by the size of the crowds coming out to see Mr. Ignatieff at his campaign stops.  Make no mistake, these people are not ordinary Canadians.  They are Liberal partisans, probably working for a local campaign in the area.  So, if Mr. Ignatieff can draw almost a 1000 people in say, Winnipeg, that probably means that the local campaigns in that city and the surrounding area are seeing a good turnout of volunteers.

The national campaign is important but as 2008 demonstrates without a good ground game to pull the vote you will not see success.

The first week of the national campaign was encouraging.  Seeing the crowds that Mr. Ignatieff has been speaking to and the buzz I saw today at my local candidate's office is also encouraging that the ground game for the Liberals will be much better than the last two elections.

Week One in the Books: Something for Everybody

The election is one week old and it has been an interesting week.  If you are sitting at home assessing how things went it can probably be concluded that every one of the campaigns can take away some positives from the week.

The Liberals can take the most positives.  Michael Ignatieff is proving, so far, to be a good campaigner.  He has been focused and that is rubbing off on the campaign.  The ads they have released are good.  He is doing a good job of comparing the Liberal and Conservative positions and priorites.  The chattering classes are beginning to see that the caricature that the Conservative Party created of him does not match reality.  The only real hiccup was the gentleman from Vaughn (sorry I am lousy with names) deciding to back the Conservatives.  Other than that it has all been good news and if they can keep it up the Liberals could win, maybe even win big.

The Conservatives have had a terrible first week.  Stephen Harper did not want to have this election and it shows.  From his first news conference at Rideau Hall to the present he has not looked comfortable campaigning.  His head is not in the game as demonstrated by the coalition gambit and the debate challenge.  By most accounts it was his idea to pursue the coalition angle and how he believed that his own words about the issue, from 2004 and 1997, would not enter into the conversation is astounding.  Then there is the debate challenge.  Making the challenge undid everything the Conservatives have been trying to do since Michael Ignatieff became leader of the Liberal Party.  It made him an equal.  Backing out of the debate just 24 hours after issuing the challenge makes him look weak.  This and other gaffes have made Mr. Harper go further into the bubble that he started the campaign in, freezing out the media, much to their chagrin, which could have some negative impacts on the campaign in the medium to long-term.  His campaign has been Seinfeldian in nature.  He only made two real promises this week.  One that will not take effect until Jim Kirk starts his 5 year mission and the one today, which everybody could see coming, and which he announced on a Friday afternoon.  Again, people are noticing, including the media, and some serious questions regarding the Conservative campaign are being posed.

All that being said, the Conservatives can take some solace from two polls today.  Despite all of their troubles they have not seemed to have suffered for it, yet. 

However, Conservatives had better take those estimates with a grain of salt.  Conservatives just need to look to Prime Minister Martin's campaign of 2006 to see what happens to party leaders who focus mainly on fear during an election campaign and who leads a campaign beset with problems like the Conservative campaign has been of late.  If it continues it will catch up to them.

Some state that the Conservatives could turn things around and that is certainly true.  However, the kind of campaign the Conservatives are having can feed on themselves and no matter what the party or leader does they just cannot right the ship.

The NDP is having its typical election campaign.  It is trying to be heard and trying to appear relevant.  So far, its policy proposals have been underwhelming.  It too can take solace from the latest EKOS poll as they were the only party that saw their estimates move outside of the MOE.  The other parties were all pretty static.

The Bloc is the Bloc.  Gilles Duceppe is a seasoned campaigner and he has the advantage of only having to campaign in Quebec.  So far, his party seems to be holding its own.  If Quebecers collectively decide, again, to be disengaged from the governance of Canada they should do well.  If that begins to change, watch their fortunes change for the worst, quickly.

The decision of the media consortium to not include the Greens is a gift for them.  It allowed them to be heard at least for a short time this week.  Any other decision and the Greens would not have received any attention at all.

Four questions per day?

Word out of the Conservative campaign is Stephen Harper is now only going to answer four questions per day.  At any other time I would find such a report as lacking credibility.  However, Stephen Harper has a history of running away form situations when he finds it getting too hot, from not answering journalists' questions to proroguing Parliament.

In one of my previous posts I asked how the media would play this election.  I stated that they would side with the campaign they believed had the greatest chance of winning.  As I said, the corporate bosses of the MSM will want to be on the good side of the victor.

I am certain that the journalists on the Conservative Leader's campaign tour are not too enamoured with these new restrictions on them.  I am also certain that some of them will see this a blood on the water.  However, I believe they will bide their time for another few days.  If the Conservative campaign continues to stumble and if polls begin to show the Liberals closing the gap then we may see the media turn against the Conservatives, possibly with gusto.

This really turning into an interesting election.

First Impressions

Some initial impressions of the party leaders after three days of the election.

Michael Ignatieff is looking like Jean Chretien in the sense that he seems to be enjoying himself.  I am not saying he has the political smarts of Mr. Chretien or anything but one thing I noticed about Mr. Chretien during his three campaigns is he always seemed to be having fun regardless of the daily vagaries of them.  The same seems to be true of Mr. Ignatieff.  He looks like he is having fun.

Stephen Harper does not look like he is having fun.  He has always been a gloomy individual having to work really hard to appear cheerful and friendly.  So far he has not been totally successful in that goal and on top of that he is channelling Paul Martin.  The Liberals have a "hidden agenda"?  Canadians have been there and done that.

Jack Layton has surprised me so far.  For the first time in longer than I can remember he has actually made the Conservatives a target of his campaign as opposed to the Liberals.  It seemed during the 2008 campaign Mr. Layton talked more about the Liberals than the Conservatives.  The past three days have been much different.  I am certain as things go forward he will change his focus but it is refreshing to see the NDP focus on the governing party for a change.

Gilles Duceppe also surprised me with his focus on Stephen Harper.  Mind you the Bloc has a better chance of taking away the few Conservative seats in Quebec than the Liberal seats.  As well, since the Conservatives tend to target the same voters as the Bloc they are a bigger threat to the Bloc than the Liberals right now. 

Lizzy May has been invisible which is not surprising considering the environment is not front and centre in this campaign.  She will not be included in the debates this time and there will not be a backlash to that fact either.

How will this election play in the media?

The Main Stream Media (MSM) in this country is not objective or balanced. That is a journalism school fallacy. This is particularly true of political reporters.

In a few cases it is because of ideology, with the Sun and the National Post being the best examples. In most cases though the media chooses the side they believe will win.

The reason is simple, money. Ownership of our MSM is pretty much concentrated in three large corporations. Those corporations want access to government (taxpayer) funds and the best way to do that is not to piss off the party that is governing or looks like it is about to become the governing party.

We saw this throughout the Liberal years. With the exception of the Sun and the National Post the MSM largely ignored or downplayed some of the more outrageous actions of the Chretien government, focusing on the positive instead. At the same time they nitpicked the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance relentlessly. This reached its peak during the 2000 election when they hounded Stockwell Day for even the most minor gaffe. Certainly he provided them with alot of content but I have always believed that the media was extremely unfair to him and the Canadian Alliance in 2000.

We saw this again in 2004 but when Stephen Harper reduced the Liberals to a minority things began to change in the MSM. They were still hard on the Conservatives but they were not as easy on the Liberals as they had been just a few years before.

Since 2006, we have seen the same thing with only the players changing. The Conservatives have enjoyed a rather easy time of it compared to the Liberals.

So which way will the media jump in this election?

That will all depend on how the election goes. I think the corporate bosses in the media will hedge their bets this time because this election is a crap shoot for both the Liberals and the Conservatives. They will want to be able to point to whoever wins that they treated them fairly during the election so they deserve a place at the public trough.

The Liberals will not enjoy an easy time of it as demonstrated by the hounding about the coalition the day before the writ was dropped but neither are they going to be nitpicked about every little thing happening in the Liberal campaign. (Remember the MSM reaction to the trouble with the campaign plane the last time?) However, the Conservatives will not receive the easy treatment they received during the 2008 election either, as demonstrated by the fact the media actually asked Mr. Harper about his coalition letter of 2004.

Both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff are going to have to work hard to impress the MSM this time and it will be interesting to see how each one of them handles that reality.

"We categorically rule out a coalition or formal arrangement with the Bloc Quebecois."

That is the key point in the Liberal Party media release from this morning.

I would guess that most people opposed to a coalition, who are not Conservative partisans, are opposed to it because of the idea that the a seperatist party might gain some power in our Federal Government.

Remove that worry and the idea of a coalition is no longer so objectionable, except of course to Conservative partisans.

Now all the Liberals have to do is take the above statement and place it beside the letter Mr. Harper wrote to the GG in 2004 and the statements made by Mr. Duceppe today regarding the process that lead to that letter.

Not only would the Liberals neutralize the coalition issue as a threat in this election they would turn it back on Stephen Harper, making him look like the hypocrit that he is on this whole issue.

On a related note, did Stephen Harper and the Conservatives really believe that their machinations of 2004 would not be brought back into the light when they began trying to scare Canadians about the "evil coalition" again?

Stephen Harper is not a political genius

It is with great amusement that I read many media commentators claiming that Stephen Harper is poised to win a majority government because he is a seasoned campaigner while Mr. Ignatieff is a rookie.

How they have such short memories.

In the last two elections the Conservatives were given remarkable electoral gifts. The first was Adscam the second was a political opponent who did not have his whole party behind him and wound up having to deal with the perception that he was proposing a new tax just as a recession was starting.

In both of these cases Stephen Harper had majority governments virtually handed to him but he still managed to blow it.

I could just imagine what Jean Chretien would have done with either of these electoral gifts. Actually I do not need to imagine. Just look at what he did in 2000.

So why would anybody believe it will be different this time?

One of the other advantages that the Conservatives had the last couple of times was they did not have to defend their record over much. Things were not all great on that front in 2008 but they could deflect any flak by pointing to the Green Shift. This time around their government fell because they were found in Contempt of Parliament and they are facing all sorts of little scandals, which on their own would not be that bad, but when taken together could be trouble.

Now Mr. Ignatieff just sucked the air out of the one issue that they could have used to deflect attention away from those scandals.

In short, this election might not be as easy for Mr. Harper and the Conservatives as the last two.

The last two times the Liberals gave the Conservatives great electoral gifts and they failed to take advantage. There are only so many times that the Liberals will do the Conservatives this favour. Will they do it again this time? That remains to be seen but if they do not I wonder how Mr. Harper the political genius will react.

The secret to a good nights sleep

Do not live and die by the polls.

Watch and listen to the leaders of the parties instead. They will tell you how this thing is going much better than Nanos, EKOS, Ipsos, etc. ever will.

Oh yes, I am going to go out on a limb right now and make a prediction on how this election will end.

It will end when all of the polling booths across the country close during the evening of May 2 and the ballots are counted.

More like 2004

Warren Kinsella seems to believe that the upcoming election will be like the 1984 election. I think he has missed it by 20 years.

The beginning of this election is more like the election of 2004.

For that election the sitting government began the it under a cloud of scandal but the scandal, that eventually became Adscam, was still not fully explored, since Justice Gomery had barely begun his work. So there was a suspicion that things were not quite right with the ethical conduct of the government but it had not yet hit that critical mass that caused the sitting government to suffer for it at the polls. Although it did suffer for it at the only poll that really mattered. (More on that in a minute)

The sitting PM had a huge lead over his chief opponent in every leadership score there was. Actually the lead was embarrassingly large. So much so the media had pretty much written off his chief opponent and expected the government to be returned with a majority despite the scandals.

Hell, there was even a poll published by a government friendly newspaper just days before the writ was dropped and the banner front page headline in that paper was "Liberals heading for majority: poll". The story then went on to explain that the governing party was in majority terrritory with almost a 20 point lead.

The economy was booming and the governing party wanted to focus on that while downplaying the brewing scandal.

The governing party spent a great deal of time and money demonizing their chief opponent.

Sound familiar?

Of course, we all know how that election turned out. The governing party was reduced to a minority government and its main opponent set itself up for a victory just 18 months later.

This does not seem to bode well for the Liberals this time because if the same thing happens this time as it did in 2004 they lose.

However, there are some big differences that need to be explored.

First and foremost, the governing party had a majority government heading into the 2004 election. It could afford to lose a bunch of seats and still retain power. The margin for error for the current government is much smaller.

Second, Paul Martin was actually liked by most Canadians. They knew he was partly responsible for the good times that we were enjoying at that time. As well, he was on the right side of many issues that mattered to Canadians such as health care and child care. The current government leader is not liked and the governments priorities seem to be out of step with the electorate.

Third, the government of PMPM and of PMJC before him enjoyed majority support and double digit leads over their cheif opponent, in poll after poll, from every polling company, for years prior to that election. That remained true right up to when the writ was dropped. With the exception of the past 6 weeks the current government has been mired in minority government territory and has bounced back and forth between small leads to statistical ties with their chief opponents for the past 24 months. And if you go back to the time between the 2004 election and the 2006 election you see a similar pattern.

The parallels between this coming election and the one that we enjoyed in 2004 are quite striking. However, there are several key differences that will have an impact on how things unfold going forward so I am certain that his election will eventually turn out like the 2011 election instead of the 2004 or 1984 elections.

It's a coalition, run for you lives!!

If the Liberals want to put this issue to bed they need to take a page out of Stephen Harper's book.

At the beginning of the 2005/2006 campaign Stephen Harper neutralized the SSM issue by stating what he would do about it during his very first campaign stop. Everybody thought he was nuts but it allowed him to put the issue behind him early and focus on getting the Conservative message out there.

Michael Ignatieff should do the same thing. On his very first campaign stop, when the inevitable questions about a coalition comes up he should anwser them in three parts.

Part one, make the following statement:

"The Liberal Party is running to win this election. When we win the election and if Canadians entrust us with only enough seats to form a minority government the Liberal team and I will work with any Member of Parliament who wants to work with us towards building a better Canada for all Canadians."

Part two, when the inevitable follow-up questions about what happens if the Liberals lose but the Conservatives only win a minority government are asked make the following statement.

"We expect to win but if the Conservative Party wins the most seats in a minority Parliament they will have the first opportunity to form a government. That is just how our system works. It will then be the responsibility of Stephen Harper to to work with the other Parties in the House to gain the confidence of the new Parliament and to continue governing.

Part three, if follow-up questions about what the Liberals would do if the Conservatives failed to gain the confidence of the House are asked Mr. Ignatieff should ask, with a wry smile:

"You really do not believe that Stephen Harper would not do whatever it takes to hang on to power do you?"

Stick to this message and repeat it everytime these questions are asked. It would not be too long before they stop asking these questions.

Handicapping the election

With an election campaign seeming to be inevitable maybe its time to take a look at the main combattants in it.

Conservatives: The Conservatives are entering this campaign mired in scandal. True it is not a big, headline grabbing scandal like Adscam but it is a bunch of smaller ones that inconveniently for them fit nicely into a rather negative narrative about their government and its ethical compass. Scandals kill governments and distract parties during elections campaigns so I am certain that there is a fair amount of unease going into this campaign with these scandals still developing.

As well, the Conservatives are on the wrong side of several key issues. Corporate tax cuts, F-35s and prisons are not on the list of priorities for Canadians so the Conservatives could have some difficulty trying to sell these to the electorate.

Then there is Stephen Harper. Even his friends would say he is not really liked or a likeable man. That fact is probably the key reason why he has been unable to achieve the majority government him and his party so crave. This fact has not changed and he is now going into his fourth election as leader of the Conservative Party. If this election becomes a referendum on Stephen Harper the Conservatives could be in tough.

All that being said the Conservatives have almost double the number of seats as their next closest and chief opponent. That is a hell of an advantage to begin with going into a campaign. There will have to be a massive swing in seats for the Conservatives to lose government and it would probably take the Conservatives having the wheels really coming off of their campaign to have that happen.

I see the Conservatives in the same position that Paul Martin was in before the 2004 election. In seems likely that the Conservatives will be returned with a much smaller minority facing a much stronger Liberal Party.

Liberals: It would appear the Liberal Party is stronger than it has been since Mr. Chretien left the scene. There is a certain swagger in their step on the eve of this election and I believe that the reason for that is they know the Conservatives are very vulnerable on a number of fronts.

The wildcard in this election will be Mr. Ignatieff. He is a journalist and author making him a natural communicator. He is not very well known outside of the political classes so he has an opportunity to use those skills to define himself to Canadians. Unlike Mr. Harper he is a likeable fellow and if Canadians begin to like him the Conservatives are in real trouble. As well, if he can use his communications skill to forcefully push the Liberal message they could enjoy some success. Of course, that message better be a coherent one that resonates with Canadians or all of his communcations skill will be for naught. That is my biggest complaint about the last three Liberal campaign. They had no direction, no theme, they just threw seemingly random policy proposals out there hoping some of them would stick.

The Liberals have a rather tough hill to climb and they would have to run the perfect campaign to reach the summit so I am not really expecting them to do so this time around. If they run a decent campaign they should be able to pick up quite a few seats, perhaps even reaching the century mark again, and setting themselves up to retake government, probably in 2014.

NDP: The fate of the NDP will rest with the desire amongst progressives to finally be rid of the Harper government. If that feeling is strong many progressives will turn to the only party that has any chance of defeating the Conservatives, namely the Liberals. If that happens the NDP suffers. If that feeling is not strong the NDP will probably not take as big of a hit.

However, the NDP probably did hit its high water mark during the 2008 campaign so it can probably expect to lose some seats this time around.

Watch out for Jack Layton. He is battling health issues and that could effect his ability to campaign and there is no predicting how it might effect the internal party politics of the NDP.

The Bloc: They seem to be the most comfortable of the four big parties. However, I would not take anything for granted when it comes to Quebec voters.

Greens: Sorry Green Party supporters, with the environment no longer so prominent in the minds of Canadians the Green Party will be hard pressed to make any big inroads during this election. Like the NDP, if progressives decide they have had enough of Mr. Harper and go to the only party that can push him out the Greens will suffer.

They will again fail to win a seat in Parliament.

There you have it. Take these opinions as you like. I know myself that I will come back to his post later this spring and either say to myself that I am a freaking genius or ask whether I am willing to share what I have been smoking because it would appear it was really good shit.

Conservatives feeling the heat?

After my disgust over the attacks on Mr. Ignatieff's father abated somewhat I had to ask myself why the Conservative War Room would have taken such a direction.

Surely they really cannot believe it was a good idea. I do not know of anybody who would appreciate it if someone were to attack their dead father or grandfather, particularly if it were for personal gain. So why would they believe that such an attack would resonate with Canadians when it was directed at their chief political opponent?

If they would have done that in the heat of an election campaign I could imagine that it could have become the Harper Conservative's "reptilian kitten eater moment". In short they blundered and badly.

That is the type of blunder political parties make when they begin to feel the pressure of an election campaign that is slipping away from them. We have seen it before, Kim Campbell, Ernie Eves, and Paul Martin, just within the last 20 years.

If the attack was the result of the above it would speak volumes about the state of mind of the Conservatives going into a campaign. After all, if they make such blunders before an election campaign begins just imagine the potential for equally serious blunders if things begin to go awry during an actual campaign.

Stephen Harper won the last two elections because he imposed iron discipline on his party and its apparatus. Then again he was not really challenged during those elections so it was rather easy to do so. If Mr. Ignatieff turns out to be a greater challenge it will be interesting to see if he can maintain that discipline

It is going to be an interesting election campaign I think.

Will he or won't he?

Considering the ethical troubles the Conservatives have found themselves in during the past few weeks.

Considering Stephen Harper is a control freak whose head would explode if he was forced to fight an election he did not call.

Considering the fact that Stephen Harper has a tendency to hide from accountability whenever the media or the Opposition managed to corner him on the issue.

Will Stephen Harper prorogue Parliament for a third time to avoid all of the above?

What do you think?

Where's our revolution?

For a person who believes in democracy the recent events in the Arab world is very heartening. Leaving aside the idea that nothing will really change in these countries you cannot but be moved by seeing all of these people coming out and demanding changes and a more powerful voice for themselves in how they are governed.

In all cases these people are revolting against a rich and priviledged elite in their countries. These elites control all of the levers of power and they make decisions for the benefit of themselves, often shafting those who do not share their elite status in the process.

Upon looking at these events and who the main protaganists are in them I could not help but see many parallels between their societies and ours. Western society also suffers from the same inequalities that the Arabs are fighting against. There is a rich and priviledged elite that countrols much of the economy and has many friends within the governing class of our societies. You just need to see the reaction of governments to the 2008 financial meltdown to see that, both the immediate reaction and their reactions in the aftermath. The financial meltdown was caused by recklessness amongst the rich and powerful, whose greed caused them to make decisions that almost brought down the entire global financial system. It was criminal really but did they suffer any consequences. Of course not, during the crisis they were bailed out with taxpayer funds so that none of them even had to sacrifice their wealth and lifestyles to pay for their folly. Since then we have seen that they have not even suffered medium or long-term consequences because governments have ignored their culpability in the events of 2008 and instead seem to rewarding them and going after ordinary people instead. The corporate tax cuts proposed by the Harper government and the removal of collective barbaining rights in Wisconson are two example.

This in itself is bad enough but what is really maddening and mind boggling is the reaction of ordinary people to all of this. They are poorer because of the actions of the wealthy elite in Western society but they are siding with them against ordinary citizens in most cases. You just need to see their reaction to the fights by the unions on Wisconson and in other juristictions where governments have been trying to reduce union rights to see that. The wealth elites in Western society are building up their wealth and power to the detriment of ordinary citizens and those very same ordinary citizens are cheering them on. It really is mind boggling and it puts paid to all of those Economics textbooks that state people make decisions based on their own economic interests.

The problem is we all believe that because we can vote in actual free and fair elections we are not really in the same position as the Arabs. On the surface that is true but looking deeper it is very apparent that a wealthy and priviledged elite are using their power and influence to protect themselves from the most harmful consequences of their actions and to further their ability to gather wealth to the detriment of ordinary citizens.

So, when are those ordinary citizens going to realize this and demand change? If the Arabs can do it certainly we should be able to.

The Conservatives are not unassailable

With the release of some "bad news" polls recently I have been seeing some doom and gloom amongst some Liberals. They seem to believe that the Liberals cannot win the next election.

Rubbish!!

First of all do not worry about the polls because they are not predictive. If they were, John Turner, Kim Campbell, Ernie Eves, and Paul Martin would have all won majority governments. Sitting governments always do better than the Opposition in between elections but that often hides an underlying weakness that only manifests itself during an election. As well, do not actually look at the polls themselves but at the reactions of the various players on the Canadian political scene to these polls. Neither the Liberals or the Conservatives appear to be reacting as they should be considering what the public polls are saying. I find there is more enthusiasm for an election amongst the Liberals than the Conservatives, which is strange considering what the public polls are saying. Then there is the media. The last time the public polls were saying the Conservatives were leading by the current margins they were all saying that Stephen Harper would engineer his own defeat to go for his majority. We have not seen that reaction this time. They are not saying boo about it this time.

Second, as I have stated in this space before governments have life cycles and they tend to permanently lose support as the life of the government progresses. It is a function of the government having to piss people off in the course of governing and the fact people eventually get tired of a government and begin looking for a change. I recently went on a business trip to Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary. When the people I was meeting with found out I was from Ottawa many of my private consersations did turn to politics and of the dozen or so people that I talked to about it none of them had anything good to say about the current government in general and Stephen Harper in particular. It was surprising really. If people in Edmonton and Calgary are stating they are not liking Stephen Harper very much it stands to reason that such an attitude would be much more widespread in areas of the country that are not the Conservative Party bedrock. By no means are my observations "scientific" and these folks are not likely to vote Liberal in any case but it still significant and it could be an indication that the Conservatives have passed that point in the life of a government when they are vulnerable to the desire for change amongst the electorate hitting critical mass.

Third, the Conservatives have been dogged by controversy and scandal since the 2008 election. The Oda Affair and the charges laid in the "In-and-Out" scheme are just the latest. By themselves they do not do significant damage but taken together they tend to add up and a government tends to die a death of a thousand cuts because of them. As well, they are election campaign gold for Opposition Parties.

Fourth, the Conservatives are on the wrong side of several issues right now and that could hurt them during an election. From corporate tax cuts, to F-35s, to prisons the Conservatives have taken positions that could cost them significant support during an election and despite their seemingly big lead it would not take much of a shift away from them to the Liberals to put them on the Opposition benches.

Fifth, Michael Ignatieff appears to be enjoying himself on his tours of the country. I know many have dismissed these tours but they are allowing Mr. Ignatieff to gain much needed experience in retail politics, which was sorely lacking in Mr. Dion during the last go round. Mr. Ignatieff spent his life communicating with people and we all know that being a good communicator can make a big difference in election campaigns. Just look to JFK, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan to see that in action. If Mr. Ignatieff combines his communications skills with an enhanced ability to play the retail political game he will be hard to beat.

The Conservatives are vulnerable and they are certainly not unbeatable. Of course, it would take a good campaign by the Liberals and it is still an open question if they can come up with such a campaign. However, as it stands now the next election will be a crap shoot for the government and there is a strong possibility they could come up snake-eyes when it is all over.

No substantial change in Egypt is coming

The upheaval in Egypt is great if you love democracy. A long suffering people, victimized by a powerful and arrogant elite, has risen up to fight it. They have finally had their first real substantial victory in forcing the President to resign, which will also preclude the President's son from replacing him as planned.

So who will replace him?

That remains to be seen but one of the most powerful forces in Egypt after the current ruling elite is the Muslim Brotherhood and if there is a free and fair election held in Egypt within the next few months they would probably win the government.

As Muslim parties go the Brotherhood is not overly radical. They really do not care about what is happening outside of Egypt and its immediate surroundings. Over the years they have really just fought to have what wealth Egypt has to be more evenly distributed. However, they are openly Muslim so they will immediately frighten the US government. Although there are many in the US government who would recognize the Brotherhood as being non-threatening to US interests in the Middle East they will be quickly overwelmed by the voices of bigotry in the US which will force the Obama Adminstration to act in ways that will not be in the best interests of ordinary Egyptians.

Hosni Mubarak was the tip of ruling elite in Egypt. He was sacrificed by them in the hope that his removal would turn down the temperature in that country enough for them to hang on to their current status and the wealth that comes along with it. They will be working behind the scenes over the next few months to retain that status, regardless of what is happening out in the open, and the Obama Administration will be working with them to help them succeed.

The uprising in Egypt is a spontaneous expression of anger and resentment but it is unorganized. The same cannot be said about the focus of this resentment. The ruling elite in Egypt is very organized and it will eventually prevail. Certainly they will allow the appearance of real change in Egypt but with the assistance of the US government it will go no deeper than appearance. In five years ordinary Egyptians will still be in the same position they were before the uprising, nothing will have change for the better for them.

The Sorry State of Political Reporting

I do not know why I bothered but I read the most recent article today in the Globe and Mail by Jane Taber and the only thing I could think of was "no wonder mainstream news organizations in the Western world are having difficulties".

I am a political animal and I found that article to be boring and pointless beyond belief. I had to force myself to finish it. I could only imagine the reaction from those who do not care about politics.

That article really sums up the MSM's troubles. They publish articles that the vast majority of their consumers will not read and they are doing it with increasing regularity and then wonder why their readership and ratings are down across the board.

The alternatives to that article are many, the agreement on the changes to pensions reached by the country's finance ministers being an obvious one. As someone who is middle aged I read the story about it and I will read any analysis of it in the future because it will actually have an impact on my life at some point.

An article about Conservative election strategy, not so much. Particularly since the article was unadulterated BS. Somebody should tell these "political" journalists that political parties generally do not make their election strategy public as they do not want their opponents to know what it is until an election is called. So, if a source within a political party calls you up and wants to talk to you about such a strategy all sorts of red flags should go up in your head and you should be a little more critical of what the source is telling you instead of taking it as whole cloth truth.

For instance the obvious question is why would you be making any part of your election strategy public? I am certain that you would not get a straight answer but you should at least give it the old college try.

One obvious answer.

The Conservatives want to give the impression that they have the "Big Mo" going into the Spring. The target audience for that message is not the electorate but the Liberals. The Conservatives know that Stephen Harper will be fighting his fourth election. They know that his esteem amongst the electorate is at its lowest since he was elected to government. Certainly Mr. Ignatieff is lower but he is the Leader of the Opposition so that is to be expected. They know that a large majority of Canadians now believe the country is heading in the wrong direction and that number has been growing steadily for about a year. In short, they know that the next election will be a crap shoot that they could very well lose so they want to postpone it as long as possible. So, they come up with some bullshit story and peddle it to any journalist that is willing to take it at face value.

The MSM in the Western world is having difficulties and the big brains in their head offices are attempting to come up with all sorts of ways to reverse the trend. Here is a little bit a free advice on how you may be able to contribute to such a reversal; Stop allowing your news organizations to be manipulated by political parties and remember that the main reason why people consume the news is to find out what is going on in the world that will directly effect their lives and their livelihoods. Until you do that you can expect the downward trends in readership and ratings to continue.

Clusterf**k

It was with great amusement that I read the story in the Globe and Mail last week about how the Conservatives were "on track" to a majority government using a "cluster" strategy in Ontario to put them there. They managed to weave together the Conservative win in Vaughn, the latest Nanos poll and some interesting speculation on Conservative strategy into a wonderful piece of political fiction.

First the poll.

The key feature of the Nanos poll was if you look at the estimates from the current poll and compare them to the estimates from the last poll you notice that the change in the estimates for all of the parties is within the margin of error. In fact, the aggregate change of both the Liberals and the Conservatives is well within that MOE. What that means is there was no real change in the estimates from one poll to the next. The fluctuation of the numbers is the natural differences you will see from one poll to the next when you use the same polling methodology poll after poll.
The other two big polls that came out this week show the same thing.

The most interesting thing about all three big polls is they are either monthly or quarterly polls and in all cases they showed that over that time there has been no change in the political dynamic in this country. They demonstrate that Canadians are in a holding pattern, with the Conservatives holding the incumbent advantage. In fact, you can go back farther with these polling companies to see that this pattern is one of long standing so it is probably going to take an election to change it.

As for the actual estimates themselves you just need to remember that all polling companies poll the same survey population using slightly different polling methodologies and that is the reason why each polling company has different estimates. The only constant for all of them is the "holding pattern" dynamic that I mentioned above. Which one of these polls best reflects the current reality as far as the level of support each party enjoys amongst Canadian voters? Who knows and it really is not relevent right now because an election is not imminent.

Second the "Cluster Strategy".

The biggest and most obvious flaw in the logic of this strategy outlined by this story is it is based on the very unreasonable assumption that the Conservatives will hang on to their current seats. Therefore, they only need about 10 seats to win a majority and they seem to be available in the 416 and 905 area codes.

What is missing is, if you believe the polls, the Conservatives could lose all but one of their seats in Quebec. No serious Conservative strategist would not take that possibility into account when planning strategy so in fact they are looking at the possible requirement of winning from 15 to 20 additional seats in those two Ontario area codes. Looking at those two area codes there do appear to be around 9 seats that the Liberals won by a small margin so they could be vulnerable. However, there are a like number seats in that part of Ontario that the Conservatives won by very slim margins (Mr. Fantino, I am looking at you). So, this "cluster" strategy must be able to accomplish the goal of winning all of the "vulnerable" Liberal seats without losing any of the "vulnerable" Conservative seats and then take another half-dozen or so Liberal seats where their margins of victory were much higher. Is this possible? Certainly but it I were a political strategist I would not be counting on it happening.

The above also does not take into account that the Conservatives won many more seats in other parts of the country by small margins so the Conservatives would need to bat a thousand in keeping all of them just to keep their "seats to majority" requirements under 20.

Another obvious flaw is the strategy as outlined in the story is the Conservatives seem to be planning on accomplishing this feat by preaching law-and-order in the cities and suburbs while preaching their anti-gun control gospel in rural areas. Do Conservative strategists really believe they can keep their message on gun control from seeping into the urban and suburban areas of this country where gun control is popular? Good luck with that.

The whole "cluster strategy" story was a piece of political fiction. Their analysis of the Nanos poll was superficial at best as they did not mention the fact the estimates had not changed from one quarter to the next. Their analysis of the "cluster strategy" was also very superficial and it was based on some extremely questionable assumptions.

All-in-all an interesting read but not one that could be taken seriously.

Well, that's a relief

With the mixed results of the by-elections last night it looks like we will be saved from the inevitable wingeing, hand wringing and cringeing from Liberals, activities that had already begun to happen in some parts of the Liberal blogsphere ever before the elections results were in.

Certainly the usual suspects are going to spin this in a way that suits their interests.

Conservatives are spinning it as a big victory.

Some in the media have stated the results are a further indication that the Liberals are in trouble. Then again the MSM in this country has been writing the political obituary of the Liberal Party for more than 5 years yet it just keeps sticking around.

Then there are some Liberals who are spinning it as really bad news but invaribly they are all Liberals who have expressed great displeasure in Mr. Ignatieff as the leader of the Party and they take any setback, real or otherwise, to butress their prejudice. They remind me of Habs fans who seem to relish the idea of Carey Price having a bad season just so they could be proven "right" in their assessment that the Canadiens traded the wrong goaltender. Or in other words their dislike of Mr. Ignatieff is more important to them than finally relegating Mr. Harper and his government to the dust bin of history. Sad really.

The reality of course is these were by-elections. They do not indicate any big trends for the upcoming general election; the results of them do not change the political landscape in Parliament and the only people who really care about them are the few that voted in the by-elections, political commentators who work for free and seem to have way too much time on their hands and paid political commentators who need to keep their bosses happy. The wider Canadian public probably were not even aware that by-elections took place last night until they read about it in this morning's newspapers.

In the end these were victories for the individual candidates that won in each riding and nothing more.

What would a debate on the Afghan mission accomplish?

There has been a fair amount of negative reaction to the decision of the government to extend the Afghan mission and their assertion, with the support of the Liberals, that no debate is necessary in the House.

My original reaction was just as negative but after thinking about it for awhile I am now wondering if it is such a big deal.

Many have argued that such a debate is necessary to assert the supremacy of Parliament. While I agree with such a sentiment I would point out that Parliament began its descent into irrelevancy under Trudeau and every government since then continued its descent with the current government taking it to extremes.

Further, even if we eventually have a Parliamentary debate and a subsequent vote we all know that Stephen Harper will make certain that such a debate is in the form of a non-binding motion which they will use to reinforce their position if they win the vote and ignore if they lose. So, really the interests of Parliamentary supremacy would not be served by such a debate and vote.

I have argued before that the true test of the actual Supremacy of Parliament will come after the current paranoid government is removed from power and we see how its successor deals with Parliament. On that score the actions of the Liberals in this case have disappointed me.

Looking at the situation on the ground, not much has changed. The Taliban is still winning the war in Afghanistan. The Karzai regime is still incompetent and corrupt and they only control Kabul. The rest of the country is still ruled by warlords who are still financing themselves and their warbands with drug money.

Here at home the war is still not very popular but that unpopularity has not really been galvanized into an actual anti-war movement. Canadians do not really want to be there but at the same time they are not clamouring for the troops to be brought home either. Further, much of the chattering class is still firmly behind the war as witnessed by the claims that the agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberals was "bipartisan" and by the fact that none of the MSM have made a real effort to analyze the implications of the proposed new assignment.

So, in the end any Parliamentary debate on the new assignment would just degenerate into jingoism, false patriotism and generally useless BS just like the last "debate" we had on the Afghan mission. No really important questions would be answered or even discussed and Canadians would eventually just tune it out and have their belief that our Parliament is useless further reinforced.

Further, do not mistake the hooting of the Bloc and the NDP as a serious desire to debate this new assignment. They merely see a an opening for gaining some political advantage.

Finally, when all is said and done, the decision on whether Canada remains in Afganistan depends of Barack Obama. He is now focusing on re-election in 2012 and part of that effort will be the removal of troops from Afghanistan before November 2012. The US may not remove them all by then but they will remove a large proportion of them and when that happens the pressure from Canadians on our government to remove our troops will be irresistable, regardless of who is in power. I would expect the Obama Administration to begin making serious noises about withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan next summer with the buildup of pressure on our government to correspond to increased momentum of that withdrawal going into 2012.

All of this talk about Canadian troops remaining in Afghanistan until 2014 is bunk. The draw down of Canadian troops next summer will be the beginning of a process that will probably end no later than the summer of 2012.

I am not surprised by the decision to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan after 2011. Anyone who really believed that Canada would pull its troops out of that country next summer, as promised, is naive in the extreme. While I am disappointed that the Liberals have decided to go along with this decision that disappointment is the result of what the decision might mean about how a future Liberal government treats Parliament. I am not really disappointed that there will be no Parliamentary debate because I do not believe such a debate would really accomplish anything useful.

Blah, blah, blah

The mid-term elections in the United States were quite unremarkable. What was expected to happen, happened.

What I found funny and fascinating was the reaction of the commentariat in the US and to a lesser extent here in Canada. The arguments put forward by these folks were quite amusing in how overblown and breathless they were. You would almost think that something profound happened in the US during the elections.

They made several arguments that I found really overblown.

1) The election was going to bring about change in the United States.

They certainly caused some changes in who occupy seats in Congress and in some governors' mansions but other than that not much is going to change in the US as a result of these elections.

The founding fathers of the United States were all movers and shakers in the American colonies in the 18th century. After they threw out the English king they knew that any danger of another king rising up to take his place would come from within their ranks. So they created a form of government that would prevent any of them from acquiring ultimate power with the now famous check-and-balances. It was a wonderful system for preventing the rise of a king but a by-product of it was it caused change in the United States to be slowed to a crawl. This was true when there was a general consensus in the United States on the direction of the country, with the only disagreement being on how to get there. That consensus broke down decades ago and we now see different segments of US society trying to pull the country in different directions. Their objectives for the country are not the same. In that kind of atmosphere the very design of the US political system has put American society and its politics into a kind of stasis. Not much is changing in the US and certainly not much is changing for the better for the citizens of the United States. This election did not change that dynamic. If anything it just made it worse.

In addition, the US Congress is now divided into five major factions. Liberal Democrats, conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers. (Note the Republicans are fractured into three.) None of these factions have a majority in either chamber and party discipline is a foreign concept to members of Congress so we have a recipe for mayhem even without any intervention of the President, who if he is smart, will take advantage of these divisions, particularly within Republican ranks.

2) President Obama is in trouble and there is a real question as to whether he will win another term.

No one can really predict the future so such an outcome is certainly possible but I would not say it is very probable. Mid-term elections in the US are similar to by-elections in this country. They tend to attract the protest vote while others who have no real problem with how things are going in the country stay home. The big prize in the US has always been the presidency so when it is not up for grabs during an election there is not much incentive amongst most of the electorate to get out and vote.

As well, the President drives the political agenda in the United States not the Congress. The Tea Partiers might think they are in a position to harm the President but he can keep throwing bombs at them to keep them off track. Indeed, the President has a little more freedom to act. He can now propose and if the Congress balks he and his supporters can claim it is just the Republicans playing partisan games instead of looking out for the best interests of the American people. And like I said in point number 1 he can begin throwing legislative bombs at the Republicans in Congress to force them to actually take potentially unpopular positions on important issues.

The President has two years to work with this new reality and if he uses his time wisely he should be able win another term.

3) The Tea Partiers are now a force in US politics.

Let's wait to see the results of another election or two before coming to such conclusions.

Much more was said about the mid-term elections but most of it was nothing more than newsies and their employers trying to justify their existance. They were certainly interesting to politicos in both the US and Canada but the sad reality is they will not have a profound impact on the US or on the well-being of its citizens.

Potash and politics

I had a chuckle at the Conservative decision not to allow the takeover of the Canadian potash industry by the Australians.

Of course the simple reason was the Conservatives did not want to put those 13 seats in Saskatchewan in play during the next election.

This is a sharp contrast to three years ago when the Conservative government shafted the Saskatchewan government out of equalization payments. At the time there was much complaining from the people and the media in that province but the Conservatives did it anyway. Back then they knew that they would suffer no political damage as a result of that decision.

Now they know the opposite is true and they also know that they will be hard pressed to win the next election as it is without risking seats in what they consider to be safe Conservative areas of the country.

I noticed that a few commentators have characterized this move as "pragmatic" on the part of Stephen Harper but I think the more accurate characterization of this move is "being scared".

Jim Who?

I was impressed with the amount of ink and time that was spent on the story about Mr. Prentice's resignation but I was also wondering why so much time was spent on it.

Really, except for politicos, few Canadians would have been able to pick him out of a lineup two days ago and the same will be true again is a week or two after his picture disappears from the news sites.

All of that speculation as to why he made the decision and its implications for the leadership of the Conservative Party, who cares? This is just another example of how out of touch the professional political class is in relation to ordinary Canadians. A simple announcement would have sufficed.

President Obama Cannot Lose in November

And he might even come out the biggest winner in the end.

The reason he cannot lose is because his job is not up for grabs. He is safely ensconced in the White House for another two years.

The reason he might win is the Republicans taking back one or both chambers of Congress would provide a foil for the President in the coming years. Remember folks, President Clinton enjoyed his greated successes when Congress was controlled by the Republicans.

The reason of course is the Republicans would no longer just be the Opposition bitching about what the Democrats were doing but they would actually have their hands of some of the levers of power in the United States government. The blame for the problems of the country would no longer be solely placed at the feet of the President and the Democrats. The Republicans would have to share that blame and as history has shown in that situation the sitting President usually has the advantage.

I doubt President Obama is hoping the Democrats lose control of Congress in November but I imagine he is not losing any sleep over that prospect either.

The Limits of the Politics of Anger

At any given time the electorate if pissed off about something. That is just the nature of politics, it is the root cause of partisanship and it is the reason why negative advertizing works.

For a politician to be successful they need to be able to tap into that anger. That is the reason why Mr. Ford won his election in Toronto. I followed that election and it was obvious that a significant number of the citizens of Toronto were very angry. At what? Take your pick. It was just a general anger but Mr. Ford did manage to tap into it very effectively.

There is, however, an inherent trap in coming to power on a wave of anger. That trap is two fold. Politicians who win by this means have great expectations placed upon them. If they are unable to meet those expectations the anger that gave them power quickly turns on them. As well, if the politician meets these expectations the anger cools somewhat and those who were angry begin to think clearly and examine what the consequences of the actions of the politicians they put into power and it is often the case that they do not like what they see.

There are many examples of the first part but I will name two.

Larry O'Brien was the Rob Ford candidate in Ottawa four years ago. He was the political outsider railing against the political establishment and tapping into the general anger of the people of Ottawa to the former administration. Although not as bombastic as Mr. Ford he made many of the same promises that Mr. Ford made this time around. Of course, Mr. O'Brien could not keep those promises and the results of the October 25 election speaks for themselves.

The Chretien Liberals came to power on a wave of anger against the GST. Although Jean Chretien never stated that he would get rid of the tax leading up to his victory he did not try to dissuade any Canadian who believed that he would, and there were alot of them. Of course, the Liberals did not repeal the GST and that was a big contributor to Mr. Chretien having his majority reduced from 20+ seats to 5 in 1997 and he would have lost alot more if it were not for the division of the political right handing him virtually every seat in Ontario.

Incidentally, that should be a story Mr. Hudak should take to heart over the next few months.

There are many examples of the second trap as well but I will name one.

Mike Harris rise to power was fueled by anger against Bob Rae. He made all sorts of promises that resonated with the voters on Ontario and they elected him. He did keep his promises and Ontarians gave him a second mandate but the original anger that put him in power faded and Ontarians became more aware of the cost of his promises, with Walkerton being the most dramatic. The result was alot of "buyers' remorse" amongst those who supported him and that resulted in Mr. Harris leaving half way through his second mandate and a massive loss for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives in the subsequent elections.

Tapping into the anger of the electorate is very important requirement if politicians wants to enjoy political success. However, if that is the sole basis of their success they will find that it will be short lived. Anger will not sustain a government for the long-term.