07.28.2015 09:58 AM

About that LPC rumour

Apologies for yesterday’s cryptic post. My excuse: I was getting on an Air North flight (and did you know Air North serves warm cookies, and free Goldfish crackers?) in Whitehorse yesterday, on my way to Vancouver, when I received the following from three pretty reliable sources:

  • There was a meeting taking place at a cottage somewhere in the Ottawa area.
  • The Liberal Party’s campaign manager was out.
  • The leader’s senior strategist was out.
  • The party’s pollster was taking over.

Just before the nice Air North attendant told me to turn off my devices for the sixteenth time, I let various folks know what I heard. I was then incommunicado for about three hours.

When I landed, this is what I got:

  • Most people couldn’t confirm it.
  • Some people didn’t believe it.
  • A couple people had received the same Intel.

I don’t much care about The Campaign Manager, The Senior Strategist or The Pollster. I do care, however, about many LPC candidates and volunteers who have to carry on through all of this sort of crap. It has to be pretty depressing.

To you, I say: every political party is more than any particular Campaign Manager, Senior Strategist or Pollster. They come and go. 

The party is also more than any particular Leader. They come and go, too. 

The grassroots hang in there, in every party. So keep working for what you believe in. This too shall pass.

46 Comments

  1. Smith says:

    Rumours are like farts in the wind….. you can smell them and then they’re gone!

    As for the many decent Liberal candidates sitting in the stench, they will be forced to campaign on the Liberal brand and hoping it’s not too tarnished by the many leadership debacles. It will be like campaigning without a leader… headlessly charging into the fray knowing it’s futile.

  2. Catherine says:

    Who would dismiss them?

    • AAJ says:

      Justin must dismiss them for the sake of the survival of the Liberal party; if he’s got the leadership cojones to make that crucial decision. If he sticks with his backroom advisors he’s toast and Red and Blue Grits will be fleeing respectively to the NDP and CPC…. rather than stick to a stinking sinking ship filled with blundering bozos.

  3. Brad says:

    Who is the Party Pollster? Herle?

  4. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    I’ll go you one further: if this is true, it’s time for members and supporters to bombard the leader and party with our thoughts on who should be running Justin’s office. I have a few names in mind and so must most of you, readers of this website. Charge!

  5. Patricia Morfee says:

    Just read your comments. My husband canvasses door to door and I do telephoning for our Lib candidate and it is truly grass roots. We have a mother and her 6 children working very hard also. We recently had high hopes that after 10 years of Conservative representation, we were going to break through with our candidate who has been tirelessly knocking on doors since January. She has a lot of cred having been an Alderman with the highest voting record in elections and a Finance Budget Chairman among other positions in the City but it seems even though we are being told we have a good chance, obstacles keep popping up. Now this. Yesterday after numerous attacks against the Liberals for the Eglington results which made me happy I said to my husband maybe we are just wasting our time. We are in our 70’s and have health issues but believe in our Party and wanted one last win. Oh well. Difficult to stay positive.

    • reader says:

      Patricia, what do you see in your door knocking? Do people ask about Eve Adams. Will that change their vote? The media get all worked up about certain things, but sometimes these don’t translate into the riding communities. It varies from riding to riding. I’m just wondering if the “roadblocks” you here about are from the chattering class or from what you and other members of the volunteer/candidate team are hearing at the door.

  6. RogerX says:

    Warren, will your LPC survive the coming political enema that will flush out the Martinite detritus or will there only be scant remnants of the once proud and great LPC?

    Can the LPC survive the coming election massacre at the hands of Mulcair and Harper? Will the LPC be forced to sue for merger with the screwed up NDP led by an ex-Liberal hater?

    Obviously both Mulcair and Harper want to destroy the LPC, and now the Trudeau leadership team is helping them in their quest.

    • davie says:

      I usually belong to and support the ND’s.
      You are likely right that there are some characters in the upper echelons of the NDP who want to get rid of the Liberal Party. We have that in our BC NDP. They figure a clean left right split simply means that we wait our turn to get power in a two party system.

      However, I want the NDP, should they have the power to do so after the next election, to take some useful steps in improving our democracy by tweaking our election system to give us a more accurate reflection of the experience and ideas of Canadians. First past the post and two parties only might have been okay in 18th Century England when maybe 1% of the population could vote, but we have a little different society now, and the old system cramps way too many of our people’s thinking and voices.
      I do not want just two parties, I want several. I want a better, more accurate representation of us in our legislatures.

  7. Lance says:

    Even if it were untrue, even the existence a rumor of that many shit-cannings is magnitude enough to be disturbing. Rumours of that magnitude, even if untrue, don’t happen in a healthy party. This is the product of someones wishful thinking.

  8. Matt says:

    1) Maybe they should dump the leader while they’re at it.

    2) Is the party pollster someone who works for one of the public firms like Ipsos, or is he/she independent?

    3) This close to the election, won’t it give voters the idea the Liberals are in complete meltdown mode and drive more people away? Or could it say to people they’re finally getting their shit together and bring people back?

    • AAJ says:

      The leader is now political dead meat and the path to destruction is obvious. Supporting C-51, accepting Adams, unable to counter the “Just Not Ready” CPC attack ads defining him, and now the Liberal faithful rejecting his anointed blonde blue poison pill. He’s toast and he knows it. What to do next?

  9. doconnor says:

    “This too shall pass.”

    It may pass, but it doesn’t always pass. The Liberal party of Manitoba never really recovered from the 1969 election. The Saskatchewan Liberal Party is now behind the Green Party. The BC Liberal Party has been taken over Neo-Cons. The UK Liberal Party is another example.

    • Michael Bluth says:

      The BC Liberal party was revived by Gordon Wilson. That first election under his leadership is the only time the party was anything but a vehicle for the anti-socialist vote.

      Rachel Notley owes her premiership to the collapse of the Alberta Liberals.

      • Maps Onburt says:

        > Rachel Notley owes her premiership to the collapse of the Alberta Liberals.

        In what universe? She owes her premiership to the collapse of Wildrose. They (Wildrose) are now polling high enough to pull in a majority government despite all the warm and fuzzy articles on her by the national press gallery.

  10. Christian says:

    And now this…….http://www.straight.com/news/496896/justin-trudeau-may-not-last-long-liberal-leader-political-scientist-says

    The election hasn’t even ‘officially’ begun, the ballots counted and already the knives are out. This will only make things worse. The enemy of the Liberal Party is not Harper or Mulcair, its the Liberal Party itself!

    • Kev says:

      That message might have been more credible if it weren’t coming from a highly partisan dipper.

      • Christian Giles says:

        You try that line next time you’re canvassing when the average voter you’re speaking to repeats it. The general public wouldn’t know (or care) who’s a partisan and who isn’t. What matters is its out there and it’s supporting/feeding the narrative that Trudeau and the Liberals are in decline.

  11. MississaugaPeter says:

    My advice would be to wait until August 7.

    Mulcair’s book will have been released and the first debate will have occurred.

    If Trudeau flubs it on August 6, not only will the bath water need to be thrown out.

    • Matt says:

      You’ve been pimping Mulcair’s book release for the last week like it’s going to be bigger than the Bible.

      You work for the publisher?

      • MississaugaPeter says:

        Matt, mentioning it on a WK post twice in 2 weeks is not pimping up a book.

        And no, it is nowhere as significant and worthy of our consideration than the Bible. No, never met Mulcair or know the publisher.

        However, IMO, the book is a risk today. It was the right thing to put out when Mulcair was in third place, but highly risky now that he is in first place. I hope the NDP War Room are ready for quotes from both Harper’s and Trudeau’s books because it will no doubt be used against him.

      • MississaugaPeter says:

        You are pimping Harper on every election post on this website.

        Are you working for Harper?

  12. edward nuff says:

    never mind the LPC. how was the camembert?

  13. BillBC says:

    “This too shall pass.” Maybe. It’s hard for someone like me, who remembers Louis St. Laurent, when the Liberals really were the “natural governing party,” to imagine them gone, or just a rump. But I also remember the Social Credit party in Alberta and nationally, I remember Dupliessis, and the days when the Tories had run Ontario (a lot better than their successors) for 40 years, and so on. It’s gobsmacking to follow the decline of the Liberals post-Chretien, but there it is. Something’s going to pass, I guess. Maybe it’s the woes of the Liberals. Maybe the Liberals themselves.

  14. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    I think what makes this leadership crisis so much worse is the strong residual effect of the camps. Incredibly in 2015, at the root it still remains Chrétien v. Martin. For the life of me, I can’t understand why this was left to fester. Each man owed it to the party to settle this long ago, but didn’t…

    If A, B, C and D are geniuses, or garbage, it should absolutely have nothing whatsoever to do with Chrétien v. Martin, and vice-versa.

    • ottawacon says:

      Martin really has no influence over the ‘Martin faction’ now, and probably hasn’t since they coalesced around Ignatieff. I doubt there is much that Chretien or Martin could do now.

  15. Matt says:

    New Ipsos.

    NDP – 34% down 1 since June

    CPC – 33% up 5 since June

    Liberals – 25% down 4 since June

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Matt,

      Don’t forget the Pauline syndrome. She led in many polls but her personal negative number as leader was in the mid -fifties. Last time I checked, Harper’s PNN was in the low sixties…

  16. Priyesh says:

    These changes are long overdue. I’m worried it’s too late. But better late than never.

  17. fan590 says:

    Has anyone been watching CFTO news in Toronto the past few weeks?

    Constant ads slamming Trudeau over, and over, and over. Where’s the hit back? Where’s the ad defining who Trudeau is, and what his plan is (like what was done with McQuinty and Wynne) to counter the barrage?

    It’s a shame to see the Liberals again make even the pathetic Tim Hudak campaign team look good in comparison!

    If this was a boxing match people would be talking about the fix being in.

  18. JH says:

    Rumors of an Iggy type night of the long knives have been circulating in BC. Quebec and the Maritimes for a long time now. Some folks are getting pretty antsy.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      JH,

      That just ain’t on. As long as Justin substantially beats last time’s seat count, he is going to be green-lighted for another kick at the can. (It’s called common sense.)

      • Ronald O'Dowd says:

        JH,

        On second thought, maybe I should have said Canadian Sense. LOL.

        • JH says:

          Sorry wasn’t being clear. I meant the part about Iggy dumping his whole team at one point. Lots calling for JT to do the same. Altough I believe you right in that he’ll get a second chance.

  19. Mike says:

    Bunch of nervous nellies on this site

  20. Joe says:

    Taking a bit more philosophical approach, I think the Liberal problem is not a leadership problem its more of a whither thou goest problem. For decades the Liberals were successful in building their big red tent on the fault line dividing socialist from classic liberalism. Unfortunately the fault has grown bigger and people are moving either to the true socialist – NDP or the classic liberal – Conservatives. I believe the earthquake began way back in Pearson’s time and the divide has grown ever since and since Turner, at an ever accelerating rate. About the only thing keeping the Liberal party together today is Brand Loyalty.

    • Vancouverois says:

      This.

      I don’t think the current Liberal leader has helped matters, but this really is the fundamental problem. What does the modern Liberal party stand for, other than power for the sake of power?

      If I want to get Harper out, why would I vote Liberal instead of NDP? If I want to keep Mulcair out, why would I vote Liberal instead of Conservative? So far, the party has no good answer.

      And assuming there is a real answer, and the Liberal party really does exist for something other than the benefit of ambitious Liberals: how is the party going to articulate that cause in a way that will inspire people to vote for them? What’s the narrative?

  21. terry quinn says:

    In my mind the infighting might be good for the party as the Libs have never ever been a purely cohesive bunch. The healthy politics inside the party have always held them together at Eday.

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