10.31.2016 09:56 AM

Myth busting: the FBI director and the RCMP commissioner

Since Friday, a few readers – and others – have suggested that the FBI’s mid-campaign move in 2016 was just like the RCMP’s mid-campaign move in 2006.  With the conservative option benefitting.

The FBI’s stunt won’t change the election’s outcome, just as the RCMP’s didn’t.  But, just for the sake of argument, let’s ask ourselves: did the Mounties change history?

Um, no. And here’s the response I just gave a commenter:

This is one of the great myths of Canadian politics.

Ipsos and others showed that the CPC moved ahead of the LPC immediately after Jane Creba was gunned down on Yonge Street. It happened over the Christmas holidays, and it provided dramatic support for the Cons’ “law and order” message.  That’s when the numbers moved, big time.

The Martin Liberals lost because (a) they spectacularly mismanaged the sponsorship affair (b) they had a million messages instead of just five (like Harper) and (c) they were running the shittiest campaign in Canadian history (“soldiers in the streets,” etc.).

The RCMP didn’t win the election for Harper. The Martin Liberals did that all on their own.

(Oh, and the NDP were the ones who sent the complaint to the Mounties and released the response, by the way.)

8 Comments

  1. Vancouverois says:

    Going back even further, what do you think about Grant Bristow and the alleged infiltration of the Reform party in the early 90s by white supremacists encouraged by CSIS?

  2. lou says:

    Now that Harry Reid, in the early stages of senility, has interjected and Paul Krugman (clearly losing his mind) has weighed in, this no longer becomes a “why” issue for Comey, but a “what are you trying to suppress” issue for the Dems. The ways the polls are moving, it’s becoming apparent that having a pervert in the white house again (see Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton for reference) may actually be preferable to having a potential criminal in there. This is the Trudeau effect. Eventually calling someone names for a year loses it ability to shock. But when you consider that Podesta (campaign manager) and Huma ( lifelong gopher) are the sources for these latest e-mails, now you have to start questioning why they haven’t been removed yet. What do they know that protects their jobs? Likely outcome is HRC wins electoral college and Pervert wins popular vote. It will then be fun do watch the same people that cried foul in 2000 try to justify their “new” position. Ain’t politics grand.

  3. MississaugaPeter says:

    I disagree WK, I think it does sway a few folks today and did sway a few folks in 2016. Over the weekend polls say about 30% are swayed by it, 70% are not.

    Hillary definitely has the ground game, and should be up quite a bit, so the few % she will lose should not matter.

    The question is: How much further fallout will come out? The Donna Brazile story does not help. I loved Donna Brazile before this election. Not impressed. I suspect most of the time you get away with going too far, and rarely it comes back to bite you.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/donna-brazile-wikileaks-cnn.html?_r=0

    This does not help with people’s perception of Hillary’s awesome debate performance and that there is a fix on Trump. Hillary would have done just as well without Brazile and there is no fix on Trump (other than Liberal media spinning for Hillary and Conservative media spinning for Trump).

    • monkey says:

      Hillary’s polls numbers haven’t changed, rather it appears Trump is picking up undecideds as well as some third party supporters as it appears the Libertarian Party is tanking in the polls and Trump as opposed to Clinton seems to be picking up most of that. Also most polls show those who it would make them less likely to vote Hillary are Republicans who weren’t going to vote for her anyways. Not saying it won’t hurt her, but assuming Trump keeps his mouth shut and no other controversy about him shows up, it means he will then hold Arizona where he was headed for a loss, pick up Iowa and Ohio and maybe if lucky pick up Florida and hold North Carolina. But even if that were to occur he would still be short. Otherwise if it makes a difference it’s more likely to be a much closer race than would have been otherwise but not enough to actually win. Off course Nate Silver gives him close to a 25% chance which is the same odds the Chicago Cubs have of winning the world series.

  4. monkey says:

    Exactly and lets not forget the beer and popcorn, chow chow dog, dropping the idea of eliminating the notwithstanding clause right during the middle of the debate. Had the Martin campaign ran a campaign equal to the Harper one, I believe they would have won albeit probably a reduced minority. Of the 5 campaigns Harper ran, 2006 was his best by far while Martin ran an absolutely horrible campaign and in fact had their not been more public skepticism of Harper, he probably would have lost even worse than he did.

  5. Susan Knowles says:

    How true, particularly with Jack Layton putting the knife into Martin by voting no confidence and thus giving us 10 years of Stephen Harper. Thank you NDP Jack, not.

    • monkey says:

      Even had Jack Layton voted against the confidence motion, the Liberals still would have fallen. If you remember in May 2005, it was Chuck Cadman’s vote that saved the Liberals from falling. He however had passed away by then while Pat O’Brien quit the Liberal caucus and Carolyn Parrish who voted with the government in May voted against in December. In May it was the speaker who broke the tie to save the government whereas in December even without the NDP the government would have narrowly fallen. Also Paul Martin already promised to call an election once the Gomery inquiry wrapped up so one would have been called in the spring anyways and if anything the Conservatives would have been even better prepared thus the Liberals likely would have lost. So blaming Jack Layton is a fallacy, the Liberals lost because they run a horrible campaign and people were ready for change. In fact the Liberals would have lost in 2004 had it not been for some stupid comments from Tory candidates like Randy White. Their internal polling showed the Tories on path to win until the final week while still fairly close until the Friday and then the Liberals pulling well ahead in the final weekend. The only way the Liberals could have survived is if the three Independents or at least two of the three voted with them and Paul Martin never reached out to any of the three independents (David Kilgour, Pat O’Brien, and Carolyn Parrish). Likewise a by-election was never called for Cadman’s riding although interestingly enough the NDP probably would have won it, so that riding was vacant.

  6. bluegreenblogger says:

    At this date, I am not very interested in any poll aggregators, or pretty much any publicly available ‘data’, except the one ‘honest’ poll, Bookies have shortened the odds against a Trump Presidency from 7:2 to 5:2 this evening. It seems the betting money disagrees with you Warren, and thinks the race has tightened considerably.
    Martins 1,000 priorities I remember all too well. I remember a long rambling shopping list of announcements. Each was less relevant than the last Couple $mill for this, half a $mill for that, yet ‘vitally, vitally ‘ important as my eyes glazed, and my heart sank.

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