09.09.2017 08:21 AM

Leaders emerge when they prevail in situations that everyone knows can go very badly

Will this guy win? Who knows. The Tories snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and picked Scheer over Bernier. 

Maybe the NDP won’t pick this guy, because (as some of them have said to me) they don’t want to offend (as I have replied) racists who never vote for them anyway. 

But they’d be bloody fools not to pick this guy. He’s got it.



15 Comments

  1. cynical says:

    Very cool. Couldn’t hear a word she said, which is good because from what I read it was utter nonsense.
    So, so stupid and uninformed, apart from being bigoted and evil.

  2. David says:

    Anyone know who the racist heckler was? Has she done this to other politicians?

    • Matt says:

      Media are identifying her as Jennifer Bush.

      I’ll be honest. When i first heard about this (prior to seeing the video) the skeptical side of me thought it may have been a set up by his campaign.

      Obviously after seeing it, it wasn’t.

      This Jennifer Bush person is apparently a regular at anti Muslim, anti Islam gatherings in and around Toronto.

  3. Eric Weiss says:

    He handled that like a boss. No point yelling back or trying to reason with a lunatic. Has that racist idiot been identified yet? I’m betting there’s a lot of #MAGA posts on her Facebook page.

  4. P. Brenn says:

    he is impressive and way ahead of the rest of the candidates…if they dont pick him the liberals should chase him ..he would be great in cabinet…

  5. Miles Lunn says:

    I think the worry is he will cost them support in Quebec, but they need to realize what happened in 2011 was a flash in the pan and they will likely lose most of their Quebec seats no matter what. What they need to do is gain seats in BC and Ontario and with him I think they can. Also he could split the vote enough in key 905 and Lower Mainland suburbs to allow the Tories to come up the middle and while the NDP may not like this, their best case scenario is the Liberals get reduced to a minority and the NDP holds the balance of power and with him I think that is definitely a real possibility.

    As for Tory leadership got to disagree Bernier was better than Scheer. Bernier is Hudak II while Scheer is Harper II so while neither are good, Harper did better than Hudak. I think O’Toole or Raitt would have done better and Michael Chong was probably who they should have chosen if they wanted to win outright. Scheer will probably as the polls say be a status quo so won’t pick up many votes but won’t cost many so depending on the splits on how the NDP does they could either gain many of the close ones or lose them but either way the party is likely to get between 80-125 seats with Scheer which is a solid opposition but not enough to win. Off course maybe he will surprise us. If Brown wins in Ontario, it will be interesting if Scheer tries to follow that mind you Ontario has a long history of alternating parties so actually a PC win in Ontario would be good for Trudeau.

  6. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    We Liberals should be seriously worried if Singh either already has, or has the desire and ability to gain French fluency. Remember, that Jack was a Hudson guy, in a PC family, who perfectly represented the Quebec Anglo mentality of the 50s and 60s — francophones were considered beneath anglophones and so was the language of the majority. But then Jack got smart after winning the leadership. It isn’t Jack the Quebecer that made NDP history, it was Jack the fluent. Quebecers respected that and his efforts made to become fluent.

    Obviously, that type of template did not apply to Mulcair — he rubbed many francophone Quebecois the wrong way compared to Trudeau. Hence, the NDP result in Quebec.

    And another thing: the election of Trump teaches us that all the old political bromides have gone out the window — in Ontario, that especially means the no longer credible history of alternation depending on which government is red and which blue.

    • Dave S says:

      I live in Montreal. Quebecois have no particular love for Trudeau; many of them still hate PET. The NDP lost seats here because of one major policy blunder: Mulcair refused to say he was against the Energy East pipeline early in the campaign. It’s understandable since Mulcair thought he had a real shot at PM and needed western seats, but he needed to throw that bone to his base (it’s an emotional issue after Megantic).

      After that misstep, there was no real platform difference between NDP and the Grits. It also built on an impression among serious lefties that Mulcair’s an opportunist, having moved from Charest’s (‘conservative’ by Quebec standards) QLP to the NDP. Trudeau just stepped into the breach (and like anywhere, had a great ground game). But I feel his support in Quebec could be fickle, too. Ah heck, anyone looking at the last 50 years in Quebec – or listening to talk radio about the Habs – knows anglos and francophones alike are fickle AF.

      • Ronald O'Dowd says:

        Dave S,

        Ah, the good old days when Lévesque had Madam Spy parked right in Trudeau’s PMO…but I digress.

        Quite obviously, you are far better than I am in reflecting the pulse than runs through people in this province. I knew there was a lot of opposition to Energy East, including the Montreal and suburban mayors, UMQ, etc. but I had no idea that so much of the population held that position.

        • Dave S says:

          Yep. My friends and especially facebook contacts are disproportionately leftie artists (eg. they perform at and run the fringe fest). Should-be NDP diehards; should be (and in 2011 were) their ground troops. They felt betrayed and many talked about voting Green despite having to know Green has no real organization in Quebec. I saw the odd Green sign go up along The Main. I’m sure many still voted NDP – ABC and Trudeau’s centrist, afterall – but they did so holding their noses. Mulcair’s waffling on Energy East took the momentum out of his campaign early on right in his backyard and he never recovered.

  7. Steve T says:

    What was she saying? Someone above suggested it was racist rants – is that true?

    Trolls who show up at party events are scum. I don’t agree with it when it’s a woman like this one, or when it’s radical lefties showing up at Conservative events, or when it’s some ridiculous naive anti-pipeline lobby group showing up at Liberal meetings, or anything else.

    Yes, little troll, you got your 15 minutes of fame. Feel better?

    • Matt says:

      She was accusing him of advocating for Sharia law in Canada and saying other anti Muslim things, apparently not knowing he is a Sikh, and not Muslim.

      I think it was comedian Shaun Majubdar who had a bit on racism he faced as a kid. People called him names and mocked him thinking he was from India when his parents are actually from Pakistan.

      The end of the joke was along the lines of “People, if you’re going to be racist, don’t be ignorant too”

  8. Cath says:

    He did a great job of handling the situation for sure WK. However, as long as Trudeau keeps eating the NDP’s lunch and straddling the left as well as he continues to do, the NDP will not be a force to be reckoned with in the next election.

  9. Sean says:

    https://youtu.be/xvGdNjNKwHY

    And what a coincidence, the next place she turned up was at Doug Ford’s campaign announcement.

  10. Eric Weiss says:

    His response as to why he didn’t try to correct the lunatic that he wasn’t a Muslim is pretty darn near perfect.

    http://m.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/09/09/jagmeet-singh-explains-why-he-didn-t-tell-that-heckler-he-s-sikh-not-muslim_a_23203030/?utm_hp_ref=ca-homepage

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