You can’t assume anything in politics.

That’s a Tip O’Neill truism. He had lots of them. Thomas P. O’Neill was a Democrat, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives for a decade in the Reagan and Bush years. He was the guy who came up with “all politics is local” line, too. You’ve heard that one.

From my current distant perch, I decided to run a poll that would be wildly unscientific. No random sampling, no weighting of results. None of that.

I started with a safe assumption: Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party is poised to win the next federal general election. Big time. For most of this year, he’s been ahead by double digits in the polls – sometimes even edging close to 20 points ahead. That’s not just a win. That’s a Grit-dammerung massacre.

So, I polled the Conservatives who follow me on X, a place where conservatives are very active. I asked them what is motivating them to vote Conservative, and I gave them four options.

After two days, three thousand people responded. More votes are still coming in. But so far, here’s what they are saying about why they are voting Conservative:

• Anti-Trudeau: 20 per cent
• Pro-Poilievre: 11 per cent
• Both options, but more the first: 42 per cent
• Both options, but more the second: 27 per cent

I’ve given people a week to respond, so things may move around a bit. But from the debut of the “poll,” the numbers have been pretty consistent. The vast majority of Conservative vote depends on Justin Trudeau still being there.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to see the danger, here. A pretty big chunk of Conservative support is opposition to Trudeau, not support for Pierre Poilievre.

I did the little X survey because it’s what my gut had been telling me, and my political gut is always more accurate than any pollster, 20 times out of 20. It rarely steers me the wrong way.

So, if the “poll” and my gut are right, one very important question arises: what happens when Justin Trudeau goes, as I believe he will before the next election?

Well, for Tories, it could get a bit bouncy. It could get kind of bad, even.

Here’s why. In elections, most people are what we call low-information voters. They don’t have. a lot of time for political nonsense. They may know something about a party’s platform, and they may actually remember their local candidate’s name (unlikely, but possible). But most of the time, the leader is the thing that matters most. Who the leader is – how he or she is – affects vote choices more than anything else.

That’s why wild things happen when parties change leaders. Take a look at our recent history.

In 1993, I was Jean Chretien’s Special Assistant and ran his election war room. When Kim Campbell became Tory leader that Summer, she instantly became the most popular Prime Minister in the history of Canada.

Hard to believe, I know, given that we reduced her party to two seats. But after the Tory leadership race was over, Campbell was ahead of us Grits in virtually every poll – in the month of July 1993, by double-digits.

Her mistake was calling the election right away, before people got to know her. Which, ironically, was John Turner’s mistake, too (I helped run his youth campaign, and I know).

Turner became Liberal leader in the hot Summer of 1984. He immediately went ahead in the polls – again, in multiple polls, by as much as ten points. He wanted to call the election right away; my future boss, Chretien, counselled him to wait, to let Canadians get to know him. He didn’t wait. He got massacred by Brian Mulroney.

Another example: Michael Ignatieff. For a brief time, I advised him, too. When he cruelly fired all of my friends, the people who made him leader, I quit. That’s not how a real leader behaves.

But before all that, when he won the Liberal leadership with 97 per cent of the vote in Vancouver, Ignatieff, too, was consistently ahead. Every single poll, in the late Spring and early Summer of 2009, showed Ignatieff ahead of Stephen Harper. Not by double-digits, but by enough to win a possible majority. He and his new team ran a terrible campaign and ended up in third place.

Same with Justin Trudeau (sorry, Tories). As soon as he became Liberal leader in 2013, the polls went his way. And so on and so on.

The moral of the story: when you get a new leader, all bets are off. It ain’t called a honeymoon for nothing, folks.

If Trudeau goes (and he will), and if there’s a shiny new Liberal leader (and there will be), things will change.

Trust me (and Tip O’Neill): in politics, assumptions are really dangerous.

Don’t assume this one is in the bag, Team Tory. It ain’t.

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ST. ELIZABETH PARISH, JAMAICA – Jamaica wasn’t really the best place to see the eclipse on Monday.

For one thing, it’s way too far from what the scientists were calling “the totality,” which has an unsettling end-times feel to it (we’ll get back to that in an minute).  For another thing, nobody around here seemed to care.  No one was scrambling to find solar-eclipse-safe glasses on Amazon (where “Solar-Powered Adaptive 0.1s Photochromic Sports Polarized Sunglasses for Men” were available, in a limited offer, for $59.97).

But the nutbars sure cared, didn’t they?  Hoo boy.  It was the Super Bowl for conspiracy theorists, said Wired magazine, and it was.

On the Left and Right, too.  Conspiracy theorists are found at every stop on the ideological spectrum. The solar eclipse was a conspiracy theory bonanza for the Lefty and Righty crazies.

Here’s a sampling on the Right:

•    Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who used to work for Donald Trump, to the surprise of absolutely no one) is now the Governor of Arkansas (to the surprise of pretty much everyone).  She declared a state of emergency in the State of Arkansas because, well, we’re not sure.  Huckabee Sanders issued her executive order to make thousands available under the Governor’s Disaster Response and Recovery Fund.  “To defray program and administrative costs,” Huckabee Sanders’ government said.  She also put state crews on “standby,” because the moon was going in front of the sun for a couple minutes, and perhaps she expected some liberalism to break out.
•    Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA Republican who previously opined on “Jewish space lasers” (more on them in a minute, too), said that the solar eclipse was a sign from God that America needed to repent. The eclipse and the recent mini-earthquake in New York State were “strong signs” of the need to atone for our sins, she wrote on X.  “I pray that our country listens.” At this point, we could point out that Taylor Greene’s husband filed for divorce citing her “multiple affairs,” but that would be mean, so we won’t.
•    Alex Jones, who is a pile of garbage disguised as a human, held an event on X Spaces to chat about “what the globalists have planned for the imminent total solar eclipse”. The word “globalists” is the word far-Rightists like Jones often use to refer to Jews.  In that vein, he went on, noting that the solar eclipse fell on a date on the Hebrew calendar where energy can be pushed into the new year to do “evil things.” That’s not all, said Jones, headlining one clip: “Major Events Surrounding The April 8th Solar Eclipse – Masonic rituals planned worldwide to usher in New World Order.”  Rituals.  Gotcha.

No to be outdone, insane people on the Left were prognosticating about the big day, too:

•    The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, for one, decided to make the eclipse day a “Professional Activity Day,” which seems to be neither professional nor active.  Their public school counterparts, however, said they’d still be in class, because it’d be a great day to learn about science and whatnot.  Outraged, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario – Waterloo Region said: ”We disagree with the decision!” Why? Well, kids could look up and see it and go blind if it’s a school day.  Nobody pointed out that the kids can look up at the sun while at home, too.  Why bother with science? Making stuff up is more fun!
•    Over on Reddit, someone using the name “wefellinloveinnyc” noted that the line of the 2017 and 2024 solar eclipses form a giant “X” over the New Madrid Fault Line in the Southwestern United States.  That means “an earthquake on the New Madrid Fault Line could be up to 20 times larger than an earthquake with a SoCal epicenter.” Lots of fatalities, wrote the Reddit correspondent. Because…well, just because.

Anyway.  All of these conspiracy theorists are nuttier than a fruit cake, of course, but most of them can usually be traced back to one thing that is serious: anti-Semitism.  Thus the fulminations about “Jewish space lasers,“ “globalists” and Hebraic calendars: if something goes wrong, it’s the Jews’ fault, say the crazies.

In his amazing book about same, Jewish Space Lasers, Mike Rothschild – who is Jewish, yes, and whose surname is another anti-Jewish conspiracy theory, yes – writes: “Almost all conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Semitism, and almost all anti-Semitism is rooted in conspiracy theories. Jewish people will always be scapegoats for some people…In many ways, the story of conspiracy theories is the story of modern anti-Semitism. That is how inseparable they are.”

And, when anti-Semitism is now worse than it has been in any time since the Holocaust, a conspiracy theory or two about a solar eclipse is just what the crazies ordered. It’s icing on the conspiracy cake.

But when it’s all said and done do you know what the solar eclipse really, truly is?

It’s the moon blocking out the sun for a few minutes.

You’re welcome.

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Politicians can’t direct police. They can’t direct prosecutors.

But can they do indirectly what they can’t do directly?

They shouldn’t. And, in the case of two politicians who are members of the Toronto Police Services Board, they can try.

And they did.

In recent days, Toronto police have been attacked, physically, by the pro-Hamas mobs. Even though cops in Canada’s largest city have shown extreme restraint – sometimes to the point that some of us have been highly critical of them – they have still been attacked by those who hate the Jewish state.

Video evidence shows they’ve been speared with signs. They’ve been physically assaulted. And they’ve even had horse feces thrown at them.

Some of those crimes have resulted in arrests. Some are still the subject of active investigations.

And that doesn’t even include the other ongoing police investigations – the unsolved firebombing of a Jewish delicatessen, anti-Semitic vandalism and threats, and more.

So, with all of those criminal investigations still under way – with Toronto police themselves the actual victims of crimes – should elected members of the police board be issuing a letter to side with the haters, and against the police?

The answer is obvious. No. Never.

In their Code of Conduct,  Toronto police board members are required to act impartially, and never, ever interfere with police work. But two far-Left members of the board – Amber Morley and Lily Cheng – have seemingly done just that.

On Thursday night, Morley and Cheng issued an extraordinary statement along with four other Leftist city councillors. In it, they stated that those who protest against Israel and the Jewish community – in recent days, even by targeting synagogues for hate – “must be protected.”

In the middle of criminal investigations of attacks on Jews and the police, Cheng and Morley and the others said – in boldface print, no less – that what most of us regard as the Israel-hating mob must “be free to demonstrate and engage in protest.”

Nobody disputes anybody’s right to protest. That’s a constitutional right.

But should two Leftist city councillors – two councillors who have enormous power, setting the police service’s budget and its policies – make such a statement in the middle of ongoing criminal investigations?

No way. Never.

Their Code of Conduct forbids it, in multiple sections. It looks like they are interfering with police operations (section 2). That they are speaking on behalf of the board, when they shouldn’t (section 5). That they should not pick sides and should always act impartially (section 7).

That they should inspire public confidence – all of the public, not just some extremist members of the public (section 8). And on and on.

These two city councillors aren’t just warming seats. They have enormous power – one of which is picking the Chief of Police.

For them to issue that statement in the middle of ongoing police investigations is so, so wrong. It’d be like a judge offering an opinion about a defendant in the middle of a trial – before a decision has been reached. It’s just not done.

And, here, it is breaking the rules in a serious way.

Morley and Cheng need to resign  from the Toronto Police Services Board.

And if they won’t resign, they should be fired.

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