Hurricane Trump

— 09.10.2017 09:37 AM

I did a radio panel yesterday. The subject-matter doesn’t matter. 

I only mention it, in fact, because I did what I often do on TV and radio, this year: I reminded everyone that supposedly-smart guys like me know SFA. We don’t know anything. 

I thought about that when I picked up the New York Times this morning. It was thick as a brick – the theatre season has started anew, apparently – but here was the only part worth reading:

Mr. Trump’s candidacy was dead when he announced it. (Mexico is sending “rapists.”) His candidacy was dead when he insulted a former prisoner of war named John McCain. (“I like people who weren’t captured.”) His candidacy was dead when he cast suspicion on an entire religion. (“Donald J. Trump is calling for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”)

Dead when he attacked a federal judge, a Gold Star family, the pope. Deader than dead when he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. (“When you’re a star, they let you do it.”)

The more Mr. Trump’s candidacy was said to flatline, the more life I saw in his crowds.

In August 2015, a month after a high-ranking Republican National Committee operative promised me that America would never tolerate a man with no military service disparaging an American military hero, I was standing on a football field in Mobile, Ala., surrounded by 30,000 screaming Trump fans, an unheard-of turnout six months before a primary. Were they mad about the candidates words on Mr. McCain? No. The opposite. “He’s not afraid of anybody,” one woman told me.

I don’t think the nameless woman had the blinding insight the author was after. These nameless Trump fans did, however, further into the piece:

“Trump sees us,” his supporters would tell me, everywhere we stopped. “You don’t.”

That’s it. 

It’s not a revelation. I (and others) have said as much before. Trump’s voters (like the Ford brothers’ voters, who called themselves a “nation,” so desperate were they to be rendered visible) had their socio-economic beefs, to be sure. But, mainly, they were sick of being forgotten. 

In one of my books, I forget which one, I recalled a conversation with a smart Liberal friend at brunch in Ottawa one morning (people in Ottawa love brunch, I don’t know why; being a member of the Calgary diaspora, I think it’s stupid). He said to me: “Kinsella, you’re too much of a CBC and Globe and Mail Liberal. You need to be a Toronto Sun and talk radio Liberal.”

There being more votes on Main Street than Bay Street, I took his advice, and was thereafter rewarded with being a very small part of five very big majority wins: Chrétien and McGuinty in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2007 – and 2011, when we got just a seat short of a majority. 

But old habits die hard, eh? Here I am, this morning, reading the New York Times and listening to CBC, and still trying to know what seems unknowable. Trying to figure out MAGA and Ford Nation. 

Yep. Old habits die hard. 


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Letter we sent to Ontario’s Attorney-General, the Premier’s Office, and Toronto’s lead Crown Attorney

— 09.07.2017 07:38 AM

About this issue, here and here and here.

Contrary to what we had been told, and contrary to what we had been promised, we have not heard from any Crown or any police officer regarding the hearing into the uttering threats matter involving the Your Ward News neo-Nazis this morning.

The news media have contacted us with respect to the status of the case. We now have no choice but to tell them we do not know, and that the authorities are not telling us about the prosecution that we initiated in the first place.

Thank you.

Warren Kinsella, LL.B
Privilege in this communication is not waived.


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This week’s column: scheerly you’re mistaken

— 09.04.2017 02:27 PM

So, Andrew Scheer shuffled his “shadow cabinet” last week. It was newsworthy only in that it reminded us that the newly minted Conservative Party leader is, you know, not dead.

But he isn’t all that alive either. Scheer exists in some sort of political limbo, neither here nor there. Among other things, he is remarkably unremarkable. He is a nobody, doing nothing. He is the unleader.

And I’m not alone in my total indifference to the new Conservative leader, about whom I had to force myself to say something. Check this out, from the fellow who aggregates polls for CBC:

“Andrew Scheer’s honeymoon as the leader of the Conservative Party is the worst any new party leader has experienced in 14 years, as the Conservatives are only marginally more popular today than they were when Scheer won the party’s top job three months ago.”

Ouch. And:

“In polls conducted over the three months since Scheer was named leader, the Conservatives have averaged 32.1 per cent support. That’s 1.3 points higher than the Conservatives’ average poll support in the three months prior to the May 27 leadership vote.”

Also ouch. And:

“That score is below the average increase of 2.3 points experienced by past leaders since 1956, when comparing average support three months before and three months after a new leader is put in place.

“It is even further behind the average leadership bump of new Conservative leaders (including those of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties), which has come in at about four points—the same average increase newly-installed Official Opposition leaders have experienced.”

Worse than Stock Day! That one is going to leave a mark!

Now, I know all the excuses — Warren, you were Jean Chrétien’s special assistant and are hardly our target vote; it’s early days, give him time; it’s an aggregate of polling by CBC, what did you expect?; Trump is making it hard for every conservative these days; it’s summer and no one is paying attention; Trudeau’s socks, blah, blah, blah — so don’t bother regurgitating them. They won’t work.

The simple fact is this: the guy is a dud. He is invisible. He was the wrong choice.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that Andrew Scheer is a bad guy, or that he is evil and stupid like the aforementioned Donald Trump. He’s just not there, you know? He’s like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, where (spoiler alert!) Willis is a ghost and is the only guy who doesn’t know it.

Now, when you are up against Justin Trudeau, the guy who is the literal personification of charisma, that’s a bit of a problem. Trudeau is Cher, Scheer is Sonny. Trudeau is Dean Martin, Scheer is Jerry Lewis. Trudeau is Catherine Zeta-Jones and Scheer is Michael Douglas, age 100. Trudeau is Madonna and Scheer is 1,000 guys you can’t remember.

Anyway, you get the point. Scheer can’t compete with what Trudeau’s got. He just can’t. It almost makes you feel sorry for him.

Almost, that is. He’s been in the news twice, by my count, since becoming Conservative leader. Unfortunately for him, both occasions were massive flip-flops. One was when he hastily declared that he would no longer be talking to the avowedly racist Rebel Media, after his most senior aide helped to found it. The other was when he said he would not fund any universities who trampled on free speech—and funding universities is a provincial responsibility, by the way—and then hastily reversed himself over the “alt-right” (i.e., neo-Nazis) holding events at universities.

Not a good way to get in the papers, Blandy. 

When you add in his weirdo tendency to grin when discussing tragedies and untimely deaths, Andrew Scheer is basically unelectable. He’s toast.
I know, I know, Team Scheer. Joe Clark beat a Trudeau, and he was dull too. No one knew who he was, either. Bland works, etc.

Here’s a pro tip, Tories: when Joe Clark becomes your best and only talking point, you’ve already lost.

Start looking for your next leader, Team Tory. This one’s done before he starts.


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