Spoke to CBC’s Mike Crawley yesterday about why Kathleen Wynne is doing so badly.

Told him Wynne made herself the only face of this government – that she didn’t ever use her capable ministers or caucus to spread the Ontario Liberal gospel. She insisted on being the only Ontario Liberal people ever heard from – to the extent, even, of actually going to grocery stores to repeatedly announce beer sales, and treating it like it was the moon landing.

Being the only recognizable face of your party is fine, I told him – if you are certain you are always going to be popular forever.

No one is popular forever.

Link here.

Snippets here:

“We teach our clients that simplicity, repetition and volume work. That’s what [PC leader Doug] Ford and [NDP leader Andrea] Horwath are doing. Sounding like a deputy minister at a policy convention doesn’t work. It’s how you lose.”

And:

“A daily frenzy of seemingly-unrelated announcements doesn’t equal having a narrative. When you don’t have a narrative, you don’t have much of a chance.”

Comments (0)

You get to leave power in one of two ways.

One, you get to leave on your own two feet, at a time and place of your choosing.

Or, two, you leave in a pine box.

The latter happens when politicians start to believe their own bullshit. The latter happens when politicians gorge themselves on the pap that is being served up to them by their servile stafflings, the ones who depend upon said politicians for a paycheque. The latter happens when a politician starts to lose touch with real people, and is only hanging out with Deputy Ministers and people who are on the payroll.

Kathleen Wynne, who I like as a person – even though she didn’t even deign to respond to my long-ago offer (and that of not a few others) to help – did not leave when she could have and should have. By default, she chose the pine box.

It isn’t going to be pretty.

Comments (14)

Comments (0)

It was uplifting and unbelievably sad, all at the same time. Jim Watson and I eulogized our friend, or tried to. I was okay, until the end. It was hard.

Some coverage, here. I am officially spent.

While the funeral drew politicos of many stripes, the duo of Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and lawyer, strategist and pundit Warren Kinsella were the self-declared “Liberal quota” on the eulogy stage.

The pair recalled their friendship with Brown during their youth at Carleton University.

“We would always greet each other with ‘Senator,’ no matter where we were,” said Watson.

Kinsella recalled how Brown, in their student government days, had a motion passed declaring Carleton “a communism-free zone.”

“I would now advise, on behalf of Gordie, that any New Democrats who received a degree from Carleton University after 1984 possess an illegal document and should turn themselves in to the authorities,” he joked.

Kinsella and Watson also recalled the group stealing a fake cruise missile from a peace protest camp on Parliament Hill.

Comments (1)