Column, now on HuffPo.  Got a lot of comments about this one.  Sample: “You’re mean, but I like it.”

Snippet:

You weren’t going to ever, ever beat Justin Trudeau. He was going to put you — a bloviating blowhard, a misanthropic misogynist, a down-market Donald — through the political Cuisinart. He was going to shred you to pieces, and make soup out of you, Sharky.

So you packed up your toothbrush, waved over your shoulder in the direction of Mad Max, and started jogging back to Gate 11.

You always planned to. You won’t be missed.

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Dear Team BC NDP: a hashtag, and a lot of fake Twitter outrage, does not a winning campaign make.  Check this out – the Globe and Mail is calling you out on your (typical, usual) tendency to get outraged about every frigging thing, the absurd #IAmLinda included:

Of all the interactions ever to occur between a voter and a campaigning politician, the one last week between BC Liberal Party Leader Christy Clark and a woman in a North Vancouver market has got to be among the most anodyne.

Except, of course, that this one was caught on camera and went viral on Twitter, where it is being used against Ms. Clark.

We’re not buying it. Anyone who wants to can see the incident online and judge for themselves. But what we saw was this:

Ms. Clark is walking through the market and greeting voters. A woman introduces herself and gets a warm greeting in return, complete with a friendly handshake.

Then the woman says, “I would never vote for you because of what…” Ms. Clark cuts her off with a smile. “You don’t have to. That’s why we live in a democracy,” she says, and walks on.

And that was that. Except for the Twitter outrage, and the embarrassing #IamLinda hashtag that went with it.

The voter in question, Linda Higgins, is an innocent party in all of this. There’s no evidence she was looking to make news, or that she was an NDP plant. She deserves no condemnation.

But neither did Ms. Clark do anything wrong. In fact, in the hurly-burly of a closely fought election campaign, she handled it well. Voters love to tell politicians they are not going to vote for them; it’s a fact of life for campaigners. As long as a politician is respectful, he or she can move on without having to listen to every prepared lecture about their failings.

Voters who start a conversation with “I would never vote for you” shouldn’t be shocked when the conversation is brief. The assumption in the #IamLinda hashtag is that Linda Higgins is a victim. But of what? Of not being an exception to the facts of life?

If there is a larger sense among some B.C. voters that the Liberal Party has grown arrogant after so many years in power, that’s fair. But the fact that a garden-variety exchange between a voter and a politician has become a distracting political incident on Twitter speaks more about a social medium that feeds on easy outrage than it does about the real issues in this election.

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We just had a Daisy staff lunch – in part, to welcome the newest member of the team, Madi Fuller – and talked a lot about this shocker, from CP:

OTTAWA — The federal Conservatives showed off their fundraising prowess during the first three months of the year, raking in almost twice as much as the governing Liberals despite being in the midst of a leadership contest that could be siphoning off potential donations to the party.

When the leadership contestants’ money haul is added in, the Conservatives raised more than three times the Liberal take.

According to financial returns filed with Elections Canada for the first quarter of 2017, the Conservative party pulled in $5.3 million from almost 42,500 donors, compared to just $2.8 million from 31,812 donors who gave to the Liberals.

The Conservative Party has always done well at fundraising. But to take in three times as much as the governing party? Huh? What is going on?

In any other leadership race, candidates siphon off dough, leaving their party with much less. That hasn’t happened here, as my former colleague Joan Bryden notes.

How can this be happening, when the CPC is:

• leaderless
• powerless
• hopeless

(Okay, maybe they’re not “hopeless,” but I had a little recurring refrain going there, and I wanted to keep it alive.)

I don’t have a theory about any of this, and so I welcome yours.  But if I were advising the governing party, I would be concerned, to put it mildly.  During the years I was privileged to work for Jean Chretien, nothing like this ever happened to us – we topped the polls, and we did great at fundraising.

So what the heck?  Comment are open.

 

 

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I’ve gotten a few emails from folks who are genuinely puzzled as to why I support Christy Clark’s BC Liberals. So, here’s ten reasons.

1. Friendship.  From 1990 to 1993, I was Jean Chretien’s special assistant, and very involved in tormenting the Mulroney/Campbell Liberals in the House.  In 1993, I oversaw the Liberal Party’s election war room.  We did okay. After we won, Gord Campbell ask me to come out to Whistler and give the BC Liberals some tips about being an effective Opposition.  I did. I became very good friends with many of the people I met, and we stayed in touch.
2. Ottawa.  In 1996, I’d had enough of the Martinite machinations, the disloyalty to Chretien – and how some in PMO (Hey, Peter! Hey, Eddie!) were looking the other way.  I got job offers in Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa – but Vancouver was the most promising, and the furthest point in Canada from the slow-motion mutiny going on in Ottawa.  Also, there was an election to run – and the BC Libs had a real shot at winning it, despite having come into existence just a few years before.
3. Election ’96.  Along with Greg Lyle, Stew Braddick, the Unsinkable May Brown, and a few others, I helped run the 1996 B.C. Liberal campaign.  It was an amazing, fun, insurgent effort – and a success.  Sure, we lost narrowly.  But we actually got 40,000 more votes than the Glen Clark BC NDP, and – just like Hillary – we won the popular vote, big time.  The NDP won because they had gerrymandered the province while in power. Period.
4. Thugs.  The BC NDP were the sleaziest, dirtiest, scummiest opponents I’d ever encountered in a campaign.  They’d threaten young Liberals with violence at our events.  They’d send in big union guys to dissemble our events minutes before announcements, citing non-existent bylaws.  They’d drop leaflets containing dirty, filthy attacks on our people.  I asked Greg about the hate.  Said he: “These are the best jobs they’ve ever had.  They will say and do anything to keep them.”
5. Aftermath.  I went back to work at the comms firm where I was a Vice-President.  I got a call from Gord Campbell, who offered me the position of his Chief of Staff.  I thought about it, but (a) we didn’t want to move to Victoria, having just bought a place in North Van, and (b) I had unfinished business – I’d had my microphone cut off by the local Reform MP when I asked him about his association with a local Holocaust denier.  So I wanted to run against him.  I declined Gord’s offer.
6. Election ’97.  Twenty years ago right about now, then, I had won the contested nomination for the Liberal Party of Canada in North Vancouver, where we indeed lived and indeed had a big (big) mortgage.  I was honoured and privileged, truly, to have a campaign team made up of the hundreds of BC Liberals with whom I’d become friends.  I lost, mainly, because the folks in Ottawa (Hey, Peter! Hey, Eddie!) had decided to go after the PCs in BC – and I (and others) needed the PCs to be enough of a factor to split the Right-wing vote with Reform. I raised more money than any other BC LPC candidate, I had a shot at cabinet, and I had the best team.  But I lost to a twerp the Canadian Press described as “elfin.” C’est la guerre.
7. Scandal.  As we BC Libs had predicted, the Glen Clark NDP turned out to be the most corrupt provincial government in modern Canadian history.  They stole from charities (Google “Bingogate”). They were linked to bribes (Google “Hydro-gate”).  And, of course, there was the deck that killed off an NDP Premier (Google “Glen Clark,” “deck” and “act of folly”).  The BC NDP treated the provincial treasury like it was their personal piggybank.  Their name was synonymous with scandal.  They were massacred by Gord in the election in 2001.  He won all but two of the seats in the 79-seat Legislature.
8. Time passes. I got headhunted for a job in Toronto, where I never, ever thought I’d live.  We move.  Gord governs.  Time goes by, everyone gets older and wiser (sort of).  Not the BC NDP, however.  They come up with a succession of bad leaders, and a litany of dumb policies, and they blow elections in 2005 and 2009.  Gord leaves, Christy – on whose CKNW radio show I’d been a semi-regular, and with whom I’d worked in the aforementioned 1993 federal Liberal campaign – takes over.  She is just what the BC Liberals need: she is a positive, unflappable force of nature.
9. Toronto mayoralty.  I’d helped John Tory’s mayoral campaign in 2003.  He lost to a Dipper. In 2009, me and a small group of others spent months, gratis, getting ready for 2010; Tory decided not to run.  Rob Ford won, and proceeded to (a) wreck the City and (b) render us an international laughingstock.  I urgently believed we needed a candidate who could defeat Ford in 2014, and I wasn’t going to wait for John, who still wasn’t sure if he’d run.  Olivia Chow approached me, she said (a) she wouldn’t run as a Dipper and (b) she’d restore integrity to the Mayor’s Office.  Well, she didn’t do either of those things.  She (and her campaign manager) were a disaster.  She lied about my role.  She favoured the New Democrats over any of the non-Dippers helping her out. When she deservedly finished third, I was long gone, and vowed to never again support a New Democrat.  (I didn’t despise Adrian Dix, by the by, but he too was a terrible candidate.)
10. John Horgan.  John Horgan has made leering, inappropriate remarks about Christy – during the campaign, no less.  He has been a bully and a shouter.  He has been incoherent, policy-wise.  He has no self-control, and he has no understanding of even basic economics – and how to keep the strongest economy in Canada strong.  He would be an unmitigated disaster for British Columbia.

That’s why I don’t support the BC NDP.  That’s why I want Christy Clark’s BC Liberals to win.

And, you know? She just might!

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Signifying security. By Kwakiutl artist R. Adams of Alert Bay. 

Picked up during a quick swing through Ottawa to get a daughter (100 per cent on final exam!), talk to a Prime Minister (the best!), and eat at the Shenger (suck it, Jason Kenney!). 

Beautiful, eh?

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Story here:

Warren Kinsella, a founding member of Standing Together Against Mailing Prejudice (STAMP) and a political consultant, said his organization, and others, “remain determined to keep this violent, racist and misogynistic rag out of their communities.”

Kinsella, who lives in The Beaches, said he first found out about the paper when it appeared in his mailbox. “It was up close and personal hate,” he said.

Kinsella applauded Foote for prohibiting the distribution of Your Ward News, something that STAMP had urged.

“That was a huge victory for the group,” he said.

He noted that a similar measure was taken decades ago against neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst Zundel, and while that step was overturned by the courts, he said it occurred before the charter of rights was introduced and thus may not be a precedent that could be used in these proceedings. 

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Dear Kevin:

At least Michael Ignatieff moved back here.

You know what I mean, Mr. Disembark Tank. You’re Just Leaving. As expected. As planned.

As such, I was going to wish you the best in packing for the return to Boston – but we both you know you never really unpacked, did you? Ignatieff may have been “just visiting” – but you, Kev, were “just not here.” Like, ever.

During your (really) short jog through the colonies, you proved one thing, however. You showed us that running a leadership campaign out of a mansion in Boston is indeed possible – in the Conservative Party of Canada. Not sure we Liberals or the New Democrats would ever go for it, however. Pretty sure we wouldn’t.

And that, as you eyeball gate 11 – that being the gate at Ottawa International Airport for most flights to Boston, your true home, God Bless America, etc. – is the problem, isn’t it? The problem wasn’t you, per se. The problem is once-great Conservative Party of Canada.

The notion that any serious political party would ever seriously consider you as a leader – well, it says it all, doesn’t it? The fact that the Conservative Party would ever rally behind a vulgarian and a creep – one who grabs women, mocks women, dismisses women – well, it’s kind of crazy, Kev. 

One who is — as the National Post’s Andrew Coyne called you — “a clown,” a cartoon who had never held political office, and who didn’t have a single coherent policy. One who didn’t speak a word of French. One who called some black women “colorful cockroaches.” One who called an opponent “an Indian giver with a forked tongue.” One who said “it’s fantastic” that half the world’s population lives in poverty. One who said that unions “should be destroyed with evil,” whatever that means. One who said that anyone in a union should “be thrown in jail.” And on and on. 

You get the picture, Kev. The only priorities you ever had were the ones you saw in your bathroom mirror down in Boston every morning. You, like Donald Trump, like to say whatever mean, rotten, cruel thing that pops into your powdered head. And you equate headlines with support. But notoriety, Shark-boy, isn’t the same thing as popularity.

That said, the Conservative Party fell for it, didn’t they? Hook, line and blinkered. So desperate are they to recapture relevance – so completely out-of-touch and out-of-ideas are they – that they enveloped you in their warm, corporate embrace. They all stood there in their fifteen-piece pinstriped suits, and welcomed you into the cloistered confines of the Albany Club. It was like Stephen Harper had never even happened. Trump Lite!

In no time at all, they propelled you to the front of the leadership line. Most of the leadership aspirants were the Dwarves – Creepy, Crawly, Needy, Beastly, Kooky, Crazy and (really) Dopey – but you were their Snow White. Every Tory wanted to be rescued by you.

But we’ll give you this much, Kev. You were uncharacteristically candid when you withdrew from the race at one of those clichéd hastily-called press conferences. You were honest. You had reflected, you said, and you and your advisors had concluded you just couldn’t beat Justin Trudeau. (Parenthetically, you should have reflected on the fact, too, that your top advisor was at a soulless, Satanic “consulting firm” that, inter alia, cooked up the fake incubator babies story to justify the Persian Gulf War. But we digress.)

And it was true: you weren’t going to ever, ever beat Justin Trudeau. He was going to put you – a bloviating blowhard, a misanthropic misogynist, a down-market Donald – through the political Cuisinart. He was going to shred you to pieces, and make soup out of you, Sharky. 

So you packed up your toothbrush, waved over your shoulder in the direction of Mad Max, and started jogging back to Gate 11.

You always planned to. You won’t be missed.

Sincerely,

Etc.

 

 

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So says one pollster, here.

Exclusive poll shows BC Liberals edging slight lead after televised debate

A new exclusive online Ipsos poll for Global News and CKNW suggests the BC Liberals have a slight lead over the NDP after Wednesday’s televised debate.

29 per cent of voters said they believed Christy Clark would be the best premier for the province, while 26 per cent put their weight behind the NDP’s John Horgan.

15 per cent said they prefer Green leader Andrew Weaver, while 30 per cent surveyed didn’t have an opinion.

To my BC Lib friends – and, yes, pious and abusive Dippers, they are my friends, because I helped run the ’96 BC Liberals campaign, and I came pretty close to being Gord Campbell’s COS, and the BC NDP are the most corrupt party I have ever encountered (cf. Bingogate, Hydrogate, etc.), and I have many many friends there still, and I admire Christy Clark for her loyalty to certain friends (unlike another Premier who will not be named) – I say: good work. Keep at it. Campaign like you are way, way behind, as I know you will. 

This ain’t over, not by a long shot. But it may be that (a) the other guys (again) peaked too soon (b) they (again) underestimated Christy and her team, and (c) Angry John Horgan’s sexism and anger issues turned off plenty of women. 

Just over a week to go. A lifetime, in BC politics. 

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Canadians sing Star Spangled Banner. Take that, Trump. #USPolitics #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/qtkkp1SNuO

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) May 1, 2017

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We live in a dark time. The rough beast, his hour come round at last:

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