When you fire your campaign manager mid-campaign

It’s never usually good.

I was there on the national Liberal campaign in 1984 when John Turner did it to Bill Lee, and replaced him with Keith Davey. Senator Davey should have been the head guy from the start. By the time John brought him in, it was too late.

In August 2015, around the time of the Eve Adams/assorted other messes, there was a persistent and credible rumour that a “cottage coup” was underway, and that unnamed forces were pushing to have Gerald Butts and Katie Telford replaced by David Herle et al. Trudeau would have none of it, apparently, and wisely stuck with the campaign management who brought him to the dance, and was thereby vaulted from third place to first. Good decision.

Now Donald Trump has jettisoned this creepy Corey person, the one who manhandles females reporters.

“Donald J. Trump has fired his contentious campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, a move that comes as the presumptive Republican nominee faces challenges as he heads into the general election.

Mr. Lewandowski could not immediately be reached for comment about his departure, which was announced by the campaign.

“The Donald J. Trump Campaign for President, which has set a historic record in the Republican primary having received almost 14 million votes, has today announced that Corey Lewandowski will no longer be working with the campaign,” the campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement. “The campaign is grateful to Corey for his hard work and dedication and we wish him the best in the future.”

Trump, who is a pathological liar as much as he is a racist, can spin it however he wants. He has fired his campaign manager because his campaign is in trouble. Big trouble.

He has alienated women. He has alienated Latinos. He has alienated African-Americans. He has alienated the disabled. He has alienated every large constituency he needed to be competitive, in fact. Barring a terrorist October Surprise, the short-fingered vulgarian is going down, hard.

When you dump your campaign manager mid-campaign, then, it means usually just one thing.

It means you’re going to lose.


Trudeau’s first Parliamentary session

It was bumpy. 

They’re a new government, and they often looked like it. C-14, in particular, was not their finest hour. At different points, it was:

  • The elbowgate thing, which planted a seed of doubt about Justin Trudeau
  • The Motion Six thing, which made them look a bit autocratic
  • The hasty withdrawal of Motion Six thing, which simultaneously made them look a bit weak
  • The Senate standoff thing, which reminded everyone what an utter disgrace the aptly-named Red Chamber is
  • The inability to meet the Supreme Court deadline thing, which was a stupid deadline anyway

And so on. C-14 aside, Trudeau performed  well on the international stage, there were no ministerial scandals, the honeymoon proved durable. Not bad. 

The Opposition? Neither party has a permanent leader, but that’s okay. Revealingly, perhaps, the Tories adapted quickly to their new role, while the Dippers (revealingly) are trapped in their usual existential debate without end. Plus ca change, etc. 

What do you think, Dear Reader? What were the highlights and the lowlights?


From next week’s column, in which I refer to men with small penises and big guns

Quote:

“Here, unlike down there, we do not make it easy for Islamic extremists, or haters, or the mentally ill, to get guns. Here in Canada, unlike in the United States, we have not elevated gun ownership to a state religion.

The statistics grimly bear this out. One that was pinging around Twitter, in the wake of Orlando, was this: “Canada has had eight mass shooting in 20 years. America has had seven since last Monday.” I don’t know if that is scrupulously accurate, but it sounds about right.

Orlando’s causality, then, could have been Islamic terror, or hate crime, or mental illness. But its methodology was the shocking ubiquity – and the easy accessibility – of guns in the United States of America.

Right about now, of course, some gun nut loser is moving their lips, reading what I’ve written, and is readying to deploy the usual barrage of bullshit statistics favoured by that terrorist group, the NRA. Sitting in their jammies in their mother’s basement – with their small penises, and their big guns – the gun fetishists will argue it’s all about mens rea, not actus reus. They always do.

But they’re wrong, of course.”