09.20.2021 06:56 AM

Is it the money? The glamour? The power?

20 Comments

  1. Peter Williams says:

    Trudeau has mastered giving away “free” stuff.

    Yesterday I met a clerk in a store who said they were voting Trudeau because of all the pandemic aid he gave out. I said you are going to be paying for that aid until you’re 65. Trudeau borrowed the money, and it will have to be paid back. I’ll be dead, so looks like you and your friends will have to pay it back. The clerk was dumb founded.

  2. Douglas W says:

    He’s lived a charmed life.

    The spell is wearing off.
    But, it hasn’t worn off.

    And so he lives to see another day.

  3. Phil in London says:

    It is partially money Warren, but that comes with a long explanation.

    A much bigger explanation is loyalty and specifically loyalty to a brand name.

    Forgive me using yourself Warren as an example of this. Your loyalty to Chrétien is admirable but you either don’t attribute a single fault to the man (or I do a horrible job of listening). While you can rail on the current leader of the party, you don’t seem to have any recognition for his predecessors’ mentorship. It was the lesser trudeau whom he chose to demonstrate the Shawinigan handshake when surrounded by a group of young liberals that Chrétien himself deserves credit for recruiting.

    You are now begging women to wake up and not support this idiot, did I miss the article about how the old man should examine his reasons for supporting his prodigy?

    That is the limit of the personal attack Warren, I found it very hard to vote for Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell when I had the chance. As someone raised in a liberal household, a French Canadian and a women should have been natural choices but Jean Chrétien was “one of our own” as my dad would have explained it had I only asked. I didn’t need to then. I would have voted for Satan himself if the leader of the Liberal party back than.

    I haven’t been back to the liberal party since Chrétien won his first majority. About the same time I quit practicing a Catholic faith in public. I still believe in policies that unite Canada and work for all and I still believe in Jesus Christ but I am not looking for a reason to return to the Liberal fold nor am I hoping I can get the pope to change enough things in the church so I can return.

    I don’t pretend to know what is on the mind of every formal liberal voter this election but I do believe there is a large number who will vote for Singh, O’Toole, and may God forgive them Bernier. I do believe a fair percentage of them will return to the Liberal fold under Freeland or Carney or Jack the Dog.

    I will only return under one condition – that I believe the leader is the best alternative for the nation.

    I won’t vote for the NDP because they have no hope of forming a government as much as I can align with a good deal of their platform, I cannot place a vote with a party I know will prop up a liberal minority over a conservative one. I believe that vote is no different than voting for the PPC you get a liberal outcome.

    I am also very comfortable that most people who know me will one day remember my dead ass as a generous and kind person. One who is reasonable and fair and can be trusted. I believe they will say that whether I ever vote Liberal again.

    I could vote for the NDP – If Jack Layton had survived or if Tom Mulcair could have succeeded as his replacement. THAT NDP was in want of a place in government and was not intent to only have influence on the situation.

    I could vote for a John Manley type of liberal or anyone who could lead the party with less division than both the current leader and ALL who followed John Turner.

    I reluctantly voted for the conservatives in 2021. I wrestled with staying out of it entirely but I cannot put down my recognition of my obligation to voice my choice and in 2021 they are in my view the best choice for the country.

    In my perfect world there would be puppy dogs in every yard and sunshine every day but I choose to no longer believe only the Liberal party of Canada can do that and like many people who no longer look at their priest and doctor as some sort of god among mortals, I will not look at any politician that way.

    So for me it is brand loyalty that explains 50-60 percent of the vote every election I have been around.

    • The Doctor says:

      Correct, and another way to put it is, “where my tribe goes, I go.” I was listening to Matt Lewis’ podcast from a week or two ago, where David French was his guest, and they were explaining the equivalent behaviour from Republican voters in the US, who are now good with anti-vax kookery, QAnon adjacency and idiotic voter fraud conspiracy theories. If my tribe goes, there, I must go there.

      I don’t know if I have ever met a Liberal Party supporter who actually, vocally opposes any kind of corruption if a Liberal Party member is the perp.

      • Phil in London says:

        Yes Doctor that is a fair way of putting it and I was deliberately avoiding the obvious US Republican comparison. Simply the two sides are so similar in some ways but like to think they are ideologically very dissimilar. When the ideological bound is corruption it should still reek.

        I think it is bigger than that. I know little old ladies who would vote conservative at all cost because “Daddy always voted conservative”. I have made posts over the years how I am sickened by the way people cheer politically like it is a fucking hockey game. There are likely Dippers and Blocquistes who do the same damn thing.

        I have a theory about humans being tribal by nature. We are thousands of years from the cave dweller but we still trust the people closest to us the most.

        Try doing business in a small town. I grew up in one. My mother’s family was from the area, my father had many cousins in that town but when we moved the year I was born, we were outsiders in some ways for the entire 20 years I was there. I don’t resent it one iota, today I actually benefit from being from that tame town but not living there when people want someone they can trust for advice but don’t want to also have to trust me not to be tribal and spread the local gossip.

        So it is with politics to a degree but the small town will shun a crook and cut them off but they will still vote Liberal, Conservative etc so it is not 100% the same.

    • Phil in London says:

      Warren I admire you and thank you for providing a forum for civil conversation. That you allow me to post when I disagree is refreshing.
      I am so glad this election has not been as hard on you personally from what I see as 2019 was.

  4. Steve T says:

    It’s the same reason Trump got tons of support from otherwise-ethical people. We’ve become a society where people’s own sense of righteousness and entitlement causes them to rationalize-away the sins of those who promise to give them stuff and/or make them feel righteous themselves.

    • The Doctor says:

      You’re right, and any side’s partisan media provides all kinds of rationalizations and deflections:

      “But what about Hillary’s emails?”

      “But Hunter Biden . . . .”

      “But Harper did this bad thing, so . . . .”

      “But abortion . . .”

  5. A. Voter says:

    Abacus said the Conservatives lead by seven points among advance voters and the Liberals and Conservatives are almost tied with mail-in ballots. Turn out today is projected to favour the Liberals according to Abacus, but I have read also that Conservatives are more likely to vote and to vote on election day. It’s going to be interesting.

  6. Ted says:

    Don’t excuse any of it. Just don’t feel there’s a better choice.

    I’m a red tory/blue grit like so many others in this country. The Blue Party lost me with the sleaze of the Mulroney years followed by the split and the ascendancy of the true blue ideologues at reunification. I had no time for Stockwell Day or Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney is just appalling. I tried really hard to like and understand where Erin O’Toole was coming from, to be convinced that he wasn’t in thrall to the Harper gang. I found him unconvincing to put it mildly.

    • Phil in London says:

      So your excuse is to excuse contemptuous actual behaviour? Fair enough. (As I recall the so called red Tories did not abandon Mulroney except for you)

      • Phil,

        I certainly didn’t. Hello to “Mes chers amis, My Dear Friends,”. I didn’t enjoy you know what but his efforts to accommodate his home province were worthy of sainthood.

  7. Peter Seville says:

    For the first time in my life I thought I might vote Conservative. But then I realized I’d have to vote for the homophobic misogynistic whack-job who replaced the late Gord Brown.

  8. Doron Berger says:

    Warren you kinda sewed the seeds back in the day of the Canadian Right being spooky bogeymen. And that lingers to this day.

    I mean does anyone truly think that Conservatives will bring in more guns and end abortions? Such rubbish. But enough people believe that crap.

  9. JPB,

    Merci, Jacques. Je croyais que tu étais mort.

  10. Canny Scott says:

    My girlfriends and I knew in 2015 that Trudeau was a sleeze-ball. You and your Liberal friends elected him and we have lost many of our freedoms. Yes, we’re bitter at all you hard-core Liberals. We have to suffer for your failure to see through him back then.

  11. Ted says:

    I hate Justin Trudeau but trust the art not the artist as they say.

    I don’t trust the Conservatives on Covid 19, climate change or gun control.

    As for the part about “except you”, I suggest you look at the results of the 1993 election and have a look at “On the Take” by Stevie Cameron, plenty of which had been in the Globe before publication in 1994.

  12. PJH says:

    The past endorsement of Jason Kenney’s covid performance, and then ignoring all questions from the media about the current state of Covid in Alberta, put the final nail in Mr. O’toole’s lack lustre campaign…..It stopped the bandwagon effect of his early campaign from gathering steam(do in no small part to covid) but I think also due to his rather pedestrian, and later, mute, pressers….my two cents…
    Oh, and the hair…..

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