09.12.2021 06:58 AM

Tale of the tour tape

26 Comments

  1. Peter Williams says:

    After reading about Trudeau, two descriptions come to mind; liar-in-chief and Crime Minister.

  2. A. Voter says:

    After the English debate, I looked at a Liberal leaning website. Everyone was bemoaning the fact that Trudeau did so poorly. Then Nanos said the Liberals were rebounding because of the debates. At the same time Mainstreet had the Conservatives leading in Ontario at 36.7. The same day EKOS had the Conservatives ahead in Atlantic Canada by 16 points, then behind the Liberals by three points the next day. Who knows what’s going on.

    • The money the Liberals gave to the media is what is going on. They are trying to earn their keep.

      • A. Voter says:

        The media did not make Conservative delegates vote against recognizing global warming. The media did not put anything about guns in the Conservative platform. This is the third weak election campaign in a row for the Conservatives. They can raise money well, they can’t use it effectively.

        • Ronald O'Dowd says:

          AV,

          This is a totally false debate about the platform. From 2006 to 2015 what the hell do people think Harper did with the CPC platform when it didn’t suit him or his plans? Well, HELLO! He fucking I-G-N-O-R-E-D it.

      • Obvious Sock Puppet #12 says:

        Don’t be too cynical about the pollsters, Mr. Stephenson:

        Professional polling firms share their electoral public opinion polling with the media and the general public basically as a form of advertising: …

        Poll results about electoral trends during a writ period are given out at basically no cost to the media or the public, other than the cost of paying attention, as probably their main way of marketing their less-well-known-about paid private services.

        They earn the money they need to keep the lights on at their offices, by taking polls the public basically never hears about.

        These are the boring polls done between elections, for private clients (sometimes governments), who want to know things like the public’s preferred brand of canned salmon, and why. Or, say, what the citizens of West Beaverbreath County think about where the new garbage dump should go.

        Therefore, the pollsters have a financial interest in getting good numbers and reporting them with honesty. If they ruin their own credibility by doing otherwise, the “real” (i.e., paying) clients will dry up, and the office lights go out.

  3. Phil in London says:

    What I am finding hard to reconcile in my head is how do polls tell such a different story than what we are seeing or at least choosing to see?

    HOW does trudeau have a lift in support after two debates he clearly was battered on? How does this happen while struggling to get a single point across on any issue because he was preparing for two debates? The latest bombshell from JWR is a rehash of the same old story and people are mad but the liberal fortunes are going up? If polls are right a lot of us are getting ready to drink the koolaid KNOWING it will kill us.

    Either people are lying to the pollsters or the law of large numbers are being forgotten by smaller samples. I find it hard to believe that the polls have shifted so much so that tells me this weekends numbers are rogue or last two weeks were rogue. My heart says he is struggling my mind tells me he will pull it out.

    I have voted and I sit back to watch, what I am sensing is unexplained liberal momentum. I want to believe that it will be close but if you can shift 3-4% of the population while doing nothing right, a good final week wins him his majority.

    A broken popsicle stick should beat this guy. That diehard liberal support puts him back in charge is just too hard to compete with Because that same support crowned him their king NO-ONE voting liberal can say the party is stronger than the leader.

    Without him the NDP could be the solid left leaning choice for decades, he truly wrestled victory from the jaws of defeat in election 42. Mulcair could not win against him, Singh will not and the Bloc is meaningless if they are not the only balance of power. Ergo all parties have to question how they disband and join the anti-liberal party of Canada because none of them can take them on at present.

    God help the conservatives because somehow with a straight flush in hand they will be defeated when he draws an ace to give himself a royal flush.

    Once in a while you have to flush the toilet no matter how much you enjoy the smell of your own shit. It is apparent we are content to keep that aroma around a while longer.

    • Gyor says:

      The Greens and NDP could take on the Liberals if they merged, but too many party insiders like the way things are now. If you add the Greens NDP numbers together you get very close to the Liberals numbers and excitement could drain off some Liberals own numbers.

      • Obvious Sock Puppet #12 says:

        Gyor, the NDP = [Canadian Commonwealth Federation] + [Canadian Labour Congress]. As such, they are (well, are supposed to be) the Party of Labour in Canada. As in, Manufacturing. As in, smoke stacks, stuff pouring out of effluent pipes in industrial parks into rivers and streams, and like that. IOW, pollution. [Suzuki seems to have overlooked this. But then, I don’t insist on political sophistication from Fruit Fly Genetics Ph.D.s, so, so what? …]

        Meanwhile, miscellaneous Green Party policies (especially in, say, the _Ontario_ Greens) — not all of them, but a noteworthy number — border on the capital-L Libertarian.

        These two parties exist, because they are appealing to rather different voter constituencies (though, undoubtedly there is some overlap). Believing the Parties themselves to be “merge-able”, therefore, is somewhat nonsensical.

        And in any case (and this applies to me blathering my comments above, also), one shouldn’t confuse what the Party Members of any given Party think (and so put in their electoral platform), with the electoral habits of their respective most frequent voters. Parties argue about “consistency with the Party’s basic values”, blah, blah, blah; voters instead, generally, ask, “Which Party is the least undeserving bunch of idiots this time around, who maybe we could sorta trust best to run the shop for the next four years?”

        [Party Platforms & Ideologies] does a p!ss poor job of explaining why, say, the Reform Party of Canada (back in the 1990s) rose to be a significant force in the main by drawing voters Out West away from the NDP, supposedly the ideological opposite. Or, consider the last seven years of Provincial Politics in Quebec, with old parties falling & new ones rising, on different axes of interests.

        Voters, at the end of the day (and probably this is why small-l liberal democracy works better than all the other forms of government), aren’t really Ideological; they’re pragmatic — all they really want is a party that will govern with something not starkly different from basic managerial competence, and then also a functional [Emergency Back Up Governing Party]™ with which to spank the first party when it gets too stupid, corrupt, lazy, ideological, or (lookin’ at you, LPC) arrogant. That’s it. “Ideology” doesn’t really figure, only managerial competence and also having a not-too-scary political spare tire figure.

    • Pedant says:

      The final result will be Lib 36-38 and Con 28-30. Likely a slim Liberal majority of around 175 seats.

      The fact is that Liberal voters are a mindless vote bank, putting party ahead of country every time (or, possibly, EQUATING party with country).

      • Phil in London says:

        Party is Country, perfectly put. I spent an hour on the phone with my brother has never voted anything but liberal and was telling me there is no accountability for trudeau. He was just livid over JWR and the SNC scandal. I said there is accountability you blindly refuse to enforce it by voting liberal because you are too afraid of conservatives and dippers.

      • The Doctor says:

        Proof positive of that is the fact that Liberal voters are ok with voting for and having a Prime Minister who interfered in a criminal investigation for partisan purposes. Says it all, really.

      • Phil in London says:

        I expressed an anxiety about the polls but also an equal dash of doubt. The only poll that does matter is a week tomorrow. I still need to see some substance to why the liberals strength seems to be gathering, that means consensus and the polls are just not there …. Yet.

        As for the greens and dippers being a legitimate challenge to the liberals. I don’t live in planet delusional and I completely understand that the NDP and the dippers do not automatically combine support. (Not that three people in Canada would give a flying fuck if the Greens folded anyway). Greens are far more aligned to the liberals than the dippers.

        This logic is so flawed it is like saying that an amalgamation of the liberals and dippers would end any chance of conservatives ever gaining power. I completely disagree if there were a two party system I think you’d see something like the US where the house, the senate and the presidency are never a given for either party.

        • The Doctor says:

          Phil, you’re right there, that voting behaviour is far more complex than what most people think. And on your latter point, exactly: voting patterns adjust to the choices that are put in front of voters. And parties adjust their positions as the number of parties and choices changes. If you had 5 viable parties in the US, for example, the Democratic Party would not be anything like the big tent party it is now.

  4. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Will the Liberal bump in the polls last all the way to September 20th? I hope not.

    Mainstreet: Liberals +4

    Nanos: Liberals +3

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Here’s a total guess: I imagine the Liberal lead will hold at least on Monday and Tuesday but what if it is diminishing? What if the Conservatives take the lead again in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday’s polling? Put another way, if the Liberals keep the lead and hold it all the way to the last polling day, Erin’s path to power will be, at the very least, difficult. If Liberal numbers go up, then we lose. If the Conservatives regain the lead and hold it, then we win. And, of course, if Conservatives retake the lead, hold it and increase it by at least one percentage point per day, then it’s a likely CPC MAJORITY in the offing.

      • A. Voter says:

        It’s over, the Liberal party will win.

        • Phil in London says:

          The polls are volatile. When you see volatility in stocks and bonds everyone thinks it will go up up up till it doesn’t (crashes) I believe there is a chance that the liberal support is not gelling but rather some is still dithering about which way it goes. Time will tell but I am still sure no matter what happens next week a lot of people are unhappy.

  5. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    For those of you who are moderates or progressives, if you need any more proof that Erin O’Toole is definitely not just another Harper, make sure to check out this weekend’s Question Period on CTV. And there you will find an actual CPC CANDIDATE!!!

    Remember under Harper how CPC candidates practically couldn’t go to the can without asking permission from the PMO first???

    In short, thank God that Erin is not another Harper, no matter what TEAMDESPERATETM says.

    • Derek Pearce says:

      Well, like all politicians, answering questions in interviews and what he’d actually do once in power are very probably two different things. The PMO is the PMO, no matter which party is in charge.

      • Ronald O'Dowd says:

        Derek,

        I would put it to you that the PMO is the most important tool in government: its protracted policy and processes either make or break the government. In Chrétien’s case, it made a government. In Harper’s, it annihilated a government.

  6. Gilbert says:

    I hope Nova Scotia is a preview of our federal election. Jody Wilson Raybould is right- the RCMP needs to conduct a full review of the SNC-Lavalin affair.

    • Ronald O'Dowd says:

      Gilbert,

      Let’s get real. After Zacc, which severely damaged their reputation and credibility, the force isn’t about to go there during an election. Himself knows that perfectly well so he can breathe easily until September 21.

  7. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    In Reply: first, six words: Sean Connery, Never Say Never Again.

    Then this: A WEEK is a lifetime in politics.

    That’s when the so-called impossible happens.

  8. Joe Calgary says:

    I think you all bleat to much. Its highly unlikely Trudeau will win a majority… Just as it’s highly unlikely O’Toole will win a minority. It is very likely Parliment will look just like it did before the election is called. Unless O’Toole has like 160 seats or better, he isn’t going to be Prime Minister without the help of the Bloc. Anything under that number and it’s an NDP/Lib coalition that will last maybe 12 months. Polling is subjective as hell, and it is particularly more so in this day and age. You all forget about the 10% to 15% of the muddled middle who can flip either way on a dime. We haven’t a single party actually top 38% since prior to the drop of the writ. You haven’t accounted for splits in very closely held ridings, of which the Liberals are much more vunerable, and you haven’t counted the 2% to 4% of PPC voters who are protest votes, meaning come election day, in the booth, they will likely flip back to the conversatives. You are also discounting the apathy of the voting public right now, and that isn’t bad for O’Toole… His base shows up no matter what. It is however bad for Justin Trudeau. His base is much more fickle… Especially the youth vote, which was very much a big part of his 2015 mandate. If you see Trudeau polling crest 37%… Well, that’s a problem alright, but I don’t think it will. In the end, none of them are going to fix a fucking thing so whats the real difference. Drama King, Soldier, Tinker, Tailor, and Spy, none of them represent meaningful improvement in the nation, none of them are really stepping up with any vision, so who really gives a shit which one wins when all of them are going to tear the nation down. The only saving grace about O’Toole to me is a northern pipeline project, otherwise he’s just as useless to me as the rest.

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