In today’s Sun: Damned if I can figure it out

What does it mean?

In the hours after the political earthquake hit on Monday night, Canadian pundits, pollsters and politicos quietly slid into chairs, turned on their computers, and stared — blankly — at the blinking cursor thing.

Wordless. Flummoxed. Terrified.

What the hell just happened? A Reform Party-in-disguise capturing a majority? A socialist party, comprised of vacationing students and America-hating conspiracy theorists, making up the official opposition? The (formerly) most successful political machine in Western democracy, reduced to a rudderless rump?

How?


We want your vote, maaaaaan

Warren Kinsella, Toronto lawyer and Liberal consultant well known for his own punk-rock past, agrees that musicians have an innate reluctance to self-affix any political labels.

“Most musicians are outsiders. They’re very suspicious of mainstream institutions, like political parties,” Mr. Kinsella says. “Political parties often stand for the things musicians hate – conventions, caution, homogeneity. Punks, in particular, despise politics. But they’ve started to come to see it as a necessary evil.”

So, as Mr. Kinsella adds, “tons of bands now donate songs and shows to help very specific candidates and causes. It allows them to help out, but hold onto their grimy, safety-pinned souls.”


The Liberal disease: five points

Along with others, my pals Jane and Linda have stories out this morning about the Liberal defeat, here and here, respectively.  (I note that there’s one name that is common to both stories.)

There’s five points I’d make about this crap.  Take them for what they’re worth.

1.  The country utterly repudiated us federal Liberals – and not just the leader, either.  All of us. Self-justifications and anonymously-sourced back-biting, post-apocalypse, are as destructive as they are transparent.  It’s the sort of behaviour that got us where we are, and it’s behaviour that’s been getting worse since the leadership wars of the past decade or so.  And I say that as one of the warriors, too.  It has to stop.

2.  This one ain’t a temporary setback, Liberals.  It’s a decade or more in the wilderness; perhaps it was an actual death warrant, like the one sent to the Bloc, but not (yet) as comprehensive.  Canadians don’t like how we did business.  Case in point:  “How can I trust them to run the country, when they can’t even act unified and/or disciplined, for more than ten minutes at a time?”

3.  Regulars, here, know that I favour unifying progressives – but they also know that, with the NDP as strong as it is, I think Jack Layton would be crazy to give us even a moment of his time.  He doesn’t need us to do what he wants to do.  So, for the next while, Liberals need to focus on riding-by-riding rebuilding.  Post-election-subsidy, it’ll be hard, but it’s the Number One job.  Whomever your interim leader is won’t be as nearly as interesting to the media or the public as you currently think it is.  Near-total obscurity generally has that effect.

4.  Obscurity, in circumstances like these, isn’t a totally bad thing.  The country has said to us – very clearly – they want us to go away, for a long time, and get our shit together.  I welcome the opportunity, personally.  The only reason some media are still writing about us is habit.  They’ll move on, soon enough, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

5.  I haven’t repeated my little pledge since before the Liberal rout – so, in case you think I chose discretion over valour, I still intend to take a shot at a Liberal nomination somewhere in the Toronto area.  Call me crazy (and plenty do), but I think it would be fun to try one more time.

Anyway, that’s what I think after reading the morning papers.  Now, it’s off to a wedding that’ll be attended by lots of Liberals, and then it’s up to Ottawa to give a speech about politics.  Have a great day.

 


A few weeks later…

…I got shit supreme from some federal Grit friends when this column came out.  Reading it now, I guess it wasn’t so far off the mark.  (I completely missed the NDP surge, however.  I am comforted by the fact that I wasn’t alone in that regard.)

Wish I had been wrong.


I call B.S.

He’s a liar.

He was on the record for years – he wanted to gut human rights in Ontario. Now, he says he didn’t mean any of that.

This one reminds of Stockwell Day’s flat tax. Said he favoured one, for ages. Then, as an election loomed – as the consequences of his mistake became evident – Day reversed himself. Didn’t mean it, he said.

It didn’t fool anyone. It allowed us to argue he had a hidden agenda. And it said as much about his character as it did about his policies.

John Tory reversed himself on funding for private religious schools at the eleventh hour, too. It didn’t help the PCs much, as I recall.

Tim Hudak is one of the biggest phonies in Canadian political life. With this, he hasn’t fooled anyone – and he’s alienated the very people who propelled him into the leader’s chair. They’re not happy, now.

You know, at least with Hudak’s predecessors, you knew where you stood.

Not this guy. He’s a liar.


Perdu

If Elections Canada allows this one to stand, they have officially become a joke:

“…signatures backing the NDP election winner that may have been forged, of people that may not live in the riding or who weren’t clear what it was they were being asked to support.

It’s just the latest problem to emerge as the media and political parties scratch beneath the surface of Ruth Ellen Brosseau, a single mother who lives in Gatineau, Que., but won the race 300 kilometres away by nearly 7,000 votes.

Midway through the campaign, Brosseau was found to have taken a vacation in Las Vegas. When she returned to Canada, she was leading the race in a riding near Trois-Rivieres, Que., propelled by NDP Leader Jack Layton’s popularity in the province.”

 


Ouch

Advisory:Kill SCOC elections story; there was no ruling in this case; item is erroneous (Tories-In-Out)
Source: The Canadian Press
May 5, 2011 10:56


OTTAWA – EDITORS: KILL Ottawa-placelined Tories-In-Out moved at 09:54 with writethru at 10:05 ET. Story is erroneous. There was no decision in this matter. There will be a substitute story with different content on another court case.

INDEX: NATIONAL JUSTICE POLITICS

 


The Lopinski Theorem

In yesterday’s morning after the morning after post, I posted a fun email I received from my Ontario Liberal war room pal Bob Lopinski. It struck a chord with a lot of people; it was Twittered, hither and yon, famous Canadian columnists emailed me approvingly about it, and a bunch of you commented. Here it is again:

“I do really wish there was more science in political science.

This is what I have gleaned from the early analysis:

  1. Voters are moving left, unless they are moving right.
  2. Incumbency is bad, unless you were re-elected.
  3. Voters want change AND even more of the same.
  4. On-the-ground organization and sophisticated micro-targeting work, unless you are a bar-maid canvassing in Las Vegas.
  5. The separatists are preparing to ramp up their campaigns, and as a first step have left the Canadian House of Commons.”

Bob’s point – which political pros like him often make, pre-, post-, and during elections – is that there is no single meaning you can apply to the outcome. Sometimes, it’s just a bunch of things happening, some good for your team, some bad.

The discussion has arisen because, partly, Michael Ignatieff campaigned way better than Stephen Harper – but the latter still beat the stuffing out of the former on E Day. Don’t “campaigns matter” anymore? Well, yes, goes The Lopinski Theorem, except when, you know, campaigns don’t matter.

Pollsters were off; pundits scratched their tall foreheads. In the Open Election Prediction Thread, I offered swell prizes for the person who accurately picked the exact seat outcome. Out of more than 200 entries, on here and Facebook, no one did. In this morning-after entry – which attracted a wk.com record of almost 400 comments – theories abounded, but no consensus was reached.

Ditto the commentariat: Harper won because he’s an evil genius; Ignatieff lost because he had a lousy platform and Canadians didn’t like him; Harper won and Ignatieff lost because the progressive side of the spectrum is divided. And that’s just the first three columnists highlighted over on the invaluable National Newswatch this morning. There’s more discordant stuff out there to read, if you have the patience for it.

I’ve penned my own take in a coming issue of The Walrus – concluded on the morning after all the results rolled in – and I go at it for nearly 4,000 words. I won’t give away what I have to say (the magazine asked me not to), but suffice to say that, after believeing for a lifetime that “campaigns matter,” now I’m not so sure anymore. (But – here I go contradicting myself again – I think a big Conservative federal win means a big Conservative provincial win in Ontario is now gone, baby, gone. Take that, Timmy.)

Thus, The Lopinski Theorem: shit happens, good and bad. People will assign whatever meaning to the results that is consistent with their own biases and prejudices. In a country as big and as diverse as this one, it’s truly dumb to say one thing explains everything, isn’t it?

I’m a Catholic: I believe in divine mysteries. I like that there are some things I can’t explain, that they are ineffable. I draw comfort from the fact that there are some things which aren’t known facts, and that there art many, many things beyond the ken of my puny brain. I don’t need (or want) everything explained to me all the time.

Election 2011, per the theorem. Don’t try and explain it to me. Whatever you come up with will be wrong, and/or right.