There is a older video of Mark Carney being diss-assembled piece by piece by Pierre Poilievre. Carney was appearing before a House of Commons Committee and Pierre Poilievre took him apart like a child would take apart a Lego model. There is no doubt that Mr. Carney well remembers his body and stature being diss-assembled by Pierre Poilievre. For the next year that leaves Mr. Trudeau to be victimized on a daily basis and on the odd occasion, just for a change of pace, throw in the body and mind of Ms. Freeland for her daily or weekly dispatching. Trudeau is yesterdays soup. Cold, tasteless, without any flavour. His cabinet reminds me of wandering around the aisles of a Walmart Store and discovering the 50% off aisle only to bump into half of the Trudeau cabinet searching for the daily special. With one or two exceptions this is a cabinet of robot like dullards condemned to a blank eyed existence. Their names will be forever etched under the title of Forgettable.
a) Depends on who cooked the yesterday's soup. If it is my soup, it is even more tasty and flavorful than yesterday. The soup you are describing must have been cooked by Liberals, cancel that word, I meant to say Liebranodips.
b) Their names will be forever etched under the title of Unforgettable Destructors Never To Be Trusted Again.
Two more years of Trudeau? I may slit my wrists. I say, “Prince Trudeau, you are an insufferable ass”, a pretentious surfer boy idly cruising your Mercedes 300 SL back and forth on the A5 bridge so citizens of Ontario and Quebec may appreciate your greatness. Never mind the minutiae of governing, the hard work of repairing Canada’s image, the mundane drudgery of rescuing a stagnant economy. You have EV battery plants to subsidize, lavish vacations to plan, weeks to idle away at the cottage and opulent banquets to oversee, all the while sucking every last dime out of the Treasury. Vanity, thy name is Justin Pierre James Trudeau.
It's a well-written article, but I'm not convinced. It makes a strong case that whoever might step into Trudeau's shoes would have a tougher time winning than Kamala Harris will, but is that really the question?
The question seems like it should be whether a fresh Liberal candidate would have a tougher time winning than Trudeau, and I don't think that's the case for any Liberal candidate capable of winning the party's support at a hastily-organized convention.
Even if the odds are low and narrowing with every passing day, Trudeau remains the worst possible choice because everybody's sick of him and he has the least credibility, even compared to Freeland, to promise that things would be different next time.
To borrow a metaphor from The Line, Trudeau's final service to the LPC will not be saving the day or preventing a total blowout, which I don't believe is within his control, but simply acting as an electoral pain sponge, thereby preserving the careers of the LPC's current crop of leadership candidates.
Or as Paul Wells put it, you don't need two sacrificial lambs.
I don't get all the breathless speculation about Carney. The man surely realizes that there's almost no chance of winning the 2025 election for the Liberals, no matter who is in charge.
Also, minor criticism of Jen Gerson: on a recent podcast she scoffed at Carney trying to be an average Joe who cares about hockey, while seemingly being completely unaware that the guy actually played college hockey.
At this life stage, Carney's past hockey - I know he enjoyed it - accomplishments are of passing interest. Anything he currently does re. hockey, or being approachable, has just about no bearing on his future political career.
What has and will have bearing on his future political career is that he is a Carbon Tax Believer Carney and a Climate Change Believer Carney. These two lodestones that he proudly carries around his neck mark him as someone who falls for political fads (created by scientific "consensus", i.e. by political pressure) and so is not sufficiently pragmatic to understand, nor care about, let alone solve, problems faced by millions of ordinary Canadian voters.
His career for decades has been in elitist positions in elitist organizations with massive paycheques, where he acquire an entire shipload of elitist baggage.
I cannot see him lasting as an actual Liberal politician. If he tries, he will be eaten alive. And, to point it out clearly, there is no more anything "Liberal" about Canada's "Liberals", since they are more and more faring with dictatorial methods.
The carbon tax policy is not the result of a "fad". There have been multiple governments at different levels in Canada that instinctively had different climate change policies instead of the tax but then who pivoted towards the tax based upon independent advice from economists.
The economist Greg Mankiw worked for George W. Bush and is an advocate of carbon tax policy.
The carbon tax is this generations version of Keynesian economics. Great in theory, but democracy doesn't have the long term discipline to actually follow through with all of it to actually make it work. Keynesians can't cut spending in good times and politicians are too tempted by the extra revenue and/or cash handout abilities to actually make carbon taxes work.
Sounds like a fair criticism of what Jen said, but I do think it reveals what a colossal charisma gap Carney is going to need to overcome at some point if he's struggling to sound convincingly enthused about everyman subjects that are in fact near and dear to him.
I think a new leader would only change Liberal fortunes if that leader could also change the Liberal agenda and promise a different approach in the future. I don’t think any of the current crop of potential leadership candidates can do that, as they’ve all been complicit in the current approach. Even Mark Carney hasn’t come out to critique the Trudeau government and say what he’d do differently.
Completely agreed that a new Liberal leader would have to promise a new agenda and a different approach to succeed, and completely agreed that that is unlikely to occur and unlikely to succeed if it does occur.
My point is simply that the question is whether a new Liberal leader is *more likely* to succeed that Trudeau, and the answer is yes. Trudeau is exhausted, reviled, and completely out of new ideas about how to improve Canada. He is *toast*.
If the Liberals were to remain committed to the kind of contest they ran in 2013, where many tens of thousands of supporters could be registered for free over many months, it would be anyone's guess who the next Liberal Leader would be. Someone not currently in the public eye could theoretically burst onto the scene suddenly and crush anyone close to the Trudeau cabinet, since organizing skills would be the dominant factor.
Another important difference is that the Democrats are nowhere near the broad disapproval of the current federal Liberal government. The US electorate is sharply polarized, which tends to cap popular support for any presidential candidate or president around 50%. However, the generic party ballot is still evenly split. In contrast, the Liberals have hemorrhaged support in polls from ~40% in 2015 and now approaching 20%, almost entirely to the gain of the Conservatives as NDP support has held relatively constant over time. The Democrats' challenge was monocausal: Biden was too old for the electorate to accept, but having removed that problem, support has rebounded.
Interesting analysis, if one is certain (and I'm not) that:
- the electoral process has not been (or will be) increasingly corrupted by foreign and domestic interference favouring the incumbents; and
- the media has not been (or will be) increasingly corrupted by foreign interference and domestic taxpayer funding, and muzzled by several pieces of legislation passed since 2015.
The cycle you describe is strong. Trudeau the Elder resisted that cycle better than anyone. For the sake of our country, I certainly hope you are correct that Trudeau the Younger will succumb to the cycle as well (and hopefully with him the ridiculous NDP leader).
I'm not confident that PP is any knight in shining armour; in fact, I'm quite concerned with how juvenile some of his comms are. I realize that's his team, not PP himself, but he has to authorize / scrutinize it.
Some of the reporting Sam Cooper is doing on the lengths the CCP and others will go to in order to thwart a candidate they don't want to win is highly concerning, and includes entrapment, intimidation of violence to candidates and their families, and (most concerningly) actual violence if the first two fail.
Canada may be small potatoes on the world stage in terms of influence, but (as I keep insisting) Canada's almost unimaginable resource wealth and proximity to the USA are what make us more important and attractive to world powers than anything we do politically. That is why we have foreign interference - it's all about controlling Canada's marketable resources of oil, gas, minerals, timber, arable land for agriculture, fresh water, and militarily strategic geography.
The reality is, if we are to be a puppet on a string of a country's foreign interference, would Canada rather dance to the USA or China as puppetmaster? The lesser of those two evils appears obvious.
Interesting article, but you could cut out the pop-culture-like analogy to US politics and not lose any idea of value.
Kamala agent of change? Gimme a break. She's got a stained record as a DA (setting record harsh sentences for victimless crimes) and reeks of the stench of the diversity hire. She's been explicitly picked by Biden because she's a black (or Indian - take your pick) woman and now they can't get rid of her because that would be a tacit admission that the DIE religion has no teeth and produces the opposite of what it intends to do.
In short? Business as usual for the Dems with a mainstream candidate foisted upon the electorate without even a single vote in her favour (Remember she couldn't hack it past Iowa in 2020?).
As for Trump, what proof do you have that he "has tried to overturn American democracy"? Asking for a friend...
Proof? I think trying to overturn the results from the 2020 election by: having his sycophants claim MASSIVE voter fraud (disproven at every turn), placing an extortionate call to Georgia "just find me eleven thousand votes", encouraging "patriots" to attack Congress, suggesting the constitution could be ignored because of his fake claim of voter fraud. Is that enough?
The absence of evidence of voter fraud isn't evidence of absence. The US voting system is rife with potential for fraud (no ID required, no paper ballots and eminently hackable voting machines) and is entirely un-auditable. So his claim of fraud, while unproven in courts, doesn't mean it didn't happen. We may never know on this one.
If you still believe in the many-times debunked January 6 insurrection hoax, then you probably spend too much time reading corporate media. Like cigarettes, it's a poison
and ain't good for your health.
Plus, none of the things you cite in example are proof of an attempt at overturning democracy. Questionable actions and motives, perhaps, but the Dems have resorted to similar tactics in the past (remember the 2000 election?) and nobody accused them of attempting to overturn the elections.
Everything the libs accuse Trump of doing is projection and misdirection to distract our attention away from the fact they do the same of what he's accused of, or worse.
What of the fact that Harris has been crowned the presumptive nominee without having a single ballot cast in her favour? Is that your beloved democracy at work? Did you call them out on their shit?
Unlike Trump, Kamala Harris actually *has* won the popular vote in an election and has won multiple elections. Republican talking points about her being a "diversity hire" are obviously self-projections of their own racism.
"So his claim of fraud, while unproven in courts"
It's not merely "unproven in courts", it's as made up and entirely unsupported by evidence as any fiction novel. The 2020 election wasn't magically rife with unprecedented with fraud just because Trump's sore ego wishes it was.
You implicitly admit yourself that there was no *legal* uncertainty over the legitimacy of Joe Biden's victory certification on January 6th. As such, there was no reason *at all* for Trump to organize a massive crowd in Capitol Hill for that day, other than that he wanted the crowd to force the law to be usurped through intimidation and violence. It's not a matter of trusting "corporate media", it's a matter of applying the least common sense to conclude that violence was *the whole point* of the crowd.
Your popular vote argument is a straw man, I only ever spoke about potential fraud and how likely it was to have happened given the elections rules in force in the US, so please refrain from using logical fallacies.
As for the January 6th hoax, that's been debunked a million times and if you read the transcript of Trump speech, he was calling for a peaceful protest, which is perfectly legal. The trespassing on the capitol was never sanctioned by him
If you still believe that a few dozen wackos with funny hats and baseball bats, who took it upon themselves to get into the building were about to overturn the US gov by trespassing into the Capitol, I'm afraid you have a mistaken conception of how coups work. Even if they managed to take over the building, then what? You think they would have magically been handed the keys to the castle???
You're implicitly leaping from "there was potential for fraud" to "there is evidence of fraud" to "there is evidence of fraud specifically and systematically undermining Trump's campaign". Unfortunately, that is not how logic works!
"if you read the transcript of Trump speech, he was calling for a peaceful protest, which is perfectly legal."
You're basically saying that the point of the protest was for the world's greatest narcissist in history to peacefully send a message to legislators that they should kindly subordinate the election and peacefully steal the outcome to favour their cult leader. How did I get the idea that someone so profoundly spoiled, disrespectful of democracy and the rule of law could be so crude as to imply that violence is justified to achieve his goals?
"Even if they managed to take over the building, then what? You think they would have magically been handed the keys to the castle???"
They were planning to use threat of violence against Vice-President Mike Pence to intimidate him into not completing his constitutional duty to certify the election result. Not anything particularly thoughtful or clever.
I am of the opinion that, barring a major bungle by the CPC, there is not much the Liberals can do to win another mandate. Even their evergreen social wedge issues are falling flat and communicating desperation. And they have an abysmal war chest, meaning they won't run paid media campaigns pre-writ. That being said, I could see a world in which the Liberal-NDP CASA drags this parliament out to its constitutional limit of October 2026. I am sure they could try to market the various reasons why they think this is a good idea, and it would give the Liberals time to pick a new leader. Jagmeet Singh either has to distance himself now (likely a futile exercise), or commit to his 'balance-of-power' schtick and cross his fingers. In either case, I'm not sure it will be of consequence to NDP success whether the next election is in '25 or '26 and this would give them more time to try and convince Canadians the most recent social spending programs are because of their sway with the government.
Governments that run out the calendar on their mandate hoping for a reversal in their fortunes usually just run themselves into the ground. That was the fate of the BC NDP in 2001, where they were reduced to 2 seats and post official party status, and also the federal Progressive Conservatives in 1993. Those governments are like gamblers on a losing streak. Instead of quitting to limit their losses, they blow everything trying to turn it around.
Generally agree. For the NDP, they're stuck with their dance partner. They'd only pull the the trigger on a confidence vote if they were ahead in the polls and could become official opposition; but because they're so closely tied to the Liberals, they aren't attracting any of the Change vote.
I think you're correctly describing the NDP's thinking, but it's that logic that proves their political incompetence. What they *need* is to be taken seriously in the future by a party reliant on their support to remain in government, and to accomplish that they needed to prove that they're willing to withdraw that support if promises are broken. Their failure to do so is what's going to destroy them, not bringing down the Liberals and keeping roughly the same number of seats.
Hhhmmm....... "its constitutional limit of October 2026". Yes, I will not scoff at them trying for that. I actually do expect some foul tricks from them, that means from Troodas, to extend their reign. On the other hand, should they try that, they could end up facing an entirely "unconstitutional" popular revolt. Even from this docile, passive, apathetic electorate.
I don't expect the Liberals will likely have party status after the next election. Their complete and total failure in Jasper will be a dagger in their side through much of the fall session, as well as so many other failures. It's far to late to save the ship; he's the EJ Smith of politics.
4 years after that, things will be far worse. if some actual leadership doesn't emerge in Canada, and really soon, we're screwed. There appears to be no one in the bullpen, much less the minors. I used to be an optimist.
I suspect the Liberals' Hail Mary hope is that if Trump is elected in November, they'll be able to use Canadian distaste for Trump and his right wing populism to hold back a Conservative wave. I'd be surprised if such a thing would actually prevent a Liberal loss, but certainly it could make the difference between a Liberal wipe-out and holding onto their strongholds in Toronto and Montreal. Particularly egregious Trump behavior and a poorly run Conservative campaign might even hold the Conservatives to a minority.
If Trump is elected in November, Canada is so screwed it won't matter who we put in office; they'll do what they're told or suffer the economic consequences. Dictators with massive economic power don't negotiate with small players.
Not sure I agree with much of this. Feels kind of like saying there was nothing Trudeau (or Chretien/Martin, Harper, Mulroney or McGuinty) could do and that this is just his time being up due to some magical ten years. I don’t disagree that parties tend to run out of ideas over a period of tenish years and start to seem stale, but you’re projecting a lot off of small sample size and each individual instance had some very clear specifics as to why time ended up being up for these guys.
There is a older video of Mark Carney being diss-assembled piece by piece by Pierre Poilievre. Carney was appearing before a House of Commons Committee and Pierre Poilievre took him apart like a child would take apart a Lego model. There is no doubt that Mr. Carney well remembers his body and stature being diss-assembled by Pierre Poilievre. For the next year that leaves Mr. Trudeau to be victimized on a daily basis and on the odd occasion, just for a change of pace, throw in the body and mind of Ms. Freeland for her daily or weekly dispatching. Trudeau is yesterdays soup. Cold, tasteless, without any flavour. His cabinet reminds me of wandering around the aisles of a Walmart Store and discovering the 50% off aisle only to bump into half of the Trudeau cabinet searching for the daily special. With one or two exceptions this is a cabinet of robot like dullards condemned to a blank eyed existence. Their names will be forever etched under the title of Forgettable.
a) Depends on who cooked the yesterday's soup. If it is my soup, it is even more tasty and flavorful than yesterday. The soup you are describing must have been cooked by Liberals, cancel that word, I meant to say Liebranodips.
b) Their names will be forever etched under the title of Unforgettable Destructors Never To Be Trusted Again.
Yes, W.'s post is disrespectful to soup.
Two more years of Trudeau? I may slit my wrists. I say, “Prince Trudeau, you are an insufferable ass”, a pretentious surfer boy idly cruising your Mercedes 300 SL back and forth on the A5 bridge so citizens of Ontario and Quebec may appreciate your greatness. Never mind the minutiae of governing, the hard work of repairing Canada’s image, the mundane drudgery of rescuing a stagnant economy. You have EV battery plants to subsidize, lavish vacations to plan, weeks to idle away at the cottage and opulent banquets to oversee, all the while sucking every last dime out of the Treasury. Vanity, thy name is Justin Pierre James Trudeau.
.... not your wrists, please .... it is the other wrists ....
It's a well-written article, but I'm not convinced. It makes a strong case that whoever might step into Trudeau's shoes would have a tougher time winning than Kamala Harris will, but is that really the question?
The question seems like it should be whether a fresh Liberal candidate would have a tougher time winning than Trudeau, and I don't think that's the case for any Liberal candidate capable of winning the party's support at a hastily-organized convention.
Even if the odds are low and narrowing with every passing day, Trudeau remains the worst possible choice because everybody's sick of him and he has the least credibility, even compared to Freeland, to promise that things would be different next time.
To borrow a metaphor from The Line, Trudeau's final service to the LPC will not be saving the day or preventing a total blowout, which I don't believe is within his control, but simply acting as an electoral pain sponge, thereby preserving the careers of the LPC's current crop of leadership candidates.
Or as Paul Wells put it, you don't need two sacrificial lambs.
I don't get all the breathless speculation about Carney. The man surely realizes that there's almost no chance of winning the 2025 election for the Liberals, no matter who is in charge.
Also, minor criticism of Jen Gerson: on a recent podcast she scoffed at Carney trying to be an average Joe who cares about hockey, while seemingly being completely unaware that the guy actually played college hockey.
At this life stage, Carney's past hockey - I know he enjoyed it - accomplishments are of passing interest. Anything he currently does re. hockey, or being approachable, has just about no bearing on his future political career.
What has and will have bearing on his future political career is that he is a Carbon Tax Believer Carney and a Climate Change Believer Carney. These two lodestones that he proudly carries around his neck mark him as someone who falls for political fads (created by scientific "consensus", i.e. by political pressure) and so is not sufficiently pragmatic to understand, nor care about, let alone solve, problems faced by millions of ordinary Canadian voters.
His career for decades has been in elitist positions in elitist organizations with massive paycheques, where he acquire an entire shipload of elitist baggage.
I cannot see him lasting as an actual Liberal politician. If he tries, he will be eaten alive. And, to point it out clearly, there is no more anything "Liberal" about Canada's "Liberals", since they are more and more faring with dictatorial methods.
The carbon tax policy is not the result of a "fad". There have been multiple governments at different levels in Canada that instinctively had different climate change policies instead of the tax but then who pivoted towards the tax based upon independent advice from economists.
The economist Greg Mankiw worked for George W. Bush and is an advocate of carbon tax policy.
The carbon tax is this generations version of Keynesian economics. Great in theory, but democracy doesn't have the long term discipline to actually follow through with all of it to actually make it work. Keynesians can't cut spending in good times and politicians are too tempted by the extra revenue and/or cash handout abilities to actually make carbon taxes work.
Paul Wells is great, man.
Sounds like a fair criticism of what Jen said, but I do think it reveals what a colossal charisma gap Carney is going to need to overcome at some point if he's struggling to sound convincingly enthused about everyman subjects that are in fact near and dear to him.
I think a new leader would only change Liberal fortunes if that leader could also change the Liberal agenda and promise a different approach in the future. I don’t think any of the current crop of potential leadership candidates can do that, as they’ve all been complicit in the current approach. Even Mark Carney hasn’t come out to critique the Trudeau government and say what he’d do differently.
Completely agreed that a new Liberal leader would have to promise a new agenda and a different approach to succeed, and completely agreed that that is unlikely to occur and unlikely to succeed if it does occur.
My point is simply that the question is whether a new Liberal leader is *more likely* to succeed that Trudeau, and the answer is yes. Trudeau is exhausted, reviled, and completely out of new ideas about how to improve Canada. He is *toast*.
If the Liberals were to remain committed to the kind of contest they ran in 2013, where many tens of thousands of supporters could be registered for free over many months, it would be anyone's guess who the next Liberal Leader would be. Someone not currently in the public eye could theoretically burst onto the scene suddenly and crush anyone close to the Trudeau cabinet, since organizing skills would be the dominant factor.
For the next 8 years, the stars are not aligned in favour of preserving the careers of the LPC's current crop of leadership candidates.
Oracle of Dephi
I think a lot can happen to Conservative popularity once they're forced to start dealing with Canada's problems instead of complaining about them.
50 % chance the Conservative popularity will then go up.
It's the rare government that's more popular five years after taking office than the day after taking office.
Ford in Ontario was.
Can you appreciate why an anecdote is an odd choice of response to a statistical statement?
Another important difference is that the Democrats are nowhere near the broad disapproval of the current federal Liberal government. The US electorate is sharply polarized, which tends to cap popular support for any presidential candidate or president around 50%. However, the generic party ballot is still evenly split. In contrast, the Liberals have hemorrhaged support in polls from ~40% in 2015 and now approaching 20%, almost entirely to the gain of the Conservatives as NDP support has held relatively constant over time. The Democrats' challenge was monocausal: Biden was too old for the electorate to accept, but having removed that problem, support has rebounded.
Interesting analysis, if one is certain (and I'm not) that:
- the electoral process has not been (or will be) increasingly corrupted by foreign and domestic interference favouring the incumbents; and
- the media has not been (or will be) increasingly corrupted by foreign interference and domestic taxpayer funding, and muzzled by several pieces of legislation passed since 2015.
The cycle you describe is strong. Trudeau the Elder resisted that cycle better than anyone. For the sake of our country, I certainly hope you are correct that Trudeau the Younger will succumb to the cycle as well (and hopefully with him the ridiculous NDP leader).
I'm not confident that PP is any knight in shining armour; in fact, I'm quite concerned with how juvenile some of his comms are. I realize that's his team, not PP himself, but he has to authorize / scrutinize it.
Some of the reporting Sam Cooper is doing on the lengths the CCP and others will go to in order to thwart a candidate they don't want to win is highly concerning, and includes entrapment, intimidation of violence to candidates and their families, and (most concerningly) actual violence if the first two fail.
Canada may be small potatoes on the world stage in terms of influence, but (as I keep insisting) Canada's almost unimaginable resource wealth and proximity to the USA are what make us more important and attractive to world powers than anything we do politically. That is why we have foreign interference - it's all about controlling Canada's marketable resources of oil, gas, minerals, timber, arable land for agriculture, fresh water, and militarily strategic geography.
The reality is, if we are to be a puppet on a string of a country's foreign interference, would Canada rather dance to the USA or China as puppetmaster? The lesser of those two evils appears obvious.
Canada only exists as a concept because the US allows it and it is convenient for them.
Perhaps not originally, as the US was not the world power it is today.
Since WWII that is likely correct.
Not originally, but for most of Canada's history definitely.
Interesting article, but you could cut out the pop-culture-like analogy to US politics and not lose any idea of value.
Kamala agent of change? Gimme a break. She's got a stained record as a DA (setting record harsh sentences for victimless crimes) and reeks of the stench of the diversity hire. She's been explicitly picked by Biden because she's a black (or Indian - take your pick) woman and now they can't get rid of her because that would be a tacit admission that the DIE religion has no teeth and produces the opposite of what it intends to do.
In short? Business as usual for the Dems with a mainstream candidate foisted upon the electorate without even a single vote in her favour (Remember she couldn't hack it past Iowa in 2020?).
As for Trump, what proof do you have that he "has tried to overturn American democracy"? Asking for a friend...
Proof? I think trying to overturn the results from the 2020 election by: having his sycophants claim MASSIVE voter fraud (disproven at every turn), placing an extortionate call to Georgia "just find me eleven thousand votes", encouraging "patriots" to attack Congress, suggesting the constitution could be ignored because of his fake claim of voter fraud. Is that enough?
The absence of evidence of voter fraud isn't evidence of absence. The US voting system is rife with potential for fraud (no ID required, no paper ballots and eminently hackable voting machines) and is entirely un-auditable. So his claim of fraud, while unproven in courts, doesn't mean it didn't happen. We may never know on this one.
If you still believe in the many-times debunked January 6 insurrection hoax, then you probably spend too much time reading corporate media. Like cigarettes, it's a poison
and ain't good for your health.
Plus, none of the things you cite in example are proof of an attempt at overturning democracy. Questionable actions and motives, perhaps, but the Dems have resorted to similar tactics in the past (remember the 2000 election?) and nobody accused them of attempting to overturn the elections.
Everything the libs accuse Trump of doing is projection and misdirection to distract our attention away from the fact they do the same of what he's accused of, or worse.
What of the fact that Harris has been crowned the presumptive nominee without having a single ballot cast in her favour? Is that your beloved democracy at work? Did you call them out on their shit?
I simply have zero energy to reply to any post which starts with "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence". Have a nice day
Unlike Trump, Kamala Harris actually *has* won the popular vote in an election and has won multiple elections. Republican talking points about her being a "diversity hire" are obviously self-projections of their own racism.
"So his claim of fraud, while unproven in courts"
It's not merely "unproven in courts", it's as made up and entirely unsupported by evidence as any fiction novel. The 2020 election wasn't magically rife with unprecedented with fraud just because Trump's sore ego wishes it was.
You implicitly admit yourself that there was no *legal* uncertainty over the legitimacy of Joe Biden's victory certification on January 6th. As such, there was no reason *at all* for Trump to organize a massive crowd in Capitol Hill for that day, other than that he wanted the crowd to force the law to be usurped through intimidation and violence. It's not a matter of trusting "corporate media", it's a matter of applying the least common sense to conclude that violence was *the whole point* of the crowd.
Your popular vote argument is a straw man, I only ever spoke about potential fraud and how likely it was to have happened given the elections rules in force in the US, so please refrain from using logical fallacies.
As for the January 6th hoax, that's been debunked a million times and if you read the transcript of Trump speech, he was calling for a peaceful protest, which is perfectly legal. The trespassing on the capitol was never sanctioned by him
If you still believe that a few dozen wackos with funny hats and baseball bats, who took it upon themselves to get into the building were about to overturn the US gov by trespassing into the Capitol, I'm afraid you have a mistaken conception of how coups work. Even if they managed to take over the building, then what? You think they would have magically been handed the keys to the castle???
You're implicitly leaping from "there was potential for fraud" to "there is evidence of fraud" to "there is evidence of fraud specifically and systematically undermining Trump's campaign". Unfortunately, that is not how logic works!
"if you read the transcript of Trump speech, he was calling for a peaceful protest, which is perfectly legal."
You're basically saying that the point of the protest was for the world's greatest narcissist in history to peacefully send a message to legislators that they should kindly subordinate the election and peacefully steal the outcome to favour their cult leader. How did I get the idea that someone so profoundly spoiled, disrespectful of democracy and the rule of law could be so crude as to imply that violence is justified to achieve his goals?
"Even if they managed to take over the building, then what? You think they would have magically been handed the keys to the castle???"
They were planning to use threat of violence against Vice-President Mike Pence to intimidate him into not completing his constitutional duty to certify the election result. Not anything particularly thoughtful or clever.
I'm always game for a good argument, but you're making one bad faith argument after another and twisting my words to suit your line of reasoning.
Please read my words again and tell where I've written any of the things you think I have.
Why don’t you show your work and explain how that is so?
The word salad from your last comment leaves me stumped, I wouldn’t know how to respond to it if I wanted to.
Cycle? I only care about the last spin cycle, when the buzzer rings and we toss the meritless Liberals and their derelict captain into the dryer.
God help their successors.
You are too kind. Not into the dryer. Into the garburator.
Wow this is great. No need for campaigns or votes or even parties and candidates. “The cycle” takes care of everything in its due time
Kind of like buying a new car every five years regardless of the mileage and whether or not you need one.
I am of the opinion that, barring a major bungle by the CPC, there is not much the Liberals can do to win another mandate. Even their evergreen social wedge issues are falling flat and communicating desperation. And they have an abysmal war chest, meaning they won't run paid media campaigns pre-writ. That being said, I could see a world in which the Liberal-NDP CASA drags this parliament out to its constitutional limit of October 2026. I am sure they could try to market the various reasons why they think this is a good idea, and it would give the Liberals time to pick a new leader. Jagmeet Singh either has to distance himself now (likely a futile exercise), or commit to his 'balance-of-power' schtick and cross his fingers. In either case, I'm not sure it will be of consequence to NDP success whether the next election is in '25 or '26 and this would give them more time to try and convince Canadians the most recent social spending programs are because of their sway with the government.
Any thoughts from others out there?
Governments that run out the calendar on their mandate hoping for a reversal in their fortunes usually just run themselves into the ground. That was the fate of the BC NDP in 2001, where they were reduced to 2 seats and post official party status, and also the federal Progressive Conservatives in 1993. Those governments are like gamblers on a losing streak. Instead of quitting to limit their losses, they blow everything trying to turn it around.
Generally agree. For the NDP, they're stuck with their dance partner. They'd only pull the the trigger on a confidence vote if they were ahead in the polls and could become official opposition; but because they're so closely tied to the Liberals, they aren't attracting any of the Change vote.
I think you're correctly describing the NDP's thinking, but it's that logic that proves their political incompetence. What they *need* is to be taken seriously in the future by a party reliant on their support to remain in government, and to accomplish that they needed to prove that they're willing to withdraw that support if promises are broken. Their failure to do so is what's going to destroy them, not bringing down the Liberals and keeping roughly the same number of seats.
Hhhmmm....... "its constitutional limit of October 2026". Yes, I will not scoff at them trying for that. I actually do expect some foul tricks from them, that means from Troodas, to extend their reign. On the other hand, should they try that, they could end up facing an entirely "unconstitutional" popular revolt. Even from this docile, passive, apathetic electorate.
I accept the metaphor but aren't we still in year 9?
I don't expect the Liberals will likely have party status after the next election. Their complete and total failure in Jasper will be a dagger in their side through much of the fall session, as well as so many other failures. It's far to late to save the ship; he's the EJ Smith of politics.
4 years after that, things will be far worse. if some actual leadership doesn't emerge in Canada, and really soon, we're screwed. There appears to be no one in the bullpen, much less the minors. I used to be an optimist.
I suspect the Liberals' Hail Mary hope is that if Trump is elected in November, they'll be able to use Canadian distaste for Trump and his right wing populism to hold back a Conservative wave. I'd be surprised if such a thing would actually prevent a Liberal loss, but certainly it could make the difference between a Liberal wipe-out and holding onto their strongholds in Toronto and Montreal. Particularly egregious Trump behavior and a poorly run Conservative campaign might even hold the Conservatives to a minority.
If Trump is elected in November, Canada is so screwed it won't matter who we put in office; they'll do what they're told or suffer the economic consequences. Dictators with massive economic power don't negotiate with small players.
I suspect worse: that the Liberals are hoping/wanting a Trump win to clearcut a possible path to victory thru (further) fear-mongering.
Not sure I agree with much of this. Feels kind of like saying there was nothing Trudeau (or Chretien/Martin, Harper, Mulroney or McGuinty) could do and that this is just his time being up due to some magical ten years. I don’t disagree that parties tend to run out of ideas over a period of tenish years and start to seem stale, but you’re projecting a lot off of small sample size and each individual instance had some very clear specifics as to why time ended up being up for these guys.