I am reminded of a story I once read about Emperor Napoleon, who was considering whether to promote one of his generals to the rank of Marshal and he asked his advisors whether the general had the qualities to be a Marshal. "He is brave as a lion," said one advisor. "He's very smart", said another, "and rarely makes mistakes." A third pointed to his charisma and said that his troops adored him.
"Yes, yes," said the Emperor impatiently. "That's all very well, but is he LUCKY?"
Doug Ford may be a lot of things, but he isn't an ideologue. One of The Line editors, I think, nailed it when they said that he isn't a politician, he's a salesman -- one that wants to do whatever deal is in front of him.
That is reflected in the flip-flops in policy as he seems to follow public opinion. Sometimes it felt like Ontario crowdsourced our COVID response in slow motion. The government would do a thing. Polling would show the public hated it; experts would explain why it was a terrible idea. A week or two later, the government would flip flop, repeating the process until things got better and/or public opinion settled down. Ideologues don't do that.
It's a pretty inefficient way to govern. Moreover, this Ontarian is left with a strong sense that certain groups (donors, big companies with good GR teams) tend to get a lot more "deals" than anybody else. It's probably why Costco and Walmart seemed to be impacted the least by pandemic restrictions while Mom-and-Pop shops had to figure out curbside service. It's probably why we're getting a new highway that nobody except a small group of developers (and probably construction companies) want. I'd call it corrupt, except I honestly think it's just Doug trying to get a deal -- running Ontario like its a super-sized label company.
What's significant about this election is that the PCs took ridings from the NDP, which doesn't happen very often in Ontario and points to a real shift as places where skilled trades or manufacturing are important start to look at the PCs. They earned that shift, it's no fluke. The labour minister has worked hard over a number of years on programs to promote skilled trades and built real relationships. A lot might be odd about this election, but those wins were the result of some hard work and good strategy. We'll see if they can hold those ridings.
Covid isn't over until discrimination against unvaccinated people ends entirely. Ontario could easily protect its citizens from federal persecution (eg travel bans, which are very much still real) simply by protecting medical privacy and refusing to issue public secure vaccination certificates. Or by issuing them to everyone who wants one, regardless of their medical records. Or by simply fining companies who discriminate, as Florida does, federally regulated or not.
Covid wasn't a factor in this election because, instead of calling out the Conservatives on their extensive violations of our Charter rights for useless Covid theatre policies, the main opposition parties criticized them for not doing more harm, and in fact promised to do more harm themselves if they got the chance.
But really, was Covid not a factor? New Blue and Ontario, which are pretty much Covid anti-narrative parties, got nearly as many votes as the Greens, despite being brand new. Sure, this didn't change the result (partly because many people who objected to our Covid rights violations and discrimination stuck with Ford as the best of a bad lot), but there have been many elections where a 4-5% swing would make a difference.
So good. Especially the observation on the conservative strategic case that the left is imploding due to its shift from class-based politics to a bourgeois posturing on race and gender, promoted in lifeless, boilerplate language that nobody actually speaks in regular conversation. (Okay, so I embellish.) I'm on the left and this drives me bananas.
Also, excellent observations about Twitter, and, well, everything. This surely will put to rest any suggestion that The Line is anything other than common sense centrist. (Though, naturally, that's my bias.)
"Better the devil you know than the one you don't". The vacuum of leadership in Ontario could Hoover all the water out of the oceans. All the choices were terrible, and people simply couldn't find enough nose plugs to protect themselves in the voting booth. The turnout is an Ontario disgrace really. Elections should still matter....in the US they soon won't. I wonder how we'll feel when that comes here. But back to the topic, Ontario gets a new $10 billion highway it doesn't really need, and Doug's friends with real estate get a boatload of tax dollars. There is no plan, no fiscal responsibility, no vision, and really, very little hope for Ontario in the future...I suspect the reality being they don't know where to start to solve the problems. You can't get elected telling the truth....so say nothing, and hope for the best. It worked great for Doug....twice. I wonder who the new faces will be next time. Hopefully, they come with a vision and no baggage.
This must be Jen Gerson: "Writing critically about the Liberal campaign today feels a little bit like flogging a dead horse, and then shooting it a bunch of times, and then setting it on fire, and then hunting down all of its little horsey relatives and shooting all of them too. And then peeing on them."
I think the editors missed an aspect upon which Dwight Duncan remarked during the TVO broadcast: the Trudeau effect. Duncan said that a sizeable percentage of the people he met at doors (in Windsor, which is not exactly a conservative hotbed) cited exasperation with Trudeau as the reason they'd vote for Ford. The stink of the federal Liberal brand seems to be rubbing off on their provincial counterparts. That ought to have been worth a mention in this postmortem.
Excellent as ever - I would only like to add one thought. Your comment here:
>>
And this is the real trap of the website. Twitter gives people the illusion of social or political engagement, but not the reality of the thing. It gives people the high of activism without the work or the results. Social media has created a simulacrum of the real world, one that sucks real energy, time and emotional investment, and redirects those finite resources toward its own parasitic advancement.
>>
Reminded me of one of the best definitions of pornography: "The high without the work or the results."
As true for cake decorating shows as for twitter debates about [pick your issue].
I think the exact quote is Dave Chappelle's: "Twitter is not a real place." As a recovering economist, I share joint ownership in "That's not how this works. That's not how anything works!" But nobody has believed me since 2008.
Some painful truth-telling to all sides in this one, for which much applause is due. Best "hot take" I've read today.
However he won, I take great pride in a country where this can happen, and only those twitting fringers think that doom is at hand. A Canadian election should steer the ship of state another five points to the right or left, not take it through a 180. I think that Ford gets that, at least. (I'm clinging, no-doubt bitterly, to the belief that Ford made himself acceptable by greatly moderating what "Doug Ford" meant to people.)
In recent elections, interior BC ridings acquired a new Conservative MP, though over 60% of the votes went to parties to their left. In the States, this would be proof that the left-side parties must all unite and not split the Left Vote, not let the dreaded Right have a win. In Canada, there's just not enough dread and hate of the other side.
It is hard to read an analysis of the Ontario election without reference to Proportional Representation. Most Ontarians voted AGAINST Ford and would have preferred a coalition of the Left like we have Federally. Our system makes Ford the winner but he wouldn't be in power in most democracies. We need long-term policies and a more cooperative and collaborative leadership to represent the public. Honest question: how low does voter turnout have to go before we decide we need to tweak something in order to make people believe in politics again?
Kudos to The Editor on this “Special Dispatch”.I laughed, I cried, my spirits rose. Truly an entertaining and educational piece of writing. Well worth the “cost of admission”. Thank you.
The long tail story here is that the Ontario Liberals are quickly becoming as marginal a provincial party in Ontario as they are in the Prairies. The NDP vs everyone who hate the NDP polarity is moving east.
Ontario does not need two, or three, left wing parties (counting the Green Zealots). The Ontario Liberal Party could dissolve tomorrow and the Left would still have ample representation in the NDP. The rally cry every four years should be “Remember McGuinty and Wynne”, that should about do it for a generation.
I am reminded of a story I once read about Emperor Napoleon, who was considering whether to promote one of his generals to the rank of Marshal and he asked his advisors whether the general had the qualities to be a Marshal. "He is brave as a lion," said one advisor. "He's very smart", said another, "and rarely makes mistakes." A third pointed to his charisma and said that his troops adored him.
"Yes, yes," said the Emperor impatiently. "That's all very well, but is he LUCKY?"
Doug Ford may be a lot of things, but he isn't an ideologue. One of The Line editors, I think, nailed it when they said that he isn't a politician, he's a salesman -- one that wants to do whatever deal is in front of him.
That is reflected in the flip-flops in policy as he seems to follow public opinion. Sometimes it felt like Ontario crowdsourced our COVID response in slow motion. The government would do a thing. Polling would show the public hated it; experts would explain why it was a terrible idea. A week or two later, the government would flip flop, repeating the process until things got better and/or public opinion settled down. Ideologues don't do that.
It's a pretty inefficient way to govern. Moreover, this Ontarian is left with a strong sense that certain groups (donors, big companies with good GR teams) tend to get a lot more "deals" than anybody else. It's probably why Costco and Walmart seemed to be impacted the least by pandemic restrictions while Mom-and-Pop shops had to figure out curbside service. It's probably why we're getting a new highway that nobody except a small group of developers (and probably construction companies) want. I'd call it corrupt, except I honestly think it's just Doug trying to get a deal -- running Ontario like its a super-sized label company.
What's significant about this election is that the PCs took ridings from the NDP, which doesn't happen very often in Ontario and points to a real shift as places where skilled trades or manufacturing are important start to look at the PCs. They earned that shift, it's no fluke. The labour minister has worked hard over a number of years on programs to promote skilled trades and built real relationships. A lot might be odd about this election, but those wins were the result of some hard work and good strategy. We'll see if they can hold those ridings.
Covid isn't over until discrimination against unvaccinated people ends entirely. Ontario could easily protect its citizens from federal persecution (eg travel bans, which are very much still real) simply by protecting medical privacy and refusing to issue public secure vaccination certificates. Or by issuing them to everyone who wants one, regardless of their medical records. Or by simply fining companies who discriminate, as Florida does, federally regulated or not.
Covid wasn't a factor in this election because, instead of calling out the Conservatives on their extensive violations of our Charter rights for useless Covid theatre policies, the main opposition parties criticized them for not doing more harm, and in fact promised to do more harm themselves if they got the chance.
But really, was Covid not a factor? New Blue and Ontario, which are pretty much Covid anti-narrative parties, got nearly as many votes as the Greens, despite being brand new. Sure, this didn't change the result (partly because many people who objected to our Covid rights violations and discrimination stuck with Ford as the best of a bad lot), but there have been many elections where a 4-5% swing would make a difference.
So good. Especially the observation on the conservative strategic case that the left is imploding due to its shift from class-based politics to a bourgeois posturing on race and gender, promoted in lifeless, boilerplate language that nobody actually speaks in regular conversation. (Okay, so I embellish.) I'm on the left and this drives me bananas.
Also, excellent observations about Twitter, and, well, everything. This surely will put to rest any suggestion that The Line is anything other than common sense centrist. (Though, naturally, that's my bias.)
"Better the devil you know than the one you don't". The vacuum of leadership in Ontario could Hoover all the water out of the oceans. All the choices were terrible, and people simply couldn't find enough nose plugs to protect themselves in the voting booth. The turnout is an Ontario disgrace really. Elections should still matter....in the US they soon won't. I wonder how we'll feel when that comes here. But back to the topic, Ontario gets a new $10 billion highway it doesn't really need, and Doug's friends with real estate get a boatload of tax dollars. There is no plan, no fiscal responsibility, no vision, and really, very little hope for Ontario in the future...I suspect the reality being they don't know where to start to solve the problems. You can't get elected telling the truth....so say nothing, and hope for the best. It worked great for Doug....twice. I wonder who the new faces will be next time. Hopefully, they come with a vision and no baggage.
This must be Jen Gerson: "Writing critically about the Liberal campaign today feels a little bit like flogging a dead horse, and then shooting it a bunch of times, and then setting it on fire, and then hunting down all of its little horsey relatives and shooting all of them too. And then peeing on them."
I love the gersonisims!
I think the editors missed an aspect upon which Dwight Duncan remarked during the TVO broadcast: the Trudeau effect. Duncan said that a sizeable percentage of the people he met at doors (in Windsor, which is not exactly a conservative hotbed) cited exasperation with Trudeau as the reason they'd vote for Ford. The stink of the federal Liberal brand seems to be rubbing off on their provincial counterparts. That ought to have been worth a mention in this postmortem.
Excellent as ever - I would only like to add one thought. Your comment here:
>>
And this is the real trap of the website. Twitter gives people the illusion of social or political engagement, but not the reality of the thing. It gives people the high of activism without the work or the results. Social media has created a simulacrum of the real world, one that sucks real energy, time and emotional investment, and redirects those finite resources toward its own parasitic advancement.
>>
Reminded me of one of the best definitions of pornography: "The high without the work or the results."
As true for cake decorating shows as for twitter debates about [pick your issue].
I think the exact quote is Dave Chappelle's: "Twitter is not a real place." As a recovering economist, I share joint ownership in "That's not how this works. That's not how anything works!" But nobody has believed me since 2008.
Some painful truth-telling to all sides in this one, for which much applause is due. Best "hot take" I've read today.
However he won, I take great pride in a country where this can happen, and only those twitting fringers think that doom is at hand. A Canadian election should steer the ship of state another five points to the right or left, not take it through a 180. I think that Ford gets that, at least. (I'm clinging, no-doubt bitterly, to the belief that Ford made himself acceptable by greatly moderating what "Doug Ford" meant to people.)
In recent elections, interior BC ridings acquired a new Conservative MP, though over 60% of the votes went to parties to their left. In the States, this would be proof that the left-side parties must all unite and not split the Left Vote, not let the dreaded Right have a win. In Canada, there's just not enough dread and hate of the other side.
It is hard to read an analysis of the Ontario election without reference to Proportional Representation. Most Ontarians voted AGAINST Ford and would have preferred a coalition of the Left like we have Federally. Our system makes Ford the winner but he wouldn't be in power in most democracies. We need long-term policies and a more cooperative and collaborative leadership to represent the public. Honest question: how low does voter turnout have to go before we decide we need to tweak something in order to make people believe in politics again?
Kudos to The Editor on this “Special Dispatch”.I laughed, I cried, my spirits rose. Truly an entertaining and educational piece of writing. Well worth the “cost of admission”. Thank you.
The long tail story here is that the Ontario Liberals are quickly becoming as marginal a provincial party in Ontario as they are in the Prairies. The NDP vs everyone who hate the NDP polarity is moving east.
These Twitter paragraphs are just fantastic. Bravo.
This fucking thing just goes on and on and on...
Ontario does not need two, or three, left wing parties (counting the Green Zealots). The Ontario Liberal Party could dissolve tomorrow and the Left would still have ample representation in the NDP. The rally cry every four years should be “Remember McGuinty and Wynne”, that should about do it for a generation.