Roundup: Trudeau wins today; Scrimshaw writes a Trudeau speech; Rothkopf on the stunning Harris campaign

Unsurprising that Trudeau won the non-confidence vote. Parliamentary reporter Dale Smith describes the House of Commons today: 

Overall, the day started out stupid, and got progressively worse as it went on.

I expect we'll see more of these days this fall!

I saw a couple of postscripts to the Colbert interview:

🚨"Perhaps he'd be happier if I accepted all expenses paid trip to Florida to appear at an anti-abortion church...because that's what he @PierrePoilievre allows of his own members...he cannot protect women's rights from the members of his own caucus!" #PierrePoilievreisLying pic.twitter.com/ECMMGMXLjB

— Carleton Deserves Better (@Carleton4Change) September 25, 2024

And I thought this was pretty good, too:

Thoughtful piece. pic.twitter.com/Dth5qvESO7

— David Hamer 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇨🇦 (@DavidHamer_1951) September 25, 2024

Moving on, this is a great article by Evan Scrimshaw: The Speech Trudeau Should Give How To Reset The Fight Against Poilievre

... No governments are perfect, and given the challenges of the last five years, even a perfect government would not be enough. But elections are not merely contests about a government, but a choice. At the next federal election, whenever it is, there will be a choice, a stark one, between a government that believes that government can be good and helpful to its citizens and one that believes that the best government is one that gets out of the way and lets corporate interests trample over the wellbeing of Canadians.

We have a choice between a Prime Minister who thinks climate change is a real and active threat to this country and someone who wants to pretend that if we just don’t do anything about it it’ll go away. We have a choice between a Prime Minister who will fight for the poorest and those who need government the most to get more from government, be it from cheaper child care, finally getting access to dental care and coverage of prescriptions, and an Opposition leader who can’t answer whether they would keep a program that’s let half a million Canadian seniors get dental care already.

Moreso than just a choice between leaders, we have to make a choice about who we are. We have a Conservative Premier who is telling people on disability supports to get off their ass and work. We have a Conservative leader in BC who thinks hardworking doctors should be fired for telling the truth that vaccines are effective but who listens to Jordan Peterson’s quackery. We have Premiers wanting to make it illegal for cities to deal directly with the federal government, because apparently the most pressing concern for Conservatives is making sure their cities can’t make their residents lives better with our help.

Pierre Poilievre will not stand up to these Premiers. Poilievre and his Conservatives won’t criticize the biggest gatekeeper stopping meaningful housing reform in Doug Ford, because their commitment to good policy only extends as far as they can criticize and play political games. They would rather attack Stephen Harper’s Governor General than get a security clearance and actually read what our intelligence agencies have said about foreign interference in our democracy. They would rather attack Stephen Harper’s Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney instead of putting forward any ideas to grow the economy other than taking money from the poorest by taking the carbon tax rebates away.

The Conservatives are good at identifying ways to whip up anger and good at identifying snappy one liners that play well to their base, but they can’t answer basic questions about a Conservative government would look like. They can’t because they know if they admit they’d cut our accomplishments in dental care and Pharmacare and child care they’d get laughed out of the room by Canadians. But they also can’t ever admit we have done anything right, because to them political expediency stands above everything - including, plainly, the truth...

Finally, here is a perceptive piece by David Rothkopf on Harris: Revealed: The Real Shocker About the Harris Campaign No one expected it!

...I will tell you one thing about this campaign that is a real shocker, even to me. It is the degree to which she has conducted this campaign on her own terms, the degree to which it has decidedly been her and not Trump and not the titanic egos of the media world or money grubbing political consultants who has from the moment she entered the race determined what it would be about....

For all the disgruntled media superstars who are bent out of shape that Kamala Harris is not dancing to their dance, I say, shhhh. Watch, listen and learn. She is speaking to the press plenty. She has plenty to say. But she is doing so in ways that allow her to address the real core issues of this campaign. She will not be baited into sessions in which all she hears are recycled Trump oppo translated into gotcha questions to burnish a multimillionaire reporter’s career bonafides and earn them a backslap or two at the next Georgetown cocktail party. ...

from how she handled her campaign launch, to how she handled taking over and then modifying her campaign team, to how she took control of the message and the strategy of the campaign, to how she conducted herself at rallies, to how she picked her VP, to how she orchestrated and basked in the warm light of the Democratic National Convention, to how she eviscerated Trump in the debate, to how she has engineered a remarkable turn around so far (knock wood, spit, spit) in the polls, to where she has engineered that turn around gaining not just in likability but in a key demographics and around issues like…wait for it…the economy (once thought to be a strong suit of her opponent even though his record on the economy was really just a big stinky ole dog turd.

At every step of the way during this campaign, she has been its strong center, its engine and the leader all others have followed. It is really quite stunning.