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Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Today's News: Trudeau v Poilievre - is it time to put up or shut up?

Disappointing but not surprising to see the Liberals lose that Quebec by-election yesterday. 
I saw some commentary online to the effect that now Trudeau will just HAVE to resign. 
But today, Trudeau is basically telling Poilievre, Singh and Blanchet "time to put up or shut up":
...the Liberals offered the Conservative Official Opposition the first chance at presenting a motion of non-confidence in the House of Commons, despite the Liberals’ loss Monday of a key south Montreal seat, the Star has learned.
The Conservatives have been informed by the Liberal House leader they will get a day to set the parliamentary agenda on Tuesday, Sept. 24, with a vote the following day, Wednesday, Sept. 25. At that time, Conservatives and their Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has vowed to trigger an election at the earliest opportunity, could call for the defeat of the Trudeau government.
If they succeed in winning the support of the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, a non-confidence motion could pass, triggering the fall of the government. Defiant, Trudeau is willing to test the resolve of the NDP and the Bloc to go to a general election — a prospect which the Bloc has downplayed....the Liberals are confident neither the NDP nor the Bloc want to go to the polls....
This point is also worth noting: From last week, here is a fascinating Toronto Star piece from Colin Horgan, a former speechwriter for Trudeau - Justin Trudeau is trapped in the internet of the past. Is Pierre Poilievre doomed to join him?
... In recent years, the social internet has become more right-wing and, at the same time, darker, angrier, and more confusing. It’s a tone that more Canadians are seeing reflected now in their own political sphere and that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has adopted to boost his populist message. But weeks from the U.S. election, and with a Canadian vote possible at any time, we sit astride a tonal edge — a divide made even more striking during the closing arguments of Tuesday’s presidential debate, when Harris appealed to the “the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the ambitions of the American people” and Donald Trump called the United States “a failing nation … in serious decline” that is “being laughed at all over the world.”
Harris’s capture of the positive online discourse suggests that this upbeat, hopeful vibe — the likes of which we haven’t seen online in a decade — might once again be ascendant, and not just in the U.S. If it bears out, it could mean Poilievre’s online gambit, and his entire messaging strategy, is riskier than it looks...
...The Conservative leader is the first politician in Canada to successfully harness the attitude of the contemporary internet right. Since taking the helm as head of the official opposition, he has wantonly but effectively pushed the limits of credulity in his social posts, posting misleading crime figures, declaring Canada “broken”, and sneering at the media. Even his promises of larger paycheques and easier home ownership come in the same aggressive tone.
...He looks and sounds like a YouTube bro selling drop-shipping schemes from a luxury condo — taking no lessons but endlessly teaching them. Yet, it works for him...
Poilievre appears wholly unprepared for any sustained growth in the kind of positivity Harris’s campaign has created....For now, Poilievre is beating Trudeau soundly by most any metric, his boastful bravado matched perfectly with the brash online realm he’s successfully leveraged against Trudeau. But, like Trump, he risks overreaching and being too online for his own good. While it’s unlikely he’d ever admit he could learn something from the prime minister, Trudeau knows a thing or two about vibes, and how they shift. And the vibes will change again — maybe sooner than we think. When they do, Poilievre may get a lesson in the true nature of the online hustle.
Pollster Frank Graves tweets: I don't understand how Poilievre thinks Canada should consider him as qualified to be Prime Minister when he cannot get a security clearance. What the hell is he hiding? And is he really such a small, mean little man that he thinks his hate-on for the CBC justifies his refusal to congratulate Canadian athletes who won medals and performed their best at the Olympics? Petulant, angry, lying, toxic - yeah, this is what Canadians want in a Prime Minister? Tweet from John Berlinsky:
What does it mean when the most toxic politician in the last 50 years is poised to become Prime Minister of Canada? Or that people are "tired" of a government which has done more than any previous one to improve the lives of Canadians and mitigate the impact of wealth inequality while protecting them from damage to their health and economic welfare through a deadly pandemic?
Is it another result of Covid-induced damage - a type of psychological long-Covid? It seems like it may be, given that, like pandemic-induced inflation, these dark and negative sentiments have appeared simultaneously in countries around the world.
The most important question is what will it take for people to snap out of this funk before the damage becomes irreparable?

Moving on to Trudeau, here is Toronto Star Althia Raj Justin Trudeau ‘unleashed’ is the Liberals’ new weapon in their battle with Pierre Poilievre
...This week, the PMO told Liberal MPs that Trudeau will be “unshackled.” They’ll see him speak more authentically, more passionately.
And they have.
On Friday, in an interview with Montreal talk radio station CJAD, Trudeau didn’t mince words when describing his Conservative opponent. “Pierre Poilievre is a liar,” he told host Aaron Rand. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, when asked if he planned to stick around if the Liberals lose Montreal’s byelection. He said he was “happy to pick a fight with (Quebec Premier François) Legault.” And he threw shade at NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh for ripping up their “progressive agreement,” complaining Singh didn’t have the decency to call him “personally” to let him know. “That, that’s telling,” he told Rand.
Then he slammed Singh for “jettisoning” the environment — a reference to the NDP appearing to walk away from its support for consumer carbon pricing. “He doesn’t have the foggiest idea of how to actually protect people, grow the economy and fight climate change at the same time. He never has,” Trudeau said
...Much of the Liberals’ summer caucus retreat in Nanaimo was centred on a plan — or perhaps more accurately, the concepts of a plan — to turn things around.
The prime minister acknowledged to his MPs there that he knows people don’t like him and are tired of him.
... MPs were told they should get used to repeating ad nauseam government talking points about what the Liberals had accomplished — on child care, dental care, pharmacare. They were told they needed to do a better job sharing party graphics on social media. Canadians needed to be made aware of what the government had done — only then, they argued, could the Liberals successfully prosecute the case that Poilievre’s Conservatives would take those things away. “Laying down the tracks,” was how one adviser described it.
...perhaps the most telling change, according to several MPs, was when a PMO official told the caucus that it was a “mistake” for the U.S. Democrats to follow former first lady Michelle Obama’s advice of “When they go low, we go high.” Instead, Liberal MPs should “go lower” said one MP, or “prepare to fight back,” said another.
“The message was, ‘It’s OK to be a little bit more aggressive in the attacks in question period or on social media,” said a third MP. The Liberals appear to believe they must fight fire with fire. The Conservatives’ stunts in question period and often inflammatory questions during committee meetings are not only driving social media engagement, the Grits complain, but also traditional media coverage....

And finally, on a side note, I hadn't seen this great photo before, from Halloween 2023:
at

4 comments:

  1. e.a.f.1:38 am

    It is doubtful either party will push and force an election. PP is grandstanding to what end, who knows. It maybe if the Liberals are forced into an early election it could impact B.C. which is headed into a provincial election. It is difficult for some parties to fight a provincial and federal election around the same time. Not only will there not be enough staff, but money would be in short supply.
    Trudeau with the support of the NDP has accomplished quite a bit, more than the Cons did with Harper and PP. Parents now receive cash from the feds, if they qualify and a lot of people need it. Progress has been made on a dental plan, During COVID the federal government issued 500K cheques within 36 hours on a 48 yr old computer. etc. It was enough to keep people afloat. Small business also had programs available and it helped them.

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  2. Cap8:41 am

    Sorry, being better at pitching Lib achievements and attacking PP ain't gonna do it. Nor is unleashing the inner Justin sunny ways. After almost 10 years, people are tired of JT, none more so than the party faithful.

    The Libs lost the two recent by-elections because their own supporters stayed home. Yes, the Cons had a gain of 14% in the Toronto riding of St Paul's, but the Libs would still have won easily had they got the 26,000 votes they did in 2021. Instead, Lib votes collapsed to 15,000, giving the Cons a 600 vote win. The same thing happened in the Montreal stronghold of LaSalle-Emard-Verdun, where the Bloc eked out a 250 vote win after Lib votes collapsed from 20,000 in 2021 to 8,700.

    PP is a little shit, and his doom and gloom message isn't winning over significant numbers. But the Cons know the Libs lose when their voters stay home. After more than a decade as party leader, the magic's gone and JT no longer excites people to vote Lib. It's that simple.

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  3. Cathie from Canada10:25 am

    I'm afraid so - it's a "what have you done for me lately?" syndrome too.
    The thing is, Poilievre will be a stunningly bad PM, dismantling every single thing Trudeau did, regardless of whether people need it. He seems to just hate everything.

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  4. Anonymous3:06 am

    Why do I feel like I'm the only who's noticed that PP's 'Axe the Tax' logo is the Confederate flag merged with X, the cesspool social platform.

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