It’s a secret of electoral politics that you spend the first half clamouring for “fully-costed platforms” (biggest bullshit expression ever invented) and shaming every party that doesn’t have one, only to devote the remainder of the campaign to not reading and otherwise ignoring said platforms.
And you wonder why I’m so cynical.
Another rule of electoral politics is that leaders who are ahead or feel especially confident spend time in unlikely ridings whereas leaders who are trying to save the furniture focus on their strongholds. The fact that both Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre spent significant time in Calgary this past week should tell you all you need to know about their internal polling.
Also noting that Carney and the NDP's Jagmeet Singh were both campaigning in Saskatoon this week. This may not mean as much as Calgary, unless it does. The people who know won't say, which leaves those of us who don't know with the ability to babble endlessly about internal polling we don't see.
Somehow I get paid to do this.
A few more things of note this week: I wrote about my friend Bruce Fanjoy's campaign to snatch Poilievre's seat in Carleton (and the extraordinarily anti-useful and stupid campaign to flood the ballot with nearly 100 fake candidates) in the Ottawa Citizen. I’m also pleased to have helped put together a fantastic panel on the Canadian election for the BBC World Questions program.
The other is Kory Teneycke's jolly eviscerating of the Conservative crew around Poilievre, accusing them of "campaign malpractice” in this podcast (jump to the 31:00 mark to get there without the long wind-up).
As I wrote elsewhere, I've had my issues with Teneycke but on this he's absolutely right that the CPC should have seen the Trump thing coming many months ago. Nobody knew precisely what form the troubles would take. But anyone with two functioning brain cells had to know Trump would behave like himself. And while I think they're wrong about most everything, the people who run Poilievre's campaign are not stupid. They're unbelievably dogmatic and stubborn, but not dumb. Which is why so many people in the Conservative camp are thanking Teneycke for calling them out.
As I said in the video above, for me the most serious problem with the CPC campaign is that it still seems primarily fuelled by resentment against Justin Trudeau. Which is a major turn-off for most normal voters who realize that 1) Trudeau is no longer in the picture and 2) the world has changed and we can't afford to run a campaign on past grievances in the face of existential threats.
Next week? Debates!
