Pierre Poilievre’s Lead Was Supposed to Be Unshakable. It Isn’t | The Walrus
Polls suggest Mark Carney is reshaping the electoral landscape
It's certainly nice to see things swing back, but be wary, the attack ads and rhetoric from the right haven't really ramped up yet, and probably won't until the official leader is chosen. I'm certainly enjoying the good news for now though.
Yeah just saw my first PP ad during the hockey game. He used the word "woke" and showed scary urban violence and homelessness. This is going to resonate with Canadians who watch Fox News. I wish that crap was illegal to show. Had some good friends that I cannot even talk to anymore.
I heard that one. Anyone who uses the word woke seriously is a joke.
At the same time he's exposing a weakness there. Typically hardcore Conservative voters account for about 30% of the Canadian voting population. Those are your guys that watch Fox News. To win, the Cons always have to peel off "moderate" voters in the middle who don't respond well to overtly So-Con stuff. They can be hoodwinked pretty easily; say that you're concerned about fairness in women's sports and you'll have their attention, say that you want to forcibly erase all trans people from existence and they'll reject that in a heartbeat, so Canada's Conservatives are generally pretty canny about how they present themselves in order to fly under their radar. You can see this even recently where Pollievre will quietly signal his So-Con views while refusing to ever actually get pinned down on them. He'll claim that talking about issues like trans rights is a distraction despite the fact that the Conservatives are the only ones that want to make an issue of it, and of course there's been a long standing Conservative party policy against pushing any bills or motions related to abortion because they know how badly it fucks them when they do, even though their hardcore base are gagging for it.
So talking about stuff like "woke" makes it really easy for the Liberals to tie what they're doing back to Trump and the Repubs, at a time when Canadians could not be more united against those things. They're already doing this. My wife has been served Liberal ads showing clips of PP and Trump side by side. The Cons could easily sink their own ship if they keep that up. They're basically writing the Liberals ads for them.
Edit to add; That this strategy is already working for the Liberals can be seen in the fact that even Trudeau is polling better against the Cons than he was. This isn't just about a new leader bump or Carney being popular. The Conservatives hitched their wagon to Trump and now he's dragging them down.
Why are they acting like Mark Carney is the party leader already?
Because all the data shows that he's the obvious choice. He destroys every other option in public polling. It's not even close. The only version of reality where Carney isn't the new leader is one where every single Liberal party member collectively suffers a brain aneurysm before the leadership vote.
Thanks for this post. I haven’t read the Walrus in a while, i will be coming for more.
