Jenni’s gone!
My guess is, she sees that Poilievre’s moment has passed and won’t come back.
It’s a thing, I swear, every time I write something excoriating Pierre Poilievre, his supporters, all seven of them, come out to bitch, moan and complain that I’m nowhere near as mean to the other guy. On top of being annoying and predictable, it’s a clear sign they’re not at all in learning mode and that in turn explains why they’re such losers.
They’re not wrong, mind you, but there are reasons for that. Chief among them is that the other guy, for all his faults, isn’t a conspicuous dick who’s always trying to find ways to insult other people. So he gets treated differently.
Criticisms are starting to come out from the conservative side saying the prime minister is letting everyone down and should resign. That he’s failing to accomplish what he set out to do, what he promised during the election and therefore needs to be replaced. That may be a dangerous game to play.
It’s true that the Carney administration hasn’t secured the deal they gave everyone the impression they could get. Now here’s the question for you political strategists: Does it make sense to start attacking Carney now for having shoved his elbows back down, or will it make the conservatives look like vultures?
I said a few days ago that most reasonable people see and understand that dealing with Donald Trump is… not easy. Maybe not even doable. Deal or no deal, he does whatever the fuck he wants, including changing his mind every time his blood sugar crashes. That’s not Carney’s fault. Is there a way around that? Is there an argument to be made that the prime minister isn’t successful because he’s neglecting something obvious that he could do but isn’t doing?
Does anyone think Pierre Poilievre would do better? On what grounds?
See, that’s what I’ll never get about this bunch of Tories. They have no strategic sense. All they do is attack, attack, attack. A smart strategist right now would say, Look, there’s no way anyone representing Canada right now can win against Trump. Let Carney fail and let’s prepare so that when the time is right we can show everyone that we’re the perfect alternative to Carney’s tried-and-failed approach. And if Carney doesn’t fail on the Trump file, keep chipping away at cost-of-living issues where nothing is happening. Housing, unemployment, inflation — there’s a lot of potential voters to gain there.
Instead, Pierre Poilievre is saying we need to build not one but two pipelines right this minute, even if people chain themselves to trees. I don’t know where in Canada this has the support of a majority of voters but I highly doubt it’s in areas that aren’t already voting blue.
It makes no sense. The job of the opposition is to oppose, but why not pick subjects where Carney is vulnerable instead of self-radicalizing the party to such extremes that accessible voters run in the other direction?
Maybe the reason for the weird strategy and worse tactics is the departure (announced very softly on a podcast) of Jenni Byrne, Poilievre’s close and long-term ally. She’s the one who kept him on cost-of-living issues during the campaign, when everyone was yelling at her to pivot to Trump. Now that she’s gone, Poilievre can’t figure out how to get off Trump (where he can’t win) and get back to bread-and-butter issues, where he has a chance.
If I had to guess, I’d say Poilievre is mad that everyone who’s anyone in his party sees the writing on the wall. His moment has come and gone. His chances of becoming prime minister melted when Justin Trudeau left. He won’t have a second chance, no matter what happens in that Alberta by-election. He knows he’s running out of runway and he’s upset. Unfortunately for him, anger and resentment aren’t good counsel, especially not when the moment calls for cold calculations of the Machiavellian kind.
The apple never crumbles far from the tree, I guess.
In completely different news, I wrote about our cracked sidewalks and Labubus here, which reminds me to talk to you about my idea of producing a documentary on same, entitled “Life in the Cracks.” Wouldn’t that be a doozy?