Last weekend, I told you all about
my most recent interaction with my shirpa, Dr. Reverend. Most of our conversation was about, as most of them are, Hitler's birthday and the importance thereof. But however much we like to pretend otherwise, there's more to life than Hitler's Birthday (which, by the way, is tomorrow.) There's also Canada's perpetual state of election readiness that no one other myself, the good Doctor and a swarm of journalistic layabout vermin in Ottawa cares about. It is, however, an issue worthy of discussion.
Ever since his election as Liberal leader and single most useless person in Canada in December of 2006, Stephane Dion has been threatening to bring down the Conservative minority government. And just as consistently, whenever given the opportunity to do so, he has abstained on confidence votes.
On the other hand, he's been doing it for six months in a row now. If nothing else, you really have to admire the man's stamina. Not opposing things for that long when you're the leader of the opposition must wind a guy.
The only problem is that Stephane Dion is no Howard Beale. This is a guy who not a year ago, was going to bring down the government over a nasty little war that Canada is engaged in in Afghanistan. Perhaps my American readers have heard of it.
In the end, Dion backed off of that threat just as he's backed off of every threat that he's ever made. He faces the smallest minority government in human history, but he just can't seem to work up the balls to defeat it.
Unfortunately, this is just further proof that Liberal bloggers and their leader are abject fucking idiots. Regardless of how bad the so-called "In and Out" scandal really is, it's about campaign finance, and that's way too inside baseball for your average voter. That's doubly true when the economy is going in the toliet. If I were a Conservative strategist, I'd be begging for the Liberals to force an election over an immigration amendment that no one has ever heard of and and a campaign finance scandal no one cares about.
I'm hoping that Dion continues to be a coward. Not because I like either the Conservatives or the Liberals. I'm just So. Tired. Of. Voting. It seems to be all that I do anymore. And it turns out that democracy makes me sleepy. The time I'm spending in voting booths is time that I could be spending sexually abusing myself.
But when I was talking to my best friend without tits, the RCMP raid hadn't yet occured. Not that I think the raid will make any difference either way. Nobody gave a shit about Bill Clinton's campaign finance follies and doubt that they'll much care about Stephen Harper's.
My spiritual guide has been convinced from almost the first day of the Harper minority government that he was perfectly poised to lose the next election in a big way.
And I'm not altogether sure that he wouldn't have been wrong a year ago. Had Dion forced an election over leaving Khandahar in 2009, the Liberals may very well have won a minority on the issue. Canadians are not a militiristic people, and resent the fact that Afghanistan has essentially become a war between the Taliban and Canada, England and the Dutch. And I'm remain unconvinced that we're not exactly where the Soviet Union was in 1985.
Despite constant infighting and a complete lack of strategic infighting in the Liberal Party, it is entirely possible that Dion could have beaten Harper on Afghanistan. And he pissed the opportunity away.
Ever since then, Dion has threatened to defeat the government in the Commons approximately twice a month, only to retreat and ultimately abstain from any and all Confidence votes that would force an election. Not only has Stephane Dion lost all credibility, the NDP has been, for all intents and purposes, the official opposition for the last six months.
One thing that I keep reminding the good Doctor of is that Harper to lose, there has to actually be someone to beat him. Like him or not (and I'm not sure that he isn't actually some kind of a fucking cyborg), but Stephen Harper is an exceptionally disciplined and resourceful politician. Stephane Dion, on the other hand, is singularly incapable of getting out of bed in the morning without embarrassing himself. While Harper is completely lacking in things like charisma and human emotion, Dion is the single most unnatural politician in human history. The guy makes John Kerry look like FDR.
I thought that Dr. Reverend and I had come to some agreement that Dion is actually Canada's biggest loser and that there's more of a statistical likelihood that I'll be the prime minister of Canada before he is. There's certainly a better chance that I'll be Liberal leader in 12 months.
Apparently, I was wrong.
On Tuesday the good Doctor e-mailed me
this poll, which is unique in its silliness.
The federal Tories have ended their flirtation with majority government territory, according to a new poll that puts them back to the same support levels that gave them their current minority.
The poll shows that, while the Tories appear to be improving their standing with Quebec voters, they have lost support in Ontario since Finance Minister Jim Flaherty launched attacks on the province's Liberal government.
The Strategic Counsel survey, conducted April 10-13, found that 36 per cent of voters would support the Tories if an election were held today, compared with 30 per cent who would back the Liberals.
The results for the two parties match the 2006 vote.
There's one problem with national polls in Canada: they're completely meaningless. Pollsters treat a voter in Saskatchewan as being equal to a voter in Ontario and they aren't. Canadian elections are decided in Ontario, Quebec and - to a much lesser extent - British Columbia. Since over half of Parliament's seats are in Ontario and Quebec, the rest of the country may as well not exist. The Democrats routinely win New York and California, but they don't win the presidency that often. It is mathematically impossible to win a majority government without winning either Ontario or Quebec in a significant way.
What this poll ignores is the fact that the Liberals are in a state of complete collapse in Quebec and Dion is about as popular in his home province as your average child rapist.
All of the polling in the 2006 election pointed to the Tories winning two or three seats in Quebec. They ended up with ten. This is because Quebec Liberals were so disheartened over the beating the took over the Sponsorship scandal and the ongoing Chretien-Martin civil war, that they organized for Harper as a federalist alternative to the seperatist Bloc Quebecois. There's no indication that that's changed, and the Strategic Council poll has the Conservatives leading in Quebec now, while they were running a distant third in 2006.
Then there's the polls findings regarding Ontario. Because of the population concentration, the poll probably relies heavily on the Toronto "416" ridings and the "905" ones that surround them. What the poll doesn't point out is that Harper doesn't have any seats in 416. For that reason, his approval rating can fall to
zero and it will make no difference on the electoral map.
Once you get out of the Greater Toronto Area, which is the combination of the 416 and 905 ridings, voters tend to vote on either cultural issues or economic populism. And those are safe Tory issues and always have been.
What the poll doesn't address is where Harper loses seats and where Dion can pick them up. Yes, the Liberals are polling very well in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, but they already hold all of those seats. Liberal support in those cities can be fucking
unanimous and it would make no practical difference. Furthermore, the Conservatives seem to be doing well where they already have seats.
That means the next election is going to be fought entirely in the non-English regions of Quebec. And the trends there favor Harper far more than they do Dion.
The Conservatives need 18 seats to win a majority and the Liberals need nearly 30 to win a bare minority. The problem for Dion is that Liberal support is strong where they already have seats, but is collapsing where they don't. Harper, on the other hand is holding on to his seats but has enormous growth potential in Quebec, where he doesn't.
Outside of Montreal, where the Liberals lost a seat that they've held since the Depression to the NDP, Quebec is going to be a battle between the Tories and the Bloc. And the Bloc is pretty much at their natural basement of support. The Baby Jesus could rise from the fucking dead and tell Quebeckers to reject independence and about 1 in 4 of them would either ignore him or crucify him again. The Conservatives aren't going to win committed Bloc voters, but they could win soft sovereigntists and sweep the Liberals in their non-Montreal ridings. And that alone is good for at least 20 seats.
The Liberals, as last months by-elections proved, aren't doing so shit-hot in B.C either. The Liberals have held Vancouver-Quandra for 20 years, and came within 150 votes of losing it outright to the Tories. And the Conservatives won a northern Saskatchewan riding that they had no business even being competetive in. People like
Jason Cherniak and
Warren Kinsella are still throwing flowers at Bob Rae and Martha Hall Findlay for winning over 60% of the vote, but they don't point out that Rae and Findlay are national figures who were running in two of the safest Liberal ridings in the goddamn country.
What both the poll and my friend are ignoring is that Harper has proven himself to be a smart, disciplined politician who has fought two leadership campaigns and two general elections in five years and won three of the four. Conversely, Stephane Dion hasn't proven himself to be capable of much of anything at all. The
only reason that he became Liberal leader is because Michael Ignatieff is a complete dickhead and Bob Rae had only been a Liberal for about 10 minutes when he ran for the praty's leadership.
In the only thing that even resembles a national election, Dion only won by accident. And since he's become leader, he's retreated repeatedly on what should be matters of bedrock principle. His reversals as leader of the opposition have badly hurt his credibility and that makes selling himself as a potential prime minister almost impossible. Add to that the fact that he'll be facing off against a guy who has run more campaigns in five years than anyone else in Canadian history, and you can almost smell the apocalypse coming.
So my question to Dr. Reverend, Canada's pollsters and the entire Liberal blogosphere stands. If Harper's going to lose the next election, just
how do you suppose that'll happen? And how much money would you be willing to bet on your convictions.
I'm only good at two things in life - eating pussy and calling elections - but I'm fucking
outstanding at both. Read through my archives and count how many political campaigns I've been ultimately wrong about if you want to question that assertion. And the good Doctor
knows about my political prowess firsthand. He's been watching me do this four times longer than the rest of you have. I don't know why he insists on continuing to question my judgement on this like this.
I can only guess that he's overly excitable because Hitler's birthday is tomorrow.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Little Hitler By: Nick Lowe
From: Jesus of Cool
