Doug Ford and the Beware of Doug Campaign

It's the final debate the Ontario election campaign. The stakes couldn't be higher.

And you can be sure that Doug Ford's Team Harper handlers have been trying to hammer one talking point after the other into him.

For with his polls heading south, and his campaign dented by scandal, it could very well be his do or die moment. 

But at least he has something new to offer the voters.

And like the man himself, it couldn't be more blunt or more brutish.



A promise to bring cheap beer back to Ontario. 

“For too long beer consumers have been forced to pay inflated prices for beer in order to increase the profits of big corporations. We’re going to allow price competition for beer and this will save consumers money,” Ford said Saturday in a statement.

And although the move can only be described as desperate, and could flood the province with drunkards like his late brother Robbie...



It does make some sense.

It helps Team Harper portray their man as a man of the people.

When in fact he's not "For The People" as his campaign slogan proclaims. He is as Martin Lukacs points out, a mercenary for the millionaire class.   



Never mind that he inherited a multi-million dollar business from his father, a conservative politician. Never mind that he has coasted on the political machinery of his brother, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Never mind that he spent years as a city counsellor trying to dismantle public services, has surrounded himself with Stephen Harper’s closest advisors, and is now advancing policies that would be a Trump-like giveaway to the wealthiest. Half-baked denunciations of the elite are apparently enough to eclipse an entire career of fealty to them.

His policies, if he ever dares include them in a campaign platform, would hurt rather than help many members of the so-called Ford Nation.

A tax-break for low-income earners? Alongside his roll-back of the new minimum wage, it actually leaves them poorer. The tax-break for the middle class? That would in fact benefit the most wealthy. And those corporations that whinged about a slight increase in worker’s wages? They’re getting a $1.3 billion giveaway. Welcome aboard – you’re being taken for a ride on the corporate gravy train.

But at least the cheap beer should make him even more appealing to some of his most ardent supporters, the province's white supremacists.  



Far-right figures and groups, from the explicitly white supremacist to the more crypto-fascist, have not been shy in proclaiming their support for “Ford Nation” and their belief that Doug Ford could create an opening for white supremacist activity similar to the effect of Donald Trump in the United States.

A recurrent theme of their analysis is that Ford, like Trump, will “electrify” the white working class and give blue-collar people permission to be racist. They lament that Ford likely won’t bring in their desired white ethnostate right away but argue that his election will hasten its arrival.

And while that "analysis" couldn't be more more disturbing, or just crazy.

And makes this campaign from the Cons at the Toronto Sun even more absurd or obscene.



It's clear that Ford welcomes the support of those white supremacists, for what else could explain his warm feelings for the grotesque bigot Faith Goldy?



Or explain his role in this video?



All of which only confirms what I've always believed. Doug Ford may be a buffoon, but he is dangerous.

For what else would you call a man who would slash the province's safety net, fire thousands of nurses, and largely privatize medicare? 

As well close down safe injection sites which have taken years to set-up...



Even though that could kill hundreds, even thousands, of people.

What else can you call a man like that, except a fascist and a criminal?

But then his lack of concern for human life is only one of the many reasons this kind of warning is being nailed or plastered on walls and poles all over the province.



And now there's even a song...



I can only hope that warning will be heeded, and that tonight's debate will help finish off Ford's chances of becoming Premier.

And that this turns out to be true:

Doug Ford is still betting that voters will be less concerned about the substance of his populism than about his shallow stunts and rhetoric. But it looks more and more likely that he might be proven wrong. Ontarians are catching on that an out-of-touch, silver-spooned con-man isn’t out to defend “the little guy” – he’s a mercenary for the millionaire class.

For Dougie is dangerous.

And if he is not stopped, first he'll kill Ontario.

And then with his Harper Cons and his Nazis he'll help kill Canada...