Well it's definitely not as good as the original Wizard of Oz. How could it be with Maxime Bernier playing the scarecrow?
And screaming all day long about how he wants a brain AND a debate.
But it does have a happy ending, sort of...
Mad Max didn't get a brain, but he did get a shiny debate.
Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party of Canada is being invited to take part in the official English- and French-language leaders’ debates during the election campaign.
The invitation, made on Monday by the independent Leaders’ Debate Commission, was extended after a review of Mr. Bernier’s party and its chances of winning more than one seat in the Oct. 21 election, according to a release from the commission.
Which made Bernier very happy
Received the good news from the @debates_can as I’m about to board my plane for Saint John! pic.twitter.com/ubpksDQMpA— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) September 16, 2019
And his loony bigot party even happier.
It's happening! pic.twitter.com/YCGv8sesUq— PPC HQ - People's Party of Canada (@peoplespca) September 16, 2019
But had Andrew Scheer and his loony Cons screaming blue murder and running for cover.
For these very good reasons:
Conservative strategist Tim Powers of Summa Strategies said Mr. Bernier’s invitation to the “main show” gives him the opportunity to be a “disruptor,” and “legitimizes” the People’s Party as an option. But he said Mr. Bernier’s presence opens the door for Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to contrast the Tories with the People’s Party, which is further to the right, or for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to try to lump Mr. Scheer in with Mr. Bernier.
As for me I'm a bit conflicted. On the one hand I despise Bernier's brand of so-called populism, and I can never forgive him for his depraved assault on Greta Thunberg.
But on the other hand when I look at this latest poll...
If the debates can give the People's Party a boost, it's obvious it's the Cons who will pay the piper.
The Pee Party would still be lucky to win a single seat.
But Scheer and his filthy Cons could suffer the fate they so richly deserve...
Speaking of polls, I'm super pissed at Nik Nanos for misrepresenting his numbers and scaring people on national television. His nightly tracker has the Cons going upward, but he only shows the national topline. You have to pay for the regional numbers and apparently they're showing the exact opposite: the Liberals are ahead in the places where the seats are. The topline is going up because of noise and a belch in the West. It matters SFA in terms of seats. Read this thread. Nanos is lying to the Canadian people and I'm galled that he would do that. Grenier is making a big mistake by including these nightly releases in the CBC tracker without full tables. That's why his numbers went the opposite way of Fournier's when the update was released yesterday. Fournier subscribes to the regionals. Grenier won't pay up. This suck-and-blow freemium model coupled with public "analysis" on CTV is malpractice, full stop. But if he wants to Nuke-Nanos his credibility and further damage that of the Canadian polling industry then so be it. All I care about is the final result favoring the Trudeau Liberals. And if Mad Max helps that along, all the better. He'll be out of a job in October and with any luck, so will Scheer.
ReplyDeleteWith any luck, Bernier will go for Scheer's throat in the debates. Bernier's got scores to settle with the fundagelicals who threw the Con party leadership to Scheer. Bernier and Scheer agree on tax cuts good and furriners bad, but Bernier's a libertarian. I hope he roasts Scheer on "teh gayz" and "da hos."
ReplyDeleteI hope he just attacks weak Andy for burning all the ballots.
ReplyDeleteConservative Parties on both sides of the 49th parallel have embraced the bigots instead of pushing them to the fringes where the belong.
ReplyDeleteBy embracing them they have put a millstone around their own necks because these people are the most insecure voters of the electorate. If they are not being continually stroked the get upset and loud, creating all sorts of problems for the parties.
In Canada that millstone is particularly big. It forces the Conservatives Party of Canada to walk a very fine tightrope between keeping the bigots happy and appearing to be centrist in order to gain enough votes to win an election. They have not been very successful. Stephen Harper only did it once in five tries.
It is an open question as to whether Andrew Scheer has the political smarts to walk that line and now he has the added challenge of Mr. Bernier gaining immediate credibility by being allowed into the debates. I have no idea in which direction Mr. Bernier will jump. His best chance of winning seats is from the Conservatives but he may still attack Mr. Trudeau so Mr. Trudeau will have to be on his toes. Then again, Mr. Bernier's political instincts are ananthema to most centrists so he may not be a big threat to the Liberals in any case.
With regard to the polls and the poll aggragators they are out of whack. I have someone in my Facebook feed who insists on uploading Eric Grenier's poll tracker every day so I have been looking at it. It has the Liberals and the Conservatives tied at 34% but the seat projections have the Liberals in majority territory. That does not make sense. No party would win a majority government with 34% of the vote.
The other thing about polls is they only publish decided and leaning voters. They remove the undecideds. At this stage of the campaign those undecideds are probably between 10 to 15%. That is alot and history has demonstrated that they will remain undecided until very late in the campaign. At that point history as also demonstrated that the undecideds often break in one direction, handing one party a decisive victory. It still remains to be seen where they will break. Until then the polls are good for entertainment value but otherwise they are worthless.
I hope Bernier takes some votes away from the Cons. I'm really worried that they're neck and neck with the Liberals now. Damn those racist Quebecois and their precious bill of bigotry.
ReplyDeleteNanos sold out to CTV and G&M to push a narrative and make money by lying through omission about his regionals and the possibility of random noise or a dead cat bounce. Literally no other poll is showing what he has. The Cons went down in Ipsos, Leger, and Mainstreet, where the QC numbers are rebounding. But on the whole I sadly think Canada is a more racist country than it's willing to admit, not just Quebec. Other polls show broad support for a Bill 21 model -- hence, a niqab ban -- elsewhere in the country. This is why Singh is saving the furniture, Trudeau is being attacked, and the right-wing media continues to focus on "cost of living issues." Nothing matters to them but money. In 2016 in the U.S. it became apparent that "economic anxiety" was a euphemism for turning a blind eye to, or outright embracing, bigotry as long as your taxes went down and you didn't have to share the spoils with "others" who "don't belong." Hence Trump and the talking points about "jobs."
DeleteThe school choice movement that Scheer champions emerged from the Southern U.S. evangelical Christian movement as a reactionary response to racial integration. They just figured out a way to couch it in palatable libertarian Newspeak about "free markets" and "parental autonomy." At the core of it all is spoiled white suburbanites and rural gammon hicks repulsed by the notion that they should have to be on equal footing with brown people, particularly those who "worship strange gods." Leaders who side with said "others" are condemned as race traitors and dispensed of accordingly, whether by ballot or bullet or both.
Note that there's an obvious reason why Harper had such a chilly relationship with Obama. Note also that he fought bitterly with Mulroney over the cardinal sin of recognizing Mandela as a prisoner of conscience rather than a criminal terrorist. Pollster Jean-Marc Leger said this morning on Twitter that Trudeau represents what Canadians want to be but Scheer represents what they really are. That speaks volumes, and as an American who, like many in my country who saw your country as "the northern star" that Martin Luther King described, the end point of the Underground Railroad and the Trudeauist Just Society, it makes me sick.
You do realise that your statement is racist, I presume? (And no, I don't support Law 21).
DeleteI do hope that people understand that I was responding to anonymous 7:11, not Jackie. Jackie and I disagree on a lot of things but she most certainly isn't racist.
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