Andrew Scheer and the Big Red Machine

Well at least now we know why Andrew Scheer has been keeping such a low profile, and looking so weird or so paranoid..

It seems he's been trying to recover from his humiliating election defeat, and figure out who to blame.

And now at last he claims he knows.




Don't blame him. 

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer has fired two top aides in his office as the party deals with the fallout of an election loss. Chief of staff Marc-André Leclerc and communications director Brock Harrison no longer work for Scheer, according to an email from the party leader sent on Saturday. 

Multiple Conservative sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained the two men were told of the decision on Thursday night. They said Scheer informed them personally that they were to be let go and not be allowed to resign.

Yes believe it or not, it wasn't Scheer's religious fanaticism, his misogyny, his homophobia, his climate change denial, Warren Kinsella, or all those lies he told that doomed his campaign.



Scheer is still blaming a "communication problem."

In a press conference two weeks after the results, Scheer blamed the loss on communications issues. "There were times where our message didn't resonate with Canadians, that's clear," he said.

Or as they say in Alberta and Alabama, and other backward places, a failure to communicate...



But sadly for the Ugly American, as Chantal Hébert reports, it seems that a lot of Cons aren't buying that pathetic excuse.

With every passing week, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer looks more like a politician trying to whistle past the graveyard of his leadership.

Since the election, there has not been a week that has not featured new cracks in the support Scheer needs to survive a vote of party confidence next April.

And they are lining up for a chance to stick a knife in his back, or hammer another nail into his coffin.

But while Scheer was clearly the wrong candidate running in the wrong century, as Susan Delacourt points out, there is something else the Cons should also be blaming for their humiliating defeat. 

Justin Trudeau's Big Red Machine. 



The federal Liberals are in power as 2019 comes to an end thanks to what may have been one of the most sophisticated, locally targeted election campaigns this country has ever seen.

“Justin Trudeau didn’t win the election. Justin Trudeau’s campaign organization won the election,” says Nik Nanos, one of Canada’s leading pollsters, who has been sifting through the results of the 2019 election and marvelling at how Liberals gathered up a national mandate with a precise focus on specific pockets of the country.

For it buried the Cons much vaunted Big Blue Machine.



The Liberals beat Hamish Marshall and his War Room minions with a more energetic ground game, and a more sophisticated digital advertising strategy.

One that was so good, they only lost a potential majority by fewer than 23,000 votes. 

And while I believe Nik Nanos underestimates Trudeau's contribution to the Liberal victory, for nobody worked harder to reach out to Canadians than he did. 



Nanos is right about this:

He (Nanos) also believes that Liberals’ growing mastery of micro-targeted campaigning will make them unafraid to plunge into another election if their new minority government collapses.

The Big Red Machine will help make the Liberal minority a stable one, that may last the full four years.

And when the election call finally comes, it should help Trudeau win another majority government.

Maybe even help keep him in power until at least 2027.



And bury the Cons once and for all.

The toxic Trudeau haters may scream or wail like banshees.

But Andrew Scheer is a dead man walking.

And unless he can be convinced to resign tomorrow, he's going to take them all down with him...