Trudeau patiently explains
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/trudeau-explains-the-problem-is-us-not-himNP Comment
Chris Selley: The problem is us, not him, Trudeau patiently explains
When two-thirds of Trudeau's support is down to who and what he isn’t, you start to wonder if just about anyone else might be a better choice
In recent days on social media the Liberals have likened Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to Donald Trump. They have also suggested that Poilievre intends to roll back gay rights.
It’s absolutely ridiculous, well into the realm of misinformation and conspiracy theory. And polls suggest it isn’t working at all.
The PMO also thought it wise for Justin Trudeau to sit for yet another interview with the Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt, which landed on the front page of that paper’s Sunday edition with a gigantic photo of Trudeau: jeans, dress shirt, sweater, inscrutable expression.
The headline: “It’s him, not you — and he knows it.”
Aha, interesting. Some humility! Let’s dive in.
First up, and rightly so, is immigration. “Trudeau is concerned about where the Canadian consensus on immigration is headed … as people start to make connections between the influx of newcomers and demands on an already overloaded housing market and health-care system,” Delacourt reports.
A lot of people are indeed worried about that; I’m not so much, for the record. For every person admonishing us not to “blame immigrants” for the housing crisis, I’ve encountered exactly zero people blaming immigrants for the housing and health-care crises. If anything I think the housing crisis specifically might have strengthened the consensus: Most people seem annoyed that we might have to limit immigration when we otherwise wouldn’t for the mortifyingly stupid reason that we can’t build houses.
After all, as Trudeau correctly tells Delacourt, “we know that shutting down immigration would not even be a theoretical answer.”
But Trudeau also says this: “I’ve long said that one of the most important responsibilities of any Canadian prime minister is to protect that (immigration) consensus.”
Is it just me or is that an admission of wretched failure? That maybe we should give someone else a chance?
Delacourt asks Trudeau about the supposed “dilemma of being in the middle.”
“The challenge of the Liberal party as a centrist, a centre-left party, is that we don’t have those fringes within the party on the far left, or on the far right, that are mobilized and activated about politics all the time,” says Trudeau.
It sounds logical that it would be difficult to rile people up about being in the centre — about believing in nothing, as one might more unkindly put it. But the Liberal Party of Canada has won 26 of Canada’s 44 federal elections, and Liberals are as rabidly partisan as anyone. They might be the most partisan, in fact, because more than any other party the Liberals conflate their own interests with the country’s.
An Angus Reid Institute poll released Monday found 63 per cent of those intending to vote Liberal were primarily concerned with preventing a Conservative government, while 62 per cent of Conservative-intended voters said they were primarily motivated by their support for Poilievre, his party and his policies.
But there are only so many of those Liberals left. Angus Reid has the Conservatives trouncing the Liberals 41 per cent to 24 per cent. One shouldn’t write off Trudeau as a campaigner. But when two-thirds of his support is down to who and what he isn’t, you start to wonder if just about anyone else might be a better choice — especially when you come across his baffling diagnosis of the problem in Delacourt’s piece.
Trudeau thinks something new and insidious is afoot, and he calls it “opinion-as-identity politics.”
“I don’t think that was a feature too much of other times in politics — where what you think about something actually creates the circles and the people that you actually associate with, and it defines who you are,” he tells Delacourt.
People didn’t use to associate with each other politically based on what they believe? I mean, sure, that’s a fairly decent assessment of the Liberal Party of Canada: you join first and foremost in hopes of winning, knowing that any precept, principle or policy can go under the bus at a moment’s notice in furtherance of that goal. (You can always go back on your word once you’re in office, after all.)
But that’s not a good thing! Believing in consistent things and ideas and fighting for them is a good thing!
“I think there’s a lot of people who are just rightly grumpy at the world right now,” Trudeau tells Delacourt. “I think there’s all sorts of things that are happening that are difficult, (so) it’s got to be the prime minister’s fault.”
So … it’s us, in other words. Not him. Duly noted. And good luck to his communications team.
National Post
