News came today that the Doug Ford government in Ontario "is refusing to say whether it has finalized initial plans for its most important transit project, three weeks after a self-imposed deadline for completing the work has passed."
The project -- called the Ontario Line -- is supposed to be a subway that will run from Ontario Place to the Science Centre in Toronto with stops throughout the downtown. It is being billed as a grander, more comprehensive version of the relief line the city had been working towards for years. The Ford government has also claimed that its bolder plan -- presumably through the use of magical pixie dust -- can also be built faster than previous plans. As soon as by 2027.
If this promise of massive subway lines to be built in record time sounds familiar, there is a good reason for that.
Transit City was cancelled and its vision destroyed. Multiple desperately needed routes that would exist today or be close to completion were simply discarded. As for the subway lines Rob promised, they never happened. Not one stop was built, not one tunnel dug.
Now we see this echoed as brother Doug tries the same as Premier.
As I argued in the pieceChaos Theory: For Doug Ford disruption will be the plannever "underestimate the damage that can be done by simply cancelling or disrupting plans and then miring governance in self-created perpetual chaos."
By overriding plans that had been carefully developed through extensive planning, consultations and working with all the involved levels of government and offering instead dots drawn on a map at a press conference Doug did exactly what his brother did.
Replaced a serious transit program with a bunch of total bullshit.
It is a mildly clever way to fool people just enough that they fail to see the sleight of hand. After all a "better" option is being offered in a faster time frame so it almost makes sense that the original one gets shelved.
Of course -- with many detours, delays and fake routes still to come -- in the end likely nothing gets built which will be blamed by Doug Ford and his stooges on the federal government, Toronto City Council, aliens or whatever.
It doesn't really matter who they say was at fault, nothing getting built was almost certainly the plan all along.
Update: As predicted above, now that plans for the "Ontario Line" have been leaked they are not what Ford showed at the press conference with dots. And it almost certainly cannot be built by 2027.
As NDP Transit critic Jessica Bell says "the Ford governments “back-of-the-napkin scheme” could see the line delayed “by years, or even decades.”
“I’m calling for Doug Ford’s secret subway plans to be released publicly, immediately. Not just the lines he drew on a piece of paper for a media event — actual planning documents,” she said. “As much as Doug Ford might like to be, he isn’t the Mayor of Toronto. He owes the City of Toronto and the people of Toronto the answers to dozens of questions they submitted months ago.”"
Early this morning -- in what was admittedly something of an unexpected judgement -- Justice Edward Belobaba ruled that Doug Ford's petty and vindictive Better Local Government Act was unconstitutional. Belobaba was fiercely critical of the act overall, though his decision primarily rested on it being an infringement of freedom of expression rights as opposed to an interference in democratic voting rights.
This is unfortunate as it seems likely to allow Doug Ford to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the constitution which only applies to some types of court rulings. Ford has now signaled his intention to do so and also implied that he would be willing to in the future on the specious and grotesque grounds that somehow having won an election means he should be able to do whatever he wants henceforth with no judicial oversight.
While many have been left in something of a state of shock, it was totally predictable.
Ford's Better Local Government Act was only ever about one thing: the fact that he lost the mayoral election to John Tory in 2014 and that the city council kneecapped the powers of his brother Rob after the crack scandals and erratic behaviour.
He never accepted that he lost that election and that his brother was not able to rule by fiat as mayor.
Even after winning the provincial election almost by default he still hasn't.
It also explains his singular obsession with the city that rejected him. It is the wounded ego of a sad, vengeful man-child who thought he had seized the bully pulpit until some dastardly judge took his toys away.
Ford has a deep, entrenched, abiding loathing of Toronto. He neither understands it -- beyond the narrow framework of his tiny little part of north Etobicoke -- nor does he like it. It is complex and dynamic, difficult and contradictory in ways that his simplistic vision of the world cannot allow.
Should he actually corral his caucus and cabinet -- some of whom must be having doubts as to the "wisdom" of this imbecilic response -- and successfully use this legal sledgehammer to crush what is a minor setback on a minor provincial issue, we can all rest assured this will not be the last time.
Doug Ford is sending a clear message that he intends to simply do whatever he wants, like the toddler screaming on the mall floor for candy. The crucial difference being that this overgrown toddler appears ready to kick all of our constitutional rights and protections to the curb to satisfy his own narrow schoolyard desires for vengeance.
On his first day in office in 2010 newly elected Toronto Mayor Rob Ford strode out before assembled reporters and proclaimed “Ladies and gentlemen, the war on the car stops today . . . Transit City is over".
Years of planning and securing funding were gone, just like that. LRT routes that would be helping countless communities today in 2018 or in the relatively near future simply vanished in the blink of an eye.
That there was no "war on the car" and that greater transit infrastructure helps ease congestion as one of its secondary benefits was irrelevant. That cancelling the project cost $65 million in penalties was irrelevant. That Ford almost certainly did not have the authority to cancel Transit City was irrelevant. That Ford's fantasy fiction that he would build two complete subway lines which would be completed by the 2015 Pan Am Games in the city almost immediately began to unravel (it of course never happened and would never have been possible to achieve) was irrelevant.
Ford's objective was secured. Disruption. The appearance of "doing what he said he would do" and "taking action" when in fact what he was doing was tearing down what government was going to do and accomplish. A fake crisis, "the war on the car" was used to justify the true goal, which was to destroy.
Never underestimate the damage that can be done by simply cancelling or disrupting plans and then miring governance in self-created perpetual chaos.
Similarly with his brother Doug now whose "platform" during the election was pure contradiction and incoherence yet who circumstance has delivered to power.
Ford, who will be sworn in today as Ontario's Premier, seems to lack a basic understanding of what the provincial government can or cannot do and how it functions, though that will likely be helpful to him given his underlying end game. He talks of finding billions of dollars in "efficiencies" and promises fiscal prudence while also claiming no jobs will be cut, no services gutted, and muses about things like building expensive subways to places that don't need them like Pickering.
A Pickering subway will never happen, needless to say, but that is not the point.
Like his late brother, Ford will almost certainly start by stopping. After a great show of "looking at the books" plans that were being rolled out or proposed by the previous government will be cancelled outright, scaled back dramatically or delayed indefinitely.
The years long farce and fiasco of the Scarborough subway looks to coming back into play as well with Ford saying he wants the three stop option, presumably planning to overrule the city's one-stop plan (both plans are expensive white elephant alternatives to an original proposed LRT that could have already been well on its way to completion).
Will the three stop option ever be built? Who knows, but by pushing the city to go back to the drawing board yet again, zero gets built and Ford can claim to be championing local Scarborough residents while, in fact, ensuring that they get nothing anytime soon. Neat trick that. Just one example of many to come.
This chaos theory of governance sets the stage for what will be the almost seemingly surreptitious introduction of deep, vicious austerity. As plans are cancelled, crazy new ideas floated, invented crises "averted", "efficiencies" introduced that are really cuts to necessary and important government spending, departments and infrastructure, the perpetual disruption provides a backdrop against which attacks on workers, women, people living in poverty and marginalized and racialized communities can be woven almost seamlessly into a constant barrage of boondoggles.
What exactly will be targeted and when remains to be seen, but now that it is about to be unleashed the Ford proverbial bull in the china shop will attempt to leave a path of total devastation in its wake over the next four years and -- for all of the times it will appear aimless or mindless -- this will have been its overarching ideological objective.
With just two months until the Ontario election the Doug Ford led Conservatives are still well ahead of the Wynne Liberals even though the Liberals have shown a faint flickering of life in some recent polls. The New Democrats remain mired in third place to date under the lackluster leadership of Andrea Horwath.
That Wynne remains deeply unpopular despite the popularity of many of her recent programs and announcements is quite clear. While the depth of the loathing for her in some quarters is obviously driven partly by homophobia and misogyny, the broader malaise stems from the Liberals having been in power for a very long time, having seemed very tired until just recently and to a lingering sense that they are tainted by corruption.
With Ford poised to be Premier people are paying closer attention to the Conservative platform and their plans for the province should they win -- or, perhaps more accurately, to the seeming lack of any clear plans or a platform.
Unlike Patrick Brown, who had a comprehensive, relatively centrist platform that had even been published in magazine format with his image on the cover itself, Ford has stuck more to the right faux populist trick of incoherent and angry broad strokes or coded slogans like how he is going to "Take Back Ontario".
While this pronounced lack of detail is getting more notice and causing consternation among various newspaper columnists, for Ford fact free during this campaign is really the way to go.
The vagueness, one has to think, is entirely deliberate. Part of this is, no doubt, due to Doug Ford's fairly obvious weak grasp of basic issues and his general ignorance of governance and provincial politics. This is not simply a man who played a key role in his brother's catastrophic municipal administration in Toronto, but who also recently mused about cutting funding for the CBC should he win in June, which should tell you all you need to know.
In the few cases where to date Ford has made pledges they have likely done him more harm than good. An instance of this was when he came out of the gate promising to cancel the minimum wage hike to $15 an hour set for next January. He described it as a "tax grab" -- which it is not -- and promised to replace it with a tax cut for low income workers that people quickly figured out would mean substantially less money in their pockets than the higher wage would have delivered.
Of course, if you refuse to make any serious commitments you don't need to justify or explain them.
In a recent trip to Welland, for example, Ford simply did not take a position on an issue of serious regional concern -- the promise of the Wynne government to extend GO service to Niagara by 2021. Instead of saying whether he would either continue with or cancel the plan, Ford said he would "review" it and "talk to the people", a mildly clever way to try to cover-up equivocation and lack of leadership by cloaking it in nominally democratic, populist themes.
Now that provincial Conservative politicians have united behind him this walking of a far right line may prove a Faustian bargain for those who still attempt to pretend that the Conservatives have a "progressive" component. The Mulroneys and Elliotts appear ready to sacrifice the reasonable on the alter of power where they can hope for cabinet chairs and the other benefits of government. They are remaining loyal despite Ford's clear and demonstrable embrace of Trump style politics, perhaps in the misguided belief that they will somehow be able to moderate or temper the beast from behind the scenes.
Given that large parts of Ontario are not yet quite as receptive to far right fantasies as some other countries and places, Ford and the Conservatives have to walk a line that keeps the extreme base that put Ford into the leader's chair all riled up while not alienating those more centrist voters dissatisfied with Wynne and the Liberals. The best approach to doing this is saying as little as possible beyond the populist rhetoric.
Slogans are often immune to factual inquiry. They can also mean whatever your audience wants them to mean. As with Trump, and as with his brother Rob before that, Doug reflects a very dangerous trend on the right where angry narratives and anti-government, anti-social justice myths replace serious policy frameworks and any pretense of a broader discourse politically. These narratives lend themselves towards a deeply toxic blend of authoritarianism and nihilism due to the fact that they are both simplistic and delegitimize all other viewpoints.
The call from a wealthy white male to "Take Back Ontario" clearly implies that somehow it has been stolen away by forces who have wrested it from those who should rightly be in charge. Among many on the far right, especially white and male supporters, those who should rightly be in charge are men who look and sound like Doug Ford. The meaning of the slogan need not be explicitly said for it to be effective.
Scratch the surface at all and we know that a Ford government in Ontario will bring massive cutbacks, austerity, the rollback of newly won rights for workers and a deep hostility to any attempts to redress historic and systemic injustices or oppression.
For this very reason we can expect that Ford and the Conservatives will do their very best to see that the surface remains unscratched.
The apparent victory of Doug Ford as the new Progressive Conservative leader in Ontario is fascinating on a number of levels. After the fiasco of his brother's administration in Toronto, his losing campaign against John Tory for Mayor of Toronto that saw the power of so-called strategic voting at work, his inherently polarizing approach to politics and even his own claims (prior to his victory of course) that the results of the leadership vote would be "corrupted" would have led one to think that a party on the verge of a landslide election victory would have stepped back from the possible abyss that is Doug Ford.
But these are troubling times where liberals and what is left of "social democracy" have ceded much of the ground on class politics and have been unable to understand, address or deal with the rise of an inchoate rage in segments of the population and society whose disenfranchisement politically and economically have sowed the seeds of nascent neo-fascism.
Ironically -- and perhaps ultimately tragically -- the Wynne Liberal government has shifted dramatically over the last few months with some impressive new legislative moves. These include the introduction of pharmacare for everyone in Ontario 24 and under, the rapid raising of the minimum wage, the introduction of sweeping and progressive new labour law legislation, bringing in "pay transparency" legislation, new laws to protect temp workers and others. Some of these have been passed and some may never happen should Wynne lose, but they are a very progressive agenda to go into an election on in the framework of today's politics.
Some, especially New Democrat partisans, will claim these moves are simply cynical steps to try to (again) outflank the NDP on the so-called "left", and perhaps to a degree they are. But they also undeniably have begun to make the lives and working conditions of millions of Ontario workers better. The partisans will also point out that these moves do not go anywhere near far enough, which they do not. But this does leave one having to note the total absence of a more robust, social democratic plan from the NDP. To counter these moves by the Liberals the Horwath NDP has done next to nothing in response. To say they have yet to make a compelling case as to how they would be more progressive than the Wynne Liberals would be generous.
This unusual conjunction of the seeming election of Ford against the backdrop of a mildly progressive, cynical Bay St. government whose "left" opposition has adopted overtly class-collaborationist rhetoric and has sought to minimize its left credentials, leads to the conclusion that the push to "strategic voting" will again be profound in the minds of many voters. That this urge should be resisted -- in fact, the case for not voting for any of the three main parties, NDP included, has never been stronger -- is a separate matter for a later piece, but the anti-strategic voting argument will be made dramatically harder with Ford's victory even though he was actually not that far to the right of his opponents ideologically.
Many NDP hacks and observers outside of Ontario see a great opportunity for the ONDP here but fail to root it in the actually existing conditions. It is hard to see grand electoral vistas with Horwath's milquetoast, say-nothing approach.
But it is also hard to see a path to victory for such a deeply unpopular government as Wynne's is. The Wynne Liberal government is arguably less popular at the moment than the Bob Rae government was prior to its decimation in 1995.
All of the Rae government's opponents were lined up on the right. In these different conditions the Wynne Liberals can attempt to try to shift the narrative based on a legislative agenda that is far more popular than they are.
Unquestionably though, her opponents on the right and the nominal "left" will seek to make this a "change" election focusing on "throwing the bums out". This change mantra is centred entirely on the government itself as opposed to its polices, rendering it primarily an electoral tactic.
Having said that, the election of Doug Ford, or Christine Elliott for that matter, would represent a terrible blow to the interests of working people in Ontario. Viscerally so.
And this will form the foundation of Wynne's attempted comeback from the edge of oblivion. Her success in this may well depend less on Ford than on whether or not the ONDP continues with an approach that appears to be more based on at least trying to come in second as opposed to actually making a serious case for why they should get the votes of working people and those threatened by a Ford or Elliott win.
Toronto Mayor John Tory's austerity budget passed Wednesday night after a variety of attempts to soften its impact or to increase property taxes above the rate of inflation failed.
This is a budget that is part of a broader austerity agenda and a larger pattern that prioritizes the better off, drivers and homeowners over people living in poverty, tenants, transit users, community housing, community programs and making Toronto a fairer and better place to live for everyone, and that does so in some pretty obvious ways.
Tory and most of council's obsession with keeping residential property tax increases at the rate of inflation continued to much detrimental effect. In fact this longstanding history in the post-amalgamation city of tying property tax increases to inflation or freezing them altogether -- as happened at some points under both Mel Lastman and Rob Ford -- has lead to the increasingly grotesque divergence in increases in these property taxes versus the increase in tolls and user fees of various kinds like TTC fares.
Councillor Gord Perks, who has long argued that residents can afford to pay more to help the city’s most vulnerable, put forward a 4.26 per cent increase. That motion failed 10-32.
“What I am proposing is that we ask those people in the city of Toronto who have the most wealth to put more money back into the system and the reason I want to do that is so that we can afford the programs that help the people who truly are struggling to live in the City of Toronto,” Perks told his colleagues on the council floor.
His motion would have meant the average homeowner would see their taxes increase by $152.50 this year instead of the approved $90.
Notably his motion was opposed by the new darling of the NDP wing of council -- whose victory was celebrated by Councillors like Mike Layton and others -- Neethan Shan who ran in part on the not terribly progressive platform of towing Tory's line on taxes and supporting the Scarborough subway boondoggle. Likely to appease his alleged allies Shan did, in the end, vote against the budget as a whole despite this, which makes his position on residential property taxes basically incoherent.
The fact is there is no path towards actually building a broad progressive platform around transit, housing, community and social programs without above inflation property tax increases in the present context given what City Council can actually do to raise revenues in a serious way
As the Torontoist pointed out in a detailed article on the subject in 2014, residential property taxes in Toronto (and elsewhere in Ontario) are not, actually, tied directly to the value of an individual property and how it increases or declines in the way most people think. They are tied to the value of any individual property versus everyone else's property set against the municipal average.
If a given residential property increases in value at the same rate as other properties in the city its property taxes will remain the same unless the city raises the overall property tax rate generally.
Ontario's Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, who are responsible for working out the municipal property taxes owed in every municipality in the province, has a handy short video (which apparently almost no one has watched), explaining this:
This is a key point which many people, including Councillors, either do not seem to grasp or do not understand the implications of. Property taxes in Toronto are ultimately revenue neutral over time -- and are based on the total revenue Toronto needs to raise relative to the total number of paying households relative to each other's value relative to non-residential property tax revenue -- unless council increases the general rate overall to fund new expenditures/programs/costs which is part of the reason that raising property taxes at the rate of inflation if Councillors want to expand overall expenditure is a no starter and that freezing them is disastrous.
It will inevitably mean that city council will have to either increase user fees or other taxes/fees of one kind or another, or that it will have to make cutbacks and start down the path towards austerity as Tory did with his cookie cutter idiocy demanding that every city department trim an identical 2.6% from their budgets. If the city wants to increase or expand programs, to create new infrastructure, or even to maintain what it has given expanding population and needs it cannot be done by keeping residential property taxes at the rate of inflation. Period.
It is simply not possible and it is crucial to understand this when discussing property taxes in Toronto.
All talk of gigantic new downtown parks, vastly improving transit, truly dealing with the crisis in community housing, and so on is pure fantasy otherwise.
Both Rob Ford and John Tory have de facto admitted this with the special and supposedly temporary property tax levies that have been put in place to fund things like the Scarborough subway.
But keeping the Gardiner in place still remains a decision that Toronto politicians made and, as Desmond Cole pointed out in the Toronto Star, specifically about the lack of commitment to housing,:
...when the voters who put Tory in office want costly roads and subways, he goes to the bank. Tory is right to say the property tax base was never meant to fund housing, and that Queen’s Park and Ottawa aren’t paying close to their respective shares. But these governments use Tory’s rhetoric against him. They similarly claim a responsibility to fuel prosperity by keeping taxes low, even if people are thrown from subsidized housing as a result.
Metro columnist and city budget enthusiast Matt Elliott told me bluntly this week, “I don’t have any time for politicians at city council who say the city is broke.” Elliott pointed to debt-financing for transit and roads as proof the city is choosing some investments over others. “The money is there if they want it to be, it just comes with trade-offs,” said Elliott.
This is true, of course, though it is also linked with a terribly destructive notion that the goal of government on all levels is to somehow keep life "affordable", a goal that actually applies only to some and that actually makes life less "affordable" or even less basically livable for others.
For when these politicians talk about "affordable" they are not talking about transit users, tenants (who end up paying via their rent for the much higher property tax rates on apartment buildings) or those who rely on community services or social programs, they are talking about middle, upper-middle and upper class homeowners and car drivers who actually benefit almost exclusively and massively disproportionately from these policies to the detriment of those who truly need government to intervene in the economy, in the building of public infrastructure and in society on their behalf.
And that is a fundamental travesty that is a basic feature of neo-liberal economics and taxation policies.
That specter that has haunted the imaginations of the right, and much of the left, for a generation now apparently has risen to new heights as commentators, politicians and angry people on the internet rant and rave about the supposed tyranny that is "political correctness".
By this, of course, they mean the actions of "progressives" or left-wing activists or any statement by anyone from any group that has suffered under the yoke of historic systemic oppression that challenges in anyway, at all, their bigoted, racist, misogynist or homophobic views on something, somewhere.
And so we find that a "majority of Canadians believe that political correctness infringes too much on their freedom of expression, a new poll suggests".
Back in the days before the internet and Gamergate brought us the so-called men's rights movement, lies about "social justice warriors" and the racist and misogynist trolls who think freedom of speech is actually about allowing them to stalk, harass and intimidate people, right-wingers across North America were all huddled together in their "think-tanks" and "war rooms" and editorial meetings freaked out by the rise of all those "others" seeking equal rights.
Women, people-of-colour, the racialized and marginalized, indigenous and aboriginal communities, were demanding to be heard, forming movements and coalitions, changing unjust laws, and forcing whites and men to think about our collective, awful history of racist, colonialist, patriarchal capitalism.
People living in poverty were fighting for economic justice. Unions and social policies were making inroads against inequality during the period we now know as the post-war "social compromise".
A President of the United States even went so far as to declare a "War on Poverty".
What was to be done? How were these obviously just and fair struggles to be undermined? How were those whose agenda it was to actually not just prevent but to reverse any gains made to make it seem as if those seeking basic justice were the "bad guys", but those who were racist, sexist bigots were the "good guys" -- or, at the very least, were just "telling it like it is" or "saying just what daddy and granddaddy did?"
Well, as Keyser Soze said about Keyser Soze, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist."
Now, in their hearts, even total idiots know that these historic injustices and terrible crimes have been committed and that they continue to this day. So how do you convince everyone that they really do not exist and that talking or doing anything about them is what is the actual "injustice"?
The "devil", so-to-speak, had this great plan. You simply turn reality on its head and make it out that those who are fighting injustice are actually the elitists who are trying to take away people's "rights" and that those who benefit from, or are at least down with, oppression are, in fact, the oppressed whose rights are being taken away!
And you call any attempt to change the existing, hegemonic political order "political correctness".
Sounds ominous.
Very clever that. Suddenly it was rich people, white people and men who were somehow "under attack" and being "oppressed" as the dastardly hoards tried to even the playing field, fight for equality and respect and stop the almost endlessly ingrained daily rituals of racism, homophobia, bigotry and misogyny that literally permeate every aspect of our society down to its very patterns of speech.
But the myth of the new "political correctness" went much further than that as it also turned people against their own interests. Even if you are making just a few bucks an hour at some dead end job how dare those "elitists" challenge your god-given right to claim to be better than entire swaths of humanity and to spew whatever vile vomit you want to with the buddies over Bud on Saturday night as the bosses are closing the factories down all around you and as the corporations and politicians you voted for are directly working to impoverish you and your family.
The myth, of course, lingers around to this day to the immense benefit of the capitalist classes, white people, the police, men, and millionaire and billionaire politicians like Rob Ford or Donald Trump who get to recast themselves as fighting against "elites" or for the "little guy" when they are doing anything but.
A woman says she does not like being demeaned by loud, ignorant comments or unwelcome approaches in public spaces by men? Political Correctness!
Native American groups demand that the grotesque and obviously ignorant racist names and caricatures of their peoples used by sport's teams like the Washington Redskins or the Cleveland Indians be ended? Political Correctness!
Black Americans rise up and write articles or refuse to stand for the national anthem in protest against police violence, murder and discrimination against them and against the sickening and deeply embedded bias in the so-called "justice system"? Political Correctness!
It is an all purpose smear. Works in so many cases.
And, ironically, its aim is to actually not just inhibit free speech, but to also serve as camouflage for the real political correctness that grips our politics and discourse which bears absolutely no resemblance to the mythological one created by right-wing white men and their useful idiots out there.
So it is that a Colin Kaepernick can actually exercise his democratic and constitutional right to make a controversial and unpopular statement and be denounced and threatened by the very groups and people who rant on-and-on about "free speech" and their supposed right to act like pigs or make ignorant comments in any time, space or place.
So it is that the true political correctness sits right there in front of our eyes but is ignored.
The political correctness we see when "Brian Burke, Calgary Flames president of hockey operations as well as a senior adviser to Team USA, said the playing field is not the place to make political statements" in a sport whose major league, the NHL, has "support the troops days" that involve disgusting on-ice displays of military might that are overtly and entirely, 100% political.
This is the revolting irony of the old reliable right wing term. The police, enabled by the formidable political power of law and the state, could and do literally kill people every single day but it is the protesting and calling out of the racism of many of these actions by those who lack real political power and who do not have the backing of the state that is what is termed "politically correct".
"He's onto something because secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up," the acclaimed actor and director said of Trump. "That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells."
"We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist," Eastwood added.
Without noting in any way at all that when he grew up "those things" weren't called racism because he grew up in Jim Crow America where segregationism was still law! He literally grew up in a country with open and institutionalized legal racism but bemoans not the oppression that, obviously, never had anything to do with him, but the fact people are now willing to call it what it was and is.
How sick is that? How ass-kissing of racist American state power is that? How stunningly, ignorantly elitist from a very rich, old white man in America is that?
It is all of those things and more
It is also a reflection of the ongoing and actual political consensus and "correctness" in North America and it is a racist, colonialist, homophobic, bigoted and sexist one!
And so it is that in our daily lives we are forced to endure that ironically deeply sanctimonious ass that we all know at least one of (usually male) who will blather rubbish like "I don't care what anyone thinks about what I am saying or being PC..." when, of course, these entitled twits deeply care or they would not have made such a pathetic self-justifying statement to begin with.
More importantly, though, it also means they are going to start into (one or more of) some age old racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-union, anti-working class line of whatever shit they woke up feeling they wanted to puke all over the internet, or at the bar, or at work, or wherever, while getting all primed and ready to defend their total moral emptiness and privilege by saying that any attempt to call them out on it is "just political correctness anyway".
This is the white male echo chamber of one's own bullshit where the only opinion that matters is the one all of the sexist or reactionary hacks hold in common with each other. Opinions that do not stand up to power at all -- that are not rebellious or individualistic -- but that make those who spout them just like every other asshole who says exactly the same thing to justify their willful and wanton ignorance and who always has and who always will.
The myth of "Political Correctness" is just another way to allow those with power to keep it. Ranting on about it is the last battle line of the troglodyte who cannot find any other final defense for the hatred or contempt of whatever group of people it is that they hate or hold in contempt and whose struggles and realities they seek to demean and diminish.
Just remember that behind every usage of the term itself lies a history that encompasses the very worst and most backward notions that our society has to offer.
And when you remember that, don't fucking use the term again!
There has never been a politician in Toronto quite like Rob Ford.
And there is a good chance there never will be one again.
I saw Ford in person a few times over the years, but I had an encounter with him last November that really sticks out.
I was standing outside Mount Sinai Hospital in the downtown of the city after visiting a friend there.
I looked north up University Ave. and saw, coming straight towards me, a middle-aged man walking by himself, in a faded and worn "Ford for Mayor" T-shirt and tattered shorts, holding a Tim Horton's coffee (or tea or whatever) who walked right past me and into the hospital.
And it was Rob Ford. Entirely by himself. No entourage, no aides, no one with him at all.
At the time I was rather flabbergasted. To this day I cannot possibly imagine seeing a similarly well known public political figure in a remotely analogous situation.
But it was totally emblematic of the type of politician Ford was and what also lay at the root of his appeal for so many.
Ford has been frequently described as having had an "everyman" persona -- but those are not uncommon in politics, especially with figures who aspire to populism. What was unique about Ford was that his was entirely unfeigned. It was not a put on or a show for the masses. It was Ford.
He genuinely seemed to care very little what anyone thought of him and he presented himself and behaved, even when on official business, exactly as he was and with seemingly little impulse control -- a quality both highly unusual in politics and one that was very dangerous and destructive for the both the city and ultimately for Ford himself.
There is little of a positive nature that can be said of Ford's tenure as Mayor. If he had a governing philosophy it might best be described as one of nihilism as opposed to conservatism. He seemed to hate the notion of governance or social services at all. There were multiple occasions on council his would be the sole or near sole vote in opposition to a motion -- a pretty shocking circumstance when it also happens when one is the mayor.
While normally being a big city mayor is about building coalitions with councillors and trying to fashion a majority for your administration's goals, Ford was totally uninterested, and likely incapable of this.
He had no visible desire to build bridges or to try to understand the perspectives of those with different views, and this ultimately even alienated his allies on the right. As did his reprehensible and outrageous conduct that was often, quite aside from the drugs, misogynistic, racist, violent, homophobic and juvenile.
That he was never legally held to account for his conduct also, to many, seemed to be a very explicit representation of how powerful, wealthy white men are treated so very differently by the police and our justice system.
All of this made him loathed by many in Toronto's political class and in the public at large, but it also paradoxically made him deeply and even fanatically loved by others.
The fact that he so openly and avowedly thumbed his nose at social and political convention and that he appeared to be taking on the city's "elites" (despite that he was a man born of and protected by great wealth) and standing up to anyone who got in his way, made him a politician who literally would draw enraptured and cheering mobs wherever he went -- often side-by-side and in competition with jeering and angry people at the very same events!
At one Christmas parade in Etobicoke I attended that Ford marched in there were those (myself included) who refused his attempts to hand out candy, but I also saw people run up to and embrace him or cheer him on as I have never seen happen with any other Toronto politician.
One woman even leaped out of her chair at a beauty salon, with curlers still in her hair, the salon gown still on and with no shoes, to run out to get a chance to see and greet him!
This type of adulation is, to say the very least, incredibly uncommon when it comes to municipal politics.
I argued once that much of Ford's appeal had nothing to do with ideology, but rather with the fact that he became the city's "entertainer-in-chief". You never knew what he would say or do next.
Yet these very qualities that his fans and followers so adored also completely derailed his tenure as mayor, fatally damaged (perhaps a good thing) any attempt at a coherent agenda, led to a series of serious scandals and cannot but have contributed to his issues with his health.
A terrible contradiction for him and the city.
Rob Ford really did embody the rejection of the highly scripted, tightly managed, hollow political messaging spoon fed us by mainstream politicians who are not as very different from each other as they would have you believe. He highlighted the thirst in many to reject this politics and showed that a very real, and potentially very dangerous, anger and rage simmers among those who feel pushed aside, marginalized or left out by government and the political process.
He was an undeniably unique figure. How he came to be able to ride such a wave of civic discontent to power and what that means about Toronto, its residents and its politics is something that will be analyzed, debated and discussed for a very longtime to come.
Given Toronto's transit track record, and given that it was a predictably Utopian and nonsensical plan from the start, you had to know that John Tory's absurd 'Smart Track' plan would be derailed by reality sooner or later.
Toronto's transit tale is one of shortsightedness, ignorance and car-crazed political cowardice at its worst.
Today, after months of obfuscation, Tory finally admitted -- without of course actually admitting anything -- that nothing like Smart Track as he proposed it during the election in 2014 would happen at all.
Remember that this plan, which he assured Toronto's voters (despite what he claims now) was completely "doable", was the centrepiece of his entire campaign. So much so that it was on his very election signs themselves!
But it was transparently flawed and predicated on at best wishful thinking and at worst crass cynicism.
Today Tory acknowledged that the entire western "spur" of the plan would have to be axed and replaced with an LRT route.
Despite the fact that this eliminates a major part of Smart Track, Tory still tried to frame the reports that he had received from the city's experts as a victory of sorts by claiming that now that he and council had "clarity" the rest of what remained of the plan would be a great success.
Why? Because "the ridership study predicts SmartTrack could attract more daily riders than the entire GO regional commuter system, and could reduce crowding on the Yonge-University subway south of Bloor St. by as much as 17 per cent."
Cue the triumphal ribbon-cutting trumpets and champagne.
But (and you knew there had to be one), the problem is these "predictions" are based on factors that are not a part of the plan!
the report, by the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute and city planner, said those optimum results would be achieved with trains arriving every five minutes. In the election Tory promised every 15 minutes or better.The best results trumpeted by Tory also presume another uncertainty — that SmartTrack riders would pay TTC fares. Tory’s campaign plan assumed the new service would merit a premium fare.
In other words, these optimum Smart Track results would be achieved only under a plan that is not the Smart Track plan even as optimistically proposed by Tory during the election!
The "projections" might as well be based on unicorns, happy cookie elves and fairy dust. They are totally meaningless.
To make matters worse, the staggering $8 billion price tag for all of this will remain just that despite the elimination of the western spur.
I am willing to make a projection. Smart Track will be a total disaster and far more could have been done for less money by investing in the Transit City idea of a network of LRTs.
So here we go yet again -- a rapidly expanding city with a staggeringly outdated transit infrastructure led by a political class that has us on yet another mystical road to nowhere.
It's a familiar theme around election time. You're talking with someone about the candidates on offer. You discuss the few strengths and many weaknesses of each party. You talk about how useless they all are; how meaningless your one vote is; and how none of the parties seem to actually be standing up for everyday people like yourself. Inevitably, you arrive at the same conclusion you always do: you'll line up, grit your teeth, and vote for the least objectionable candidate you can. Disappointed, but proud to live in such a vibrant democracy, you go down to your local polling centre and vote for yet another wealthy, boring and totally inoffensive lawyer/business owner. Your job is done!
Or is it? Is a single vote, every four years, really the most involved we can be in the governance of our own lives? Like a bad cold that you can't kick, every election - at every level - saturates us with messages about the shame associated with not voting. We are told that our brave ancestors (typically, soldiers and white politicians) fought and died for us to be able to line up and cast a ballot. I myself have been persuaded by this very logic. The first election in which I was eligible to vote was the Toronto municipal election of 2010. Thoroughly unimpressed by the big business candidates, Rob Ford and George Smitherman, I checked out Joe Pantalone. As the consensus left-winger, he must have had some great ideas, right?
Wrong. Here was a desperately uninspiring candidate, complete with the usual platitudes about partnering with industry and "greening" Toronto's economy. I made my mind up not to vote, only to be rebuffed by several friends. Not only did I cave to them, I fell prey the (very effective) campaign put on by Smitherman to position himself as the "anti-Ford." To my shame, then and now, I cast a ballot for a Bay Street blowhard. I truly understand the tactical (and occasionally moral) imperative of strategic voting. I get why people will vote "Anything But Harper," just as I voted "Anything But Ford" in 2010. But I think there needs to be room in the strategic voting conversation for the large number of us who don't want to vote, for any number of reasons.
At dinner last week, my mother - a nurse - asked us who we were going to vote for, and would any of the parties be expanding health care funding? Our answer, of course, was a resounding "no." My brother stated that he was going to vote Green because of their plan to eliminate tuition for post-secondary students. It's a fine, principled reason to vote, and one for which my brother should be proud. My sister simply expressed the view that she would not be voting NDP, and left it at that. I told my mother that I would not be voting, to which she expressed very visible shock.
A few nights later, I asked my sister why she wouldn't vote for the NDP. She told me that it was because I had expressed very vocal opposition to the New Democrats. I expressed the view that no one should vote a certain way because of something that someone else tells them. I suggested that she do some reading on which candidates she liked, or which policies she wanted to see implemented. She responded that she didn't want to bother with politics, because whatever the outcome, there was no party that could truly be trusted to stand up for regular people. That was probably the most politically astute thing I've ever heard her or anyone else say. I told her I agreed with her 100%, and that it was a totally reasonable position from which to not be politically engaged.
My sister may not realize it, but she was reflecting a very important and difficult political truth. Even though she couldn't give you a basic history of Canadian socialism, or tell you what the neo-liberal assault is, she can speak to those truths within her own life. She is so far removed from mainstream political discourse, her values so different from those of the political elites, that she simply tunes our politics out. And she is perfectly justified in doing so. She's not bored, or stupid, or apathetic, or any one of the million insults hurled at the nearly 50% of people who refuse to vote. She is hyper-aware that her concerns, whether economic, social or cultural, are irrelevant to mainstream political elites. Her refusal to engage is a reflection not of ignorance, but of the recognition that she, like nearly all of us, is politically and economically disposable.
Working class people, social assistance recipients, immigrants, queer and racialized people, and especially women...these are all groups that are simply not being paid attention to by any of the mainstream, capitalist political parties (with the occasional exception of the Greens). It simply does not fit the mold of our current politics to talk about opening more shelters for rape victims, or building public housing for the homeless, or allowing more refugees to cross our border. Why on Earth should these groups of Canadians vote in a general election? How, exactly, will an NDP and/or Liberal government benefit them? Will their eye and dental care magically be paid for by a government that has no interest in it? Will their relatives in war zones now be able to come to Canada in search of a better life? The answers are obvious.
One of the more vile justifications put forward for continued participation in our ridiculous election pageants is the idea that if you don't vote, you have no right to complain. This is deeply offensive on several levels. First, the idea is ridiculous on its very face. As a matter of basic human rights, you have the right to express your distaste for government policies, cultural ideas, and so on. Whether or not you cast a ballot - one out of millions - has no bearing on your right to do so. Then there is the truly unnerving conception that voting for a political candidate is the height of democratic expression. Elections matter, it is true, and anyone who feels so inclined can and should vote for a candidate they believe in, or against a truly despicable figure like Stephen Harper. But what about people's movements like Occupy and Idle No More? Are they not expressions of democratic will? What about the groundswell of opposition to Rob Ford's plan to close public libraries? Maybe it's just me being a utopian, but I thought that that battle was the most inspiring and important in the recent history of Toronto politics. The opposition worked, as it has around the world, all without casting a single ballot. Democracy means much, much more than the name you tick off on a piece of paper every few years.
As for my own political circumstances in this election, the choice has actually been relatively hard. I would, of course, never vote either Conservative or Liberal. The Conservatives regularly poll at about 5-8% in my riding, Toronto-Danforth, and haven't been competitive here in fifty years. The battle, as usual, will come down to the NDP and Liberals. My local NDP MP, Craig Scott, is actually one of the more principled figures in the House of Commons. He has worked tirelessly on issues surrounding Canada's queer communities, as well as working for democratic reform. Scott has worked internationally in human rights law, and should be respected for his principles and contribution to justice. The local Liberal candidate, Julie Dabrusin, is a neighbour of mine and a pretty typical Liberal. She was once a corporate lawyer, and is an active parent at the school her children attend (which I once did, in fact). She seems to be a decent enough person, if a tad unprincipled. For both personal and political reasons I cannot vote for her.
My plan is to watch the local polls closely and see how tight the Liberals make the race in Toronto-Danforth. If there is any doubt of Craig Scott's victory, I will grit my teeth and cast a ballot for him, but not his party. It's a subtle distinction, but one that is important. The circumstances in your riding are likely much different than mine. I urge you to take all issues into account, and vote how you feel.
If that means sitting it out, know that your choice is valid. One day your voice will be heard again when we come out of the wilderness of our ugly politics.
As NDP strategists mull over the polls this weekend and try to figure out why their shift to the right of the Liberals on the issue of balanced budgets and deficit financing doesn’t seem to be playing out as they hoped in Ontario, they might be wise to take some time out and do a little research on the British Labour Party leadership election.
Early projections seem to indicate rogue left wing MP Jeremy Corbyn is poised to win the party’s leadership race on Sept. 12. Corbyn is not only left wing, if he wins the Labour leadership, he would be the party’s most left leader in more than three decades dating back to the early 1980’s when Labour was led by Michael Foot.
The longtime Labour politician has also remained unshakeable in his convictions of what he believes constitutes a truly social democratic society. Or, to put it more succinctly, Corbyn has never advocated tax cuts for the middle class as one way of achieving social democratic goals.
The Blairites are of course horrified but it doesn’t really matter what they think if the majority of the Labour Party membership is behind Corbyn which they appear to be. The British press is already speculating the MP from Islington -- who chooses to wear a suit and tie as little as possible and likes to speak his mind about his left convictions -- could pose a real problem for David Cameron and the Conservatives and actually become Prime Minister in the near future. Some journalists are accusing the Blairites of being stuck in the past and failing to see the on the ground appeal of a guy like Jeremy Corbyn to a significant constituency of voters.
Let’s shift over to the Canadian political scene for a moment.
Although the people running the Federal NDP and its provincial wings these days will never admit it publicly, they are strongly influenced by Third Way politics and the vision that Tony Blair very firmly stamped on the British Labour Party in the early 1990’s. Third Way politics basically says there is no way social democratic parties can get elected anymore on the types of platforms they ran on from the post World War Two period up until the early 1980’s. They believe all voters, including working class voters, have moved on from any opposition to capitalism, favour neoliberal ideology without question, do not believe an interventionist state in the economy can ever have a positive influence, are anti-labour and much more individualistic than they had been in the past.
So wherein lies the hope for social democratic parties as far as how the Third Way sees it? There is a "third way" that can be instituted which means social democratic parties have to far lower their expectations of the past by fully embracing the inequities of the free market, eliminating government intervention in the economy from the policy book, sometimes reducing income taxes and certainly never raising them, being firmly committed to balancing the budget, trying to appear as business friendly as possible and never, ever doing anything pro-labour.
If social democratic parties are willing to accept the cold and harsh realities that the general public has moved significantly to the right, they can then make themselves palatable to voters and actually win elections. What is their advantage over the right wing parties? They are a kinder, gentler form of neoliberal party than the mean spirited right. They seek not to destroy the state but to try to preserve it in the current harsh realities that we live in. Their goal is not to completely eliminate taxes but maybe just keep them where they are or reduce them slightly. These parties are also much more easily able to present themselves as more open minded and liberal parties on social issues than the right wing parties who are really neoconservative parties and believe in a much less socially liberal society.
The Third Way is the strategy New Labour ran and was elected in Britain on in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections. It was the platform that was used in Saskatchewan that saw four straight NDP governments elected from 1991 to 2003. It is also the strategy that has been used by the Manitoba NDP that is now in its fourth consecutive term after winning power in 1999. A lot of NDP strategists would probably argue that the short-lived Bob Rae NDP government in Ontario in the early 1990’s might have lasted longer had it been willing to accept Third Way strategies a little more fully or at least a lot sooner.
However, all of a sudden the Third Way strategy doesn’t seem to be working as well as it once did. New Labour lost the 2010 British election and was soundly defeated in this spring’s election by the Conservatives. Many of its losses came at the expense of a much more left Scottish Nationalist Party.
In Saskatchewan, the NDP was soundly defeated by the right wing Saskatchewan Party in the 2007 election and then thoroughly routed by them again in the 2011 election – suffering the party’s worst electoral loss since its very early CCF days. The once formidable Saskatchewan NDP now sits rudderless and directionless in opposition with only a rump of nine seats. The party is not positioned to win the next election and it could be a number of years before they are competitive again. To give the Saskatchewan Party credit, they were forward thinking enough to shift slightly left after their surprising 2003 election loss – eliminating any public fears that they would privatize Crown corporations, generally maintaining existing government services and shedding the image of being nothing more than a neoconservative party trying to move the province to the hard right.
The B.C. NDP was supposed to be a shoe-in for government in the 2013 election as a discredited Liberal government appeared to be on its way out. However, the party ran on a moderate centre-right platform and was soundly defeated. The Manitoba NDP is likely headed for defeat in the next provincial election. The Nova Scotia NDP was elected for the first time on a centre-left platform in 2009 but only lasted one term being defeated by Liberals in the 2013 election.
And perhaps the biggest screw up of them all – the Ontario NDP’s bizarre decision to trigger an election in the spring of 2014 and then run on a right wing populist platform. Right of, you guessed it, the Liberals this time around.
Every thing they did in the campaign seemed designed out of some sort of Mike Harris/Rob Ford handbook. The NDP railed out against government excess and tried to position itself as the party of small business. It lashed out at the Toronto “elites,” which was pretty much anyone who questioned their ethics or motives, and wondered why many unions in the province decided not to support them after the NDP was running a campaign that was in many ways hostile to labour. They accused the Liberals of running a fiscally irresponsible campaign when in reality the Liberal campaign was hardly fiscally ambitious at all. The party even decided to place a cover ad in the Toronto Sun of all newspapers – you know – to reach out to all their blue-collar right wing friends who read it.
And it all made such “common sense.” Except to voters of course who decided to re-elect the Liberals to a majority on election day and reward the NDP with a third place finish.
Now the Federal NDP strategists will tell you the party ran on a centre-right platform in the 2011 election winning more seats than it ever has and becoming the official opposition for the first time in the party’s history. However, if they were actually honest -- and in their current state of hubris they most likely wouldn’t be -- they would admit that the party’s good fortunes had much more to do with the strange circumstances of that particular election than anything that was in the NDP platform.
First, the Liberals hit what will be for them likely rock bottom running under a leader which is the worst the party has ever seen in its modern history in Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff wasn’t even able to hold his own Toronto seat.
Second, after almost 20 years of successful campaigns in Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois completely imploded and bit the dust leaving a tremendous opportunity for another party to become dominant in the province. With the Liberals remaining largely discredited in Quebec since the sponsorship scandal and the Conservatives quickly wearing out their welcome after the 2006 election, the NDP was able to seize that opportunity and fill the gap.
Third, and most important, the NDP was very well served by their late leader Jack Layton who admirably decided to fight the campaign despite suffering the effects of a recent hip replacement and what later came to be known was terminal cancer. In his fourth campaign as party leader, Layton caught on like wildfire across the country but no more so than in Quebec where his meteoric increase in popularity there sealed the deal for the NDP in the province.
The point of all this is the NDP might actually want to try something that would be considered a little “radical” to those people running the party these days. Rather than always shifting right why not shift a little left? Maybe consider that working people might actually be a little bit fed up after 25 years of neoliberal policies and lies that have left them worse off than at any time since before the Second World War. That people may not be so easily tricked into the deficit hysteria as they were 20 years ago. That they even may be willing to pay a bit more in income taxes if this means better public services.
In general, why not just try and run on the values your party was founded on rather than someone else’s? You certainly would make your base happy and give your party members and campaign workers something to believe in again and you might just gain some votes and a little respect at the same time.
It also likely wouldn’t splatter as much egg on your face as promising to balance the budget heading into a looming recession.
Just a thought.
Fraser Needham is a freelance journalist living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He has been working and writing in Saskatchewan for the past 15 years. Aside from the Saskatchewan CCF/NDP, he follows Aboriginal issues and politics closely.
Stephen Harper has no plan to grow our economy and no plan to help the middle class, so he's spending your money trying to convince you that I'm not ready.
Here's what I'm not ready for.
I’m not ready to stand by as our economy slides into recession. Not ready to watch hard-working Canadians lose their jobs and fall further behind. And I’m certainly not ready to stand by while this government continues to ignore hard-working Canadians, when it should be offering a plan for economic growth.
I am ready to do what our opponents won’t: Ask the wealthiest 1% of Canadians to pay more tax so our middle class can pay less. And while they propose massive cuts and austerity, I’ll lead our country with a historic investment plan to strengthen the middle class, create jobs and grow our economy.
By now we have all likely heard one variation or another of this pitch being made by federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau -- a pitch that very directly seeks to outflank NDP leader Tom Mulcair from the "left" in progressive terms. This one was taken directly from a Liberal campaign email.
While Mulcair has made a fundamentally misguided, and likely untenable, balanced budget pledge, Trudeau has invoked the language and rhetoric of Occupy ("the 1%", "tax the rich") and sought to inspire with a plan that is interventionist and aims to create jobs and growth via stimulus -- something I suspect is far more appealing to many progressive voters than is Mulcair's rhetoric of austerity.
In Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci has announced an upcoming deficit stimulus plan very similar to the one proposed by Trudeau and using very similar fiscal and economic logic -- and this despite the fact that Alberta is starting from an already existing deficit:
Despite a deficit that will be the largest in two decades, and that the government has warned could grow to $6.5-billion, Finance Minister Joe Ceci says the province could borrow more to speed an economic recovery and create jobs.
“Do we have the money? Yes. I think we would have the capacity to borrow some more for investments in infrastructure,” Mr. Ceci told The Globe and Mail on Friday. “We’re forecasting GDP to be on the growth side in 2016, so an investment in transit and other infrastructure would come at the time when it would bolster a brightening GDP.
In fact, while there is a long way to go, there are some initial indications that Trudeau's pitch is working among the swing voters who actually matter -- progressive voters outside of Quebec (the NDP appears, for now, to be virtually certain to sweep Quebec again).
Justin Trudeau has helped himself with his proposed deficit-funded infrastructure spending program. Thomas Mulcair, meanwhile, seems to be hurting himself with his promise of a balanced budget, suggesting that Canadians are leery of focusing on fiscal rectitude – rather than kick-starting the economy – when middle class workers have not seen a real wage increase in years. Furthermore, concerns with fiscal discipline are largely concentrated in the Conservative camp, which is largely unavailable to the NDP. At best, Mr. Mulcair may be making himself mildly less objectionable to those who won’t vote for him and ignoring the preferences of his available constituency. While we understand the importance of signalling fiscal prudence, the NDP may want to consider the potential fall-out more carefully.
The key point here being "concerns with fiscal discipline are largely concentrated in the Conservative camp, which is largely unavailable to the NDP" -- a point that NDP strategists of late simply do not seem to understand.
As Fraser Needham pointed out in a piece about the NDP's bizarre decision to campaign from the right, the party seems to be trying to mimic, in the critical NDP-Liberal battleground of Ontario, the tone of the disastrous ONDP campaign of 2014 that sought to appeal to a largely mythical "Rob Ford" swing voter and that resulted in helping to get the Kathleen Wynne Liberals reelected with a majority government in what unfolded as a strategic vote against the Hudak Conservatives.
That ONDP campaign failed for a reason. It alienated progressive voters by sounding very "populist" and right wing, while, in fact, not appealing to right-wingers who in Ontario (and elsewhere) are simply never going to vote NDP in anything close to meaningful numbers. The "Rob Ford" voter is largely fictional as his constituency was a mixture of actual conservatives and reactionaries and the disaffected who turned to or supported him not at all for his "policies" -- such as they were -- but for his grandiose personality and rhetoric.
In fact Ford's polices were largely irrelevant to this second group of voters and as a result their voting decisions and directions outside of municipal politics were going to be all over the map. This can be demonstrated by the results in the various heartlands of "Ford Nation". All of Etobicoke, York and Scarborough were swept by the Liberals in the provincial election, and swept despite the very vocal calls by the Ford brothers at the time to toss the Liberals out of office!
Wynne, though she has predictably governed more to the right, campaigned from the left and directly and successfully sought to appeal to NDP-Liberal swing voters (the only swing voters who actually matter to the NDP in vote rich Ontario) while the ONDP tried to appeal to a group of "swing voters" that simply did not exist -- and did so in very reactionary terms.
Trudeau is doing what Wynne did while Mulcair echoes ONDP leader Andrea Horwath. Trudeau is clearly targeting the soft progressive vote that the NDP is either taking for granted or do not think they need.
But it is also clever. With Mulcair almost inexplicably -- given that it was his principled stance on Bill C-51 that shifted him from third to first place in national polls while Trudeau's pandering stance cost him dearly -- adopting a very cautious and even rhetorically reactionary approach, this was the hand that Trudeau had left to play. The Liberals exist to win, and if portraying Mulcair as a right wing austerity wolf in progressive sheep's clothing is the way to win, that is what they will do.
Trudeau can only take this approach and make this appeal to progressive swing voters, though, as it is at least in part true.
Mulcair and his strategists, and they alone, have made this possible and allowed him to be able to do this by taking a series of positions and adopting a tone that are both right-wing and wrong-headed and that will be perceived as such by the very voters that Mulcair needs and that were swinging his way.
There is still plenty of time for Mulcair and the NDP to avoid the trap they so clearly seem to be walking into. The soft progressive constituency that is willing to go either NDP or Liberal to both stop Harper and get what they hope will be progressive governance is still very much up for grabs.
But if the NDP continues down this track federally, there is a very real probability that the result in Ontario will be what came of the strikingly similar campaign strategies of Andrea Horwath and Olivia Chow that sought bizarrely to appeal to right-wing voters and that both failed miserably.
And without winning in most of the key ridings in Ontario no progressive party, Liberal or New Democrat, stands any chance of becoming government.
Mulcair and his strategists seem to need to be reminded of this.
