But the India trip has had some real impact on Liberal support and one has to ask whether Justin has peaked and is on the way down.
Even the Indians cringed at the Bollywood style outfights that our first family decked themselves out in and questions are starting to be asked, even among supporters, just how stable our PM is.
His cringe-worthy outfits, costing tens of thousands of dollars belies that fact that the Indian government think poorly of him and has shunned him badly on the trip
"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada was the subject of global ridicule for his Bollywood-worthy outfits during a weeklong trip to India.All this after the "humankind' fiasco where our intrepid PM hectored a questioner at a town hall meeting advising her that 'mankind' was no longer acceptable in his eyes. The backlash was particularly vicious and humiliating, prompting Trudeau to tell the media clumsily that it was all a joke.
His elaborate dress was called “too Indian even for an Indian.” Above, Mr. Trudeau and his family with the movie star Shah Rukh Khan." New York Times
Not many of us, even the faithful believed that.It may very well be that the "humankind"
gaffe may have sent Justin 'jumping the shark.' the exact point at which we can say he turned from a modern new-age feminist superstar to bumbling dolt.
At any rate, the Liberals and Justin personally suffered real damage after the Canadian diplomatic reception in India that offered an invitation to a Canadian man connected with Sikh terrorism. The invite was quickly rescinded, but the damage was done.
To make matters worse, those speaking for the Prime Minister intimated that it was elements in the Indian government who made the invitation in an effort to discredit Trudeau.
This assertion set the Indian government into a rage and in a sharply and undiplomatic rebuke, told the Canadian government that India had nothing to do with the invite and in a diplomatic note said that; "Any suggestion to the contrary is baseless and unacceptable.”
And so the latest poll shows Trudeau and his Liberals falling behind the Conservatives and the only thing surprising is why it took so long.
For the longest time, Trudeau's support was rock solid despite his many gaffes, missteps and reckless overspending, but cracks in his feminist/new world armour appeared when he started to be mocked in the media, especially the foreign media.
It isn't policy that is hurting the Liberals, it is Trudeau's personality, which is what propelled the Liberals into power back in 2015 and which is sinking the party now.
Like young teen girl giddy over the latest iteration of a popular boy band, when the crush is over, it is over, and near impossible to get back on the bandwagon.
As for Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, we've not heard or seen much of him, which is a good thing because when your opponent is driving towards a cliff, it's bad form to yell.... Faster! Faster!
But sensing trouble, Trudeau will fight for his political future tooth and nail and damn the consequences for the country. He's already demonstrated his selfish propensities by running up the debt for no good reason except to keep him and his party in power, a selfish decision that demonstrates his utter contempt for taxpayers and future taxpayers.
And so we all sit here and hope that the NAFTA negotiations are successful and conclude without inflicting too much damage on us, pain that we are already factoring in, in order to placate Donald Trump's ego.
But let's be clear, any NAFTA is better than no NAFTA.
And so Justin finds himself between a rock and a hard place, deciding between a bad deal in NAFTA or no deal at all.
Now Trump has gone all in, by making an exemption for Canada from the soon to be imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum conditional on a successfully re-negotiated NAFTA.
It seems that Trump, sensing that Canada is on course to reject the NAFTA deal and damn the consequences, is terrified that failure to 'win' a new favourable deal for the USA would destroy his image as the great negotiator, something we all know he is loathe to allow.
If the deal is scrapped, the full weight of the disaster on the economy will take a year to be felt and another year to send unemployment skyrocketing and the economy tanking and since the Liberals are running a huge deficit already, there's no way to ease the pain through spending.
All this in the runup to the next federal election.
Even if Justin somehow makes a deal, the political pain from the moaners who lose out because of Canadian concessions made will be harsh.
Since it is inconceivable that Justin will allow the dairy cartel to be dismantled or the duties on cross-border online shopping, it probably falls on the auto sector to be given up, a disaster for Ontario.
Make a deal and face a political disaster or make no deal and face a political disaster, a veritable 'Sophie's Choice.
It is lights out for the Liberals and there's no new age blather that can talk Justin and the Liberals out of this one.
Facing diminishing polls, ridicule and difficult decisions ahead, I think we're going a different Justin, a nasty sort who will bare his teeth and viciously attack opponents, blaming others for all his woes.
In other words, just another cheap politician.
And here is another fearless prediction.
You won't see another photo of Justin in costume anymore, not even for Halloween!
And I'll bet he's also ditching the goofy socks too.
Or in the very least, he's going to have a smaller majority. If he's counting on the Instagram crowd to pull him through (see the Rick Mercer rant corresponding to this topic), that's only going to take him so far.
ReplyDeleteRemembering that Hillary Clinton easily won the first match-up against him, the Trump machine hit on the bright idea of taking their campaign into an area that was alien to her side: the industrial belts. That meant the grain belt, the rust belt, the mining belt, areas whose livelihoods are tied to something a little more substantial than Insta (natural resources). If Scheer's side can do similarly to Trudeau, the next electoral campaign promises to be a dogfight. No matter what anyone says about him, Scheer has more than enough time to make a full and complete recovery from his own gaffes while the Tory war room irons out their strategy to deal with Prime Minister Zoolander and his social climbing other half.
Just don't go dressing up like the theme park version of your host country's greeters.
Mr. Sauga here. Sadly, this election promises the bad, the badder and the baddest. Quebec won't vote for a turban wearer, never in a million years. The NDP had Jack Layton, and nobody else. The only NDP candidates before the Layton landslide (in Quebec) were Thomas Mulcair, and Phil Edmundston who won a by-election then lost in the next general election about two years hence.
DeleteThere is the old platitude "It is better to be a moron and shut up (Sheer) than to open your mouth and prove it (Justin)".
Between Gorgeous (Justin) and The Dike (Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario), and now Trump beating his chest about killing NAFTA, this can bode very badly for the whole country, but especially the former economic engine of Canada, Ontario. Melancholic, while you're right about Sheer having a window of time to backtrack on his gaffes, the question is will he?
Morneau's budget was about as bad as the late Alan MacEachen's budget back in 1981 (the pre-recession budget that ended up putting Canada into the worst economic tailspin since the Great Depression), and I think what can happen here will make the recession of the early 1980s pale by comparison!
Had the Conservatives chosen Maxime Bernier as Leader, I would agree with the premise of your blog. However, the guy the party chose -- Andrew Sheer -- is such a Robert Stanfield type that come election day, the electorate will hold their noses and vote for Justin.
ReplyDeleteJustin may have the bad habit of saying "uh" twenty times every minute but Sheer has a permanent smirk on his face that wouldn't disappear even if he were announcing the end of the world.
Mr. Sauga here. Tony, my nickname for Sheer is Dolly Dimples. I hope you're wrong about the electorate and that "holding their noses" bit, but like I wrote above. He has had the good fortune of endless screw-ups at Justin's expense to eclipse his gaffes, but that's quickly coming to an end. Between the stooges of the three parties, you have the bad, the badder and the baddest. It seems you're giving Justin the title of the bad, i.e., the best of the worst. That's OK, because every reader here can easily choose how to label those Three Stooges using the three labels I've provided.
DeleteNow with the Big Three automakers telling the f--khead in the White House about a billion dollars in losses just on doing what he says he'll do about steel and aluminum, that may draw attention. Too, is he going to alienate 35 state governors who say killing free trade will hurt their economies.
Now we have a clear idea about how the f--khead in the White House got his billions. He bullied, he manipulated, he hid the facts, and he cheated. Sadly, he's paramount to too many CEOs who run public companies that manipulate numbers to justify laying off countless people to fatten their pay envelopes, and trust me, despite so called "objective" audits by the biggest accounting firms (it used to be the Big Seven, now down to about three or four), they are slaves to the big business owners. CEOs act like they own those public companies, but the f--khead in the White House privately owned his companies, ensured any losses and bankruptcies he incurred were at the expense of other people's money, and bullied those who worked before him.
With any luck, that freak of nature will be a true aberration and not the new trend of leader in a democracy...with any luck! That the the f--khead at 24 Sussex Dr. and the f--khead in the White House haven't duelled yet is a surprise considering they are both obnoxious narcissists.
Not so sure NAFTA will destroy Justin as he is a pretty good diplomat but I think within 2-3 years enough Canadians will see through his superficial ways.
ReplyDeleteI suspect he still wins a majority in 2019 just because nobody knows who Scheer is and he is about as dull as Harper and of course many Canadians wont support a politician with a turban on his head. But there is a chance of a Liberal minority. I think it all hinges on how quickly the real estate bubble collapses in Toronto and BC..if it really falls off the rails within a year then Justin will be in trouble as that means unemployment and bankruptcies in those areas which are key Liberal battlezones.
I suspect a stock market collapse is also a possibility in the next year or so which could throw more uncertainty on the economy which is by far Justins weakest point.
Its telling though as a nation that most Canadians thought Justin was the best option in 2015..its a sad statement on Canadians in my opinion.
Thomas Mulcair would have been a much better leader overall and in fact was more conservative than Justin is ironically. But Canadians are more interested in glitz and glamour than integrity experience and rigour and we will all pay the price for this.
Most Canadians show how unsophisticated they are by somehow believing that real estate is worth what it is in places like Toronto and Vancouver even after the collpase in the USA. Its incredibly embarassing to see Canada make the same mistakes that the Americans did and somehow think we are special and will get away with it..ironically Montreal may be one of the stronger real estate markets in the country over the next few years in relative terms..if we elect the CAQ or Liberals.
I am still not convinced the PQ is gone and buried..I suspect they will finish stronger than any polls suggest as they use their media clout to trash anglos and immigrants which will bring out the worst in les Quebecois by October 1st. My prediction is a CAQ minority with PQ finishing a surprisingly strong second and the Liberals only keeping their usual safe anglo seats.