Friday, September 20, 2019

Trudeau The Lame Duck

I'm not sure of the effect of the latest Trudeau scandal will have on the federal election as voters are a lot less disturbed than the media would have us believe.
Voters have proven over and over again that foibles count less than agenda as Donald Trump has proven with his resilient popularity despite his many moral and ethical failings.

As for the blackface brouhaha, the media has in fact blown up the scandal as if it was the end of the world.
I'm not so sure it is.

Canada is largely a liberal country with the Conservatives generally winning power when the NDP and Liberals split the liberal vote, but the reality is that substantially more Canadians fall on the left-hand side of the political spectrum than the right.

It remains amusing and somewhat sad that the political undoing of Trudeau may (and I repeat 'may') be undone by something so stupid as wearing blackface twenty and thirty years ago.
Like Al Capone whose many crimes went unpunished, it was simple tax evasion that finally sent him to jail for eleven years, ending his lifelong criminal career.

I fully expect this scandal to peter out, but not without repercussions for the Trudeau brand and his holier-than-thou political persona.

For Canadian voters, the alternative is the uninteresting and decidedly bland Andrew Scheer, who has impressed nobody with his anyone-but-Trudeau campaign strategy, a man without morals or even a plan, destined to be a caretaker if elected.

Perhaps that's a good thing considering the damage the Trudeau Liberals have wreaked upon the Canadian pocketbook with massive and unnecessary deficits used to buy voter loyalty, something that Canadians should be ashamed of for accepting.

But Andrew Scheer's election to the Conservative leadership was predicated on a fraud, whereby Canada's dairy industry bought up thousands of phoney memberships in order to support him at the convention in return for his commitment to retain the cartel status of the dairy industry in Canada.
That cynical and fraudulent support led him to a razor-thin victory, something he had the chutzpah to gloat over in his victory speech, guzzling a carton of milk at the podium in tribute.

So the choice for Canadians this election is grim.
A lame-duck Prime Minister Trudeau whose bread and butter feminine/environment/apology game plan is destroyed or a Prime Minister Scheer who has proven that before even getting into power, he will unabashedly play ball with the powerful special interests.
As for the NDP, their numbers are about to be returned to the also-ran status, the party stupidly dumping Thomas Mulcair in the deluded belief that they were a stone's throw from power. Mulcair was, in fact, the best that it was going to get and replacing him with turban-clad Jagmeet Singh ensured that the NDP's power base in Quebec would be destroyed.
As for the Greens, they remain a protest vote for the radical granolas, and while they will pick up votes from the NDP, they are destined to their traditional role of filling a couple of Parliamentary opposition seats in useless and sad ignominy.

Which leaves the only politician who tells it like he actually sees it, Maxime Bernier, who has attacked all that the majority of Canadians hold sacred.
His branding of the saintly, useful idiot Greta Thunberg as unbalanced was perhaps a death blow to his campaign for legitimacy. But he voices concerns that a minority of Canadians hold but are too afraid to say out loud.
His position on immigration, climate, coddled Quebec and big government may be a lot more important than the media will admit, branding him 'Mad Max' for his heretical beliefs that run counter to liberal media bias.

At any rate, if Trudeau gets elected it will be a subdued and diminished leader that will take us forward.
There will be no more moralistic preaching, no more holier-than-thou pronouncements and no more pseudo-feminism or radical environmentalism.
The bread and butter of the Trudeau persona will be forever changed and it remains to be seen exactly what it will be.

On the international scene, Trudeau is a diminished and mortally wounded leader, seen as a fraud, particularly in the United Staes which views blackface as an unpardonable sin.

The newly-minted NBC late-night talk-show hosted by Toronto's Scarborough's own Lilly Singh dumped Trudeau unceremoniously from an appearance, something that augers poorly for the future where Trudeau's golden boy image is forever destroyed.
In light of the blackface scandal, he is seen as a pompous moralistic fraud whose comeuppance is well-deserved.
The mocking is devastating.
I saw a photo  of Trump and Trudeau shaking hands which was mockingly captioned as "Trump still keeping company with white supremacists." Ha! Ha!

While voters may not punish Trudeau at the polls, the legacy of the blackface incident will haunt his political future.
Just one future protester in blackface at a Trudeau campaign rally will be enough to destroy the moment. The blackface tool will be exploited mercilessly by his enemies and opponents.

Paradoxically, a diminished Trudeau may be preferable to the puffed-up moralist and spendthrift of these past four years.
If we are destined to re-elect Trudeau, then the new version might well be more palatable than the last.

And so this election is the saddest of all in-memory where voters will undoubtedly hold their nose as they vote for whomever.