For those of you who were awaiting the next installment of #TheResistance, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I have to put that on hiatus for a while. Not because I'm out of ideas for things I can make fun of them for, but because the real thing has basically abandoned the home front. #TheResistance has been rather derelict in their #Resisting duties over the last little while, possibly because they're too busy acting as an anti-Trump fifth column in preparation for the all important midterms.
The current political arm of said #Resistance, the NDP, have all but vanished after using up every last drop of fuel they had in the tank to kick the walls of the Legislature so they could try to protect the careers of a handful of Toronto City Councillors. Subsequently, they rushed out the most half-baked campaign anyone's seen in quite some time, leaving the hapless Jennifer Keesmaat with half the votes of the incumbent Mayor. Their pals at the CBC, likely sensing a rout, decided that they couldn't be bothered to cover the recent Ontario municipal elections, but you had best believe that they had the resources to bombard us with endless Kavanaugh coverage.
Depending on who you believe, the NDP is either currently imploding, bleeding votes to real left-wing parties like Quebec Solidaire and the New Brunswick Greens, or re-enacting their famous "play dead and then suddenly emerge as a third way in the middle of an election" strategy, or some combination of all three. Andrea Horwath has been lashing out in all kinds of weird ways, getting into some bizarrely under-reported possibly-a-shoving-match-I-don't-know-because-Canadian-journalism-is-terrible? with PC MPP Donna Skelly and sort-of-calling-for-violence? against Doug Ford by saying she wanted to "keep our foot on his neck". Which, luckily for her, nobody took seriously because everyone knows that the NDP's feet, as they were, are both stuck somewhere up their collective rectums.
But at least Andrea and the rest of the NDP stumblebums are in the headlines on their bad days. Jag meet Singh is currently reduced to begging the Prime Minister to call a by-election after spending months outside the House doing… I don't know?… and calling for the cancellation of the Frum-Bannon Munkster Mash Debate a whole two days before it was scheduled to air, which is several kinds of pathetic.
As for the CPC, they just announced that defeated and disgraced Toronto City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti might represent a Brampton riding in the next election. This, just after they parted ways with "go-for-the-media's-jugular" staffer Jacqui Delaney over totally plausible "health reasons", which proves that no matter how bad Trudeau is doing, the CPC can somehow find a way to do worse. This is because no amount of election losses will convince them that no, Canadians are not ever going to get to the point where they are so fed up with the Liberals that they ignore obvious coddling of arguable racists.
Faced with these two unappetizing options on their left and their right, caught in their own mirror image death spirals, the way forward for Trudeau and the Liberals is obvious. Having spent one election as "Real Change" already, they can now comfortably settle into the Liberal sweet spot of "Status Quo." They can smear the CPC for being Trump-adjacent, which the CPC seems bent on proving correct, while lampooning the NDP as dreamy socialists even as the Liberals themselves engage in dreamy socialism. No fights with NDP or PC Premiers, no poorly thought out promises that they'll have to walk back later. Just good old line-toeing while the NDP and CPC try frantically to capture some of that sweet populist energy.
And I may be going to hell for saying this, but I can't fault Trudeau for taking this tack, either. Is it cruel to allow the Opposition parties to destroy themselves? Sure it is. But the NDP and CPC refuse to learn their lesson. They keep watching Fox News or listening to Chapo Trap House, or vice versa, and fooling themselves into thinking that the cure for what ails our politics will come from outside our borders, rather than doing the work here in Canada. They'd rather fight battles that have no need for Canadian involvement, rather than fighting the war at home.
Photo Credit: CTV News
Written by Josh Lieblein
