E-dayism
Our politics is too obsessed with one day out of 1461. It's wrecking everything.
This will not be a post that picks endlessly at the latest microscopic developments in the debate over Justin Trudeau’s future. I want to make some broader observations about why our politics is lately so terrible. But to get there, I do have to start with the prime minister.
He gave another podcast interview at the end of last week, to the good people at Village Media. His answers kind of are what they are at this point. Having parsed the hell out of a previous podcast appearance, I’ll leave you to decode this one on your own. He has many thoughts on current TV shows, for instance.
Today was supposed to be Justin Trudeau’s deadline for deciding whether he’s going to lead the party into the next election. Spoiler: he already decided.
I’m on the record believing Trudeau should be the leader in the next election, for the least inspiring possible reason: because they will lose and he might as well wear it. Others think there’s still a chance for the Liberals’ fortunes to reverse, so Trudeau should get out of the way and let [INSERT NAME HERE] change millions of voters’ minds by [INSERT MAGIC PROCESS HERE].
What I might as well point out — and I can’t emphasize this strongly enough — is that, judging from reader response to my recent posts, the people who are happiest with Trudeau’s decision to stay as leader are the ones who want the Liberal Party of Canada erased from Canada’s political map. They believe Trudeau’s continued best efforts are necessary to achieving this goal. Liberals might want to ponder that irony, but it’s not as though they can do anything about it. He’s staying. He has a thing in his head that he wants to express, and all of us will now get to watch him express it.
What I want to do today is pull the camera back, and examine how the Liberal Party of Canada became so irrelevant to the decisions of the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Just as the Conservative Party of Canada has receded from the deliberations of the Conservative leader, and the New Democratic Party of Canada became a nation-spanning shrug emoji.
The question before the congregation today is: Why is our political discourse so vapid?
Why do entire caucuses of MPs eagerly transform into noddy-head backdrops or echo chambers (“Triple triple triple,” “Axe the tax/ Build the homes”) for their leaders? How could Parliament ground to a halt without most Canadians even noticing?
The answers are complex. We’re not going to capture all the reasons in a single post. But lately I’ve been thinking it has a lot to do with the way Canadian politics has become obsessed with a single binary question: who’ll win the next election.
Four years is 1460 days, or 1461 if you add leap years. Affective polarization and the return of a competitive Conservative Party have produced a potent situation, which we can describe thus: (1) The two big parties are competitive to win every election. (2) Neither can stand the thought of the other winning. (3) So each election carries the threat of each big party’s worst nightmare becoming reality.
I’m gonna be straight with you, subscribers: Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre love this state of affairs. And the only people who love it more than the leaders do are their stupidest and most unimaginative helpers.