goldstein: what, other than ego, makes trudeau think he can win?
more than a year of polling has shown the liberals under his leadership are behind pierre poilievre and the conservatives by double digits
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since we’re told that prime minister justin trudeau is contemplating his political future, a fair question to ask is what – other than his own ego – makes him think he can win the next federal election? or, alternatively, if trudeau has ruled out that possibility, what makes him think he’s best equipped to lead the liberals so that they aren’t relegated to third or fourth place in party standings in the next election?
more than a year of polling has shown the liberals under his leadership are behind pierre poilievre and the conservatives by double digits.
an ipsos poll done last week – after trudeau’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, chrystia freeland, resigned from cabinet on monday, basically declaring she had lost confidence in trudeau’s leadership – found the pm and his party plummeting to new depths of unpopularity with canadians.
the poll of 1,001 adult canadians taken dec. 19-20 (freeland resigned dec. 16, with trudeau’s cabinet shuffle occurring on dec. 20) shows the conservatives are now 25-points ahead of the liberals (45% for the conservatives, 20% each for the liberals and ndp).
ipsos ceo darrell bricker noted that liberal support is now “the second-lowest share of the popular vote ipsos has ever recorded for the liberals, who are plumbing new lows not reached since 2011, when michael ignatieff led the liberals” with 19% of popular support.
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in addition, 73% of canadians surveyed want trudeau to resign – including 43% of liberal voters – 77% say it’s time for another party to form the government and 53% say the opposition parties should defeat trudeau’s liberal minority government at the earliest opportunity, as the conservatives, bloc québécois and, at long last, the ndp, are now vowing to do.
finally, in the face of trudeau saying on friday – in a brief and impromptu encounter with reporters – that his new cabinet’s first meeting was “almost entirely focussed on the canada-u.s. dynamic” – what does he have to say about the ipsos poll finding that “just 14% (-8 pts since early december) now believe trudeau is the best equipped to handle donald trump, while 39% (+5 pts since early december) say poilievre is best, a 25-point gap between the two leaders”?
the fact that trudeau, notorious for not answering questions the media poses to him, has now escalated this to not making himself available to answer questions – he has yet to comment on freeland’s resignation – suggests, as liberal mp wayne long put it, that trudeau is “delusional” and “living in a false reality” if he thinks the liberals can go on like this.
in the wake of freeland’s resignation, the pm apparently thought it was more important to talk to liberal partisans, at christmas parties for liberal donors and political staffers – where, again, he said nothing of substance – rather than address canadians about the political mess he caused in ottawa last week, through his own actions.
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perhaps it’s that deep down, trudeau still believes he can pull off a repeat of the 2015 election where he came out of nowhere to lead the third-place liberals to power over then prime minister stephen harper and the conservatives.
but in 2015, he wasn’t burdened by the nine years of political baggage he and his party have accumulated since then.
perhaps it goes back even further, with the pm reliving, in his head, his 2012 charity boxing match with conservative sen. patrick brazeau, which he unexpectedly won.
if so, the reality he has yet to face is that these days, he most resembles the black knight in the famous monty python skit, who keeps insisting he can fight on, despite having lost his arms and legs in a battle with king arthur.
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