Campaign notebook: what to do, what to do

Pierre's paradox

My plane from Washington landed just as the Mango Mussolini’s tariffs were hitting. The plane was on time. So was he.

Will things be as bad as the economists are prognosticating? Well, here's a helpful visual guide from the nice folks at CNN:

SO MUCH WINNING, as I like to say.

**

We were shooting some of the documentary near and around the U.S. Capitol yesterday. For some of it, The guys shot B roll of me loitering near the Canadian Embassy. At one point, I muttered something to myself, and one of the crew asked me what I'd said.

“Poilievre won’t ever be boss of this place,” I said. They looked puzzled. "Never mind,” I said.

In the days after Canadians vote, Conservative spin meisters will flood the air waves saying that “no one predicted” Trudeau leaving, Trump winning, tariffs arriving.

But, um, that won't be true, will it? Yours Truly had been saying, for months, that Trudeau would depart. Weeks before the vote, I said that Kamala Harris was losing (see hard evidence, below). Equally, Your Humble Narrator volunteered for Harris in the U.S. and every day - every day - Trump would talk about his tariffs plan. Every day.

I wasn't the only one making these predictions. Others did, too. They weren't radical opinions.

That's what makes the likely coming defeat of Pierre Poilievre so unforgivable. They had time to get ready, and make changes to the strategy.

And they didn’t.

**

Getting ready is 99% of the job in politics. The Conservatives didn't get ready. Like all conservatives, they prefer stability and constancy. But we live in a world where those things don't really exist anymore. Hats off, Mr. Trump.

There were things that the Conservative campaign could've done months before the vote. Here are my top three.

**

Before Doug Ford became a regular on the American news TV circuit, Pierre Poilievre could have – and should have - done the same damn thing.

Americans have only a passing acquaintance with the pecking order in Canadian politics. For example, when they hear that you work for a Canadian Senator, they actually think it's a Senator like one of theirs: you know, elected and therefore legitimate.

Appearing on American TV with the title of “Canadian Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition” would’ve commanded Jake Tapper’s attention. And Pierre could have gone on there and told the truth: “Donald Trump isn’t a real conservative, Jake. He believes in interfering in the markets, in the private sector, and in peoples’ lives. Real conservatives don't do those things.”

Would Poilievre have ever done that? Of course not. But he needed to create a lot of light between himself and Trump, months ago.

He didn't.

**

The next thing that Team Blue needed to have done is to remember the only thing I really learned in law school. They needed to always ask them themselves the question: "What if I'm wrong?”

As in, what if they were wrong about Justin Trudeau leaving? A majority of them had convinced themselves that the former Liberal leader was an idiot and a narcissist, and he would never ever quit.

Well, there's no disputing that he was a narcissist. But he was no idiot. He beat three Conservative leaders in a row, and he knew, in his tiny black heart, that the jig was up.

In 1992, when I was running the very first War Room in Canadian politics, we asked ourselves that question a lot: what if we're wrong? We figured Mulroney would go, but we weren't certain who would replace him. So we assigned Kim Campbell to me, Jean Charest to Marc Laframboise, and so on and so on. All of us knew every single thing all of those potential candidates had said and done going back to high school.

We were ready, in other words.

The Poilievre Tories have given us every indication that they weren't ready for the rapid ascension of Mark Carney. At all. They let him define himself before they could define him.

The China stuff, for example. My War Room would've been all over that like ravenous dogs on a bone. The Poilievre Conservatives, meanwhile, treat like it’s a meme.

This one is funny, however.

**

The third and final thing that Pierre Poilievre could have done was to promote the living Hell out of his plan to respond to Donald Trump's tariffs.

Because, make no mistake: Poilievre has the better plan to deal with them. In particular, he doesn't believe that it's good economic policy to leave Canadian energy resources in the ground. Like Carney clearly does.

If Poilievre had done that – even on the aforementioned Tapper show - it would've paid two big dividends. It would have shown him championing Canada to the Americans. And it would have shown him as The Guy With A Plan.

He didn’t do that, either. Like too many people – not just conservatives, he kept hoping that the tariff stuff was a bad dream that we would all wake up from.

It wasn't a dream.

**

Nor, is what is happening in this election campaign. It’s not a dream, Conservatives. The polls tell the real story, not snapshots of big campaign rallies. And the real story is that the Conservatives are losing.

Can they snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? Yes they can. Just for starters, in the debates, Pierre Poilievre can say the very things that I have recommended he say about Trump.

Will he? Of course not. No one ever listens to me.

Sure is good to be home, however.