There’s more to politics than elections, and more to campaigns than televised debates. Yet we treat the debates like monumental happenings, often to our disappointment, since they rarely change anything or do much to illuminate the issues.
We media folks still seem to think that debates are potential game changers and also good TV. I’m not so sure about either anymore, having covered, produced or moderated dozens of them. They rarely live up to expectations either as TV shows or political events.
Still, the parties can’t risk losing a debate, so they make elaborate preparations to win them, or at least spin it that way. Meanwhile, many voters just see low-drama stage plays: the dialogue is either boring or shouted by ham actors.
To be fair, debates do help reveal how the parties think they’re doing in the race. Leaders play it safe because they don’t need to win, just avoid losing. Challengers with little to lose can pump up their supporters while attempting to suppress unfriendly votes through damaging their rivals.
That’s what Maxime Bernier wants to do. He’s being denied.
The self-appointed People’s Party leader has been excluded from the main TV spectacles under a preliminary ruling from the new non-partisan commission on election debates.
The commission ruled Bernier does not meet one of the minimum requirements for participation: at least one member of Parliament elected under a party banner.
Bernier was elected in 2015, as a Conservative. He founded the PPC after his bitter loss to Andrew Scheer in the subsequent Conservative leadership campaign. Bernier now portrays Scheer as a faux-Con milquetoast.
Whatever motivates Bernier, he’s working to build a party based on right-wing ideas that would have seemed un-Canadian in the pre-Trump era just a few years ago. He’s crisscrossing the country signing up members and organizing constituency associations, the fundamental building blocks of every party.
He’s been pretty successful, wooing people who hate the Liberals but are disillusioned with the lack of policy vigour in the Scheer Conservatives, particularly on hot-button issues like immigration and minority rights.
The PPC claims to have 40,000 members across Canada and has named at least 312 out of 338 potential candidates. They won’t all be good candidates, but they’re evidence of the party’s reach.
Bernier claims to be furious about his debate exclusion, calling the commission part of a political old boys’ network protecting itself from courageous mavericks like him. But I don’t shed tears for the PPC, not over this.
That’s because right now, the rejection is helping the party. Casting Bernier as the victim of a deep-state cabal, the PPC is fundraising and circulating petitions, demanding a podium for their man and getting lots of coverage. It argues that excluding Bernier but allowing Elizabeth May of the Greens and the Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet proves the deck is stacked against its leader.
And nobody loves playing the victim as much as your right-wing ideologue, who perceives public rejection of his or her politics as moral slights and personal insults. The debates commission has handed Bernier a gold-plated victim card that could come in handy, if played right.
It’s also possible that exclusion from the debates won’t hurt the PPC campaign at all. It would if Bernier was unknown, or half as brilliant as his fans wish him to be, but he is neither.
For good or ill, everyone knows who Bernier is. As to brilliance, his political record suggests otherwise, which is precisely why the other parties should ask, nay demand, that Bernier be included.
But they won’t. There’s no way Scheer will accommodate his tormentor, who bashes him every day. Justin Trudeau probably doesn’t need Bernier there either, and Jagmeet Singh is losing the chance to look smart and reasonable by comparison.
It’s too bad. Canadians should know what Bernier’s ideas really mean. Keeping him out of the debates won’t help that one bit.
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