06-17-2022, 02:37 PM
(06-17-2022, 11:45 AM)ac3r Wrote: As awful as Ford is, I don't think he was ever at risk of sliding into Trumpian style populism here. He's intelligent enough to know that the majority of Canadians aren't like that and we witnessed that by how atrocious the PPC, New Blue and Ontario First parties did. That shit just doesn't really fly up here. The pandemic offered him an opportunity to capitalize on that sentiment, but he never really did and primarily made rational decisions. He knew being sympathetic to pro-death Covidiots would have buried his centrist support and made the left hate him even more.
Ultimately, he's your standard Tory. Friendly to big busines and people with money, fiscally conservative, socially neutral (more or less). Even his handling of the pandemic wasn't as bad as it could be compared to other conservative leaders and politicians in the country or around the world. We had lockdowns and restrictions much longer than most Western nations which did help.
It's just...now that the pandemic is basically over, we screwed up by giving him 4 more years. Considering all the problems we face that are not related to that, we needed a fresh government but the opposition parties had terrible leaders and so he walked right onto his next term without needed to do much to convince voters (well, the 40ish percent that even bothered to vote). I won't give him the benefit of the doubt that he'll do anything useful for transit or whatever else...we'll just have to see how bad things continue to get - especially now that we're on the edge of global economic catastrophe.
I don't think intelligence has anything to do with it.
Ultimately, he's not a sociopath in the same way Trump is.