2019 Federal Election

[MidTowner]

I'm not so sure. The NDP won Burnaby last night, but that should be a given that the leader wins his seat. They lost Outremont, which could foretell a poor showing in Quebec. The Liberals may do very well in Quebec again.

My thinking is that, if Bernier polls well between not and autumn, the Tories may try to shore up their base with various more-rightist policies and messaging that the Liberals can capitalize on to capture swing voters who might be easily convinced that Scheer is as "scary" as Harper. It's not hard to imagine Scheer saying something to a group like that truck convoy in Ottawa last week that the Liberals successfully turn into this cycle's version of the "old stock Canadians" remark.

I believe the Liberals have the possibility of campaigning to younger voters with the same type of more progressive rhetoric they used in 2015; and to older, more moderate voters with their actual record of governance since.

I think it's easy to see how likely the above prediction is when you consider the story the media took away from Scheer's town hall in Kitchener last night. CBC's headline is "Scheer says he didn't hear question about Clinton 'pizzagate' lie during town hall."

At the town hall, a certifiable nut job asked Scheer about Trudeau's government giving money to, among others, the Clinton Foundation. He refers to it as being part of "child trafficking and child sacrifice" before his ultimate question is "The PM, if he knows about the foundation, should he be in jail for this?"

Scheer declined to inform the gentleman that a great deal of what he said was dangerous nonsense, and went into a canned response that reference the Clinton Foundation and Trudeau's other questionable spending. The next day, he claimed simply not to have heard that part of the question that mentioned "pizzagate" and "child sacrifice." Maybe. Or maybe he felt uneasy about giving the what-for to someone at a friendly event. Especially when members of the audience applauded the nonsense about the Clinton Foundation.

Eventually something like this is going to result in something the Grits can really make hay out of.