The PCPO/NDPirates Who Don't Do Anything

It's not so much that the people who are supposedly trying to stop Kathleen Wynne from driving this province further and further into the ground are doing a bad job (although they certainly are doing a bad job). 

The problem is that they have convinced themselves that they are doing a good job. That is why they fail, and continue to fail. 

This byelection was particularly instructive in that respect because there is no half-truth that can be told in the aftermath that makes the opposition parties look good. There is no spin that can be put on these results. It simply is what it is, and what it is is that Kathleen Wynne can do whatever the hell she pleases with zero consequences, having just proved that not only are the haters totally wrong, but they are singularly useless as well. Their "opposition" amounts to sitting around waiting for the voters to "send the government a message" because nobody could possibly be voting for this government. After all, nobody they talk to is voting Liberal. 

And so, the NDP (and the PCPO, to a far lesser extent because they are a non-entity up in Sudbury, but I could have written the same thing about them in any other case) spent the last few weeks (not really) trying to convince Sudburians that the objectionable way in which Kathleen Wynne poached Glenn Thibeault was a reason to vote for another party and to reject the Liberal goodies that were being dangled seductively.

They failed spectacularly because everyone knows what Glenn Thibeault figured out: that if you want to go anywhere politically, you hitch your wagon to Kathleen Wynne's Liberals, scandals be damned. You don't mount principled opposition to all parties like Andrew Olivier did, either, because ain't nobody got time for that. 

The fact that the Liberals are untouchable is by this point entirely obvious to everyone except the opposition. At this very moment party workers are struggling for answers, open mouthed in shock. There was a poll- there is always a poll- that showed the Liberals were "neck-and-neck" with (insert-non-Liberal-party-Party-here) right before the byelection. Hours before the polls closed, the Liberals were found guilty (again?) of corruption by the OPP. How could ANYBODY be voting for these Liberals?

Then someone comes along and says, "Because you guys are expecting the government to just fall into your laps? Because you're lazy?"

And oh, the horror. Oh, the anger. How dare you imply that anything less than 127% was given, in Sudbury, and in the last four general elections? So the complainers are taken out behind the barn and shot and we go right ahead derping along about scandals that nobody cares about.

Well, I don't know about you, but I think it's time to start pointing the finger at ourselves, because pointing the finger at the Liberals isn't working. They are still winning seats despite Glenn Thibeault, a hospital worker strike, and a pedophile in charge of creating a curriculum for preschoolers on top of all of the other mismanagement, scandals, waste, general poor governance and all the rest of it.

When your opponent is daring you to hit them and you still can't do it, that's not their fault- it's yours.