Eve Adams loses nomination race: Trudeau's risks continue to fail

Well, it's been quite an interesting day. Eve Adams, former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, has lost her nomination race in the riding of Eglinton-Lawrence.

Admittedly, hundreds of candidates across the country fail to earn their party's nomination for the upcoming election, but Eve Adams' case is a different one. In case you're not familiar of her situation-cum-predicament, here's a brief recap.

Eve Adams has been a Conservative since the age of 14. She won 3 municipal election in Missisauga (as a councillor) on her Conservative values. She then ran for office on the federal scene in 2011 and defeated long time incumbent Navdeep Bains. Incidentally, Bains had strong support from the Punjab community in the region, but the Liberal fell prey to his party's historic collapse under Michael Ignatieff, and Stephen Harper's key success in the GTA area to secure a majority government. But even with some help thanks to the Tory momentum in Ontario, Adams had nonetheless done what has always been tricky to do in politics - defeating a well-respected incumbent.

Despite this, Adams became tangled up in a heated nomination race in Oakville North-Burlington, a new riding in which she now resided. Although most of the juicy stuff - wrongdoings, illegal campaign activities, all that good stuff - remain behind closed doors within the Conservative Party, the Tories saw fit to ban her from running not just in that riding, but anywhere for the Conservatives. The party's upper ranks' falling out with her fiance, Dimitri Soudas, probably didn't help her cause either.

Flustered, frustrated and determined to keep herself in the House of Commons, Eve Adams crossed the floor to the Liberal Party - an announcement made on a nationally televised press conference by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. The instant reaction of the journalists in the room was very telling - a collective gasp, a few groans and one or two chuckles. The long-time Conservative, who was certainly not on the Progressive side of the Conservative Party, and who is no stranger to controversy (shopping in NYC on Remembrance Day when you're the secretary of Veterans Affairs? maybe not the best idea...), was suddenly taking a massive ideological shift and running for the Liberals?

It was an eyebrow raising decision by Trudeau, and one that could massively backfire (see: C-51). Sure enough, it seemingly has today. After pursuing the Liberal nomination in the riding of Eglinton-Lawrence (finance minister Joe Oliver's riding, but otherwise long-time Liberal seat), Adams has lost her nomination race. The person instead earning the Liberal nomination in the GTA riding is lawyer Marco Mendicino, a familiar face in the riding who has worked himself up the party hierarchy so to speak in the area which he is now running to represent.

This comes as a blow for Justin Trudeau, but more so within the party than outside the party. I wonder if this decision in itself will have any palpable impact on the average Canadian voter. Perhaps it reinforces the narrative that he lacks the character of a leader, that he hasn't acquired that metaphorical gene required to be a thoughtful, strong frontman of a party, or even of a country? I suppose it does help drive home that attack against him.

Regardless, I think that Trudeau's public endorsement of Eve Adams as a potential candidate, followed by Adams' rejection by the Liberal  party members in the riding which Trudeau had hand picked for Adams, is more damaging within the party than outside the party. Which speaks to a more pressing problem - in politics, I believe it's crucial to speak to your base, to keep those votes. When things aren't going right for your party, it's still important to have that yoke of support within your party. In my opinion, Justin Trudeau has fundamentally failed at this.

First, he kicked out senators from his Liberal caucus. I might write about my thoughts on how the parties are playing the Senate crisis later, a very delicate situation that still has a sizeable amount votes riding on it. But back to this point. Kicking out long-established senators from his caucus meetings and the "inner baseball" of the party alienates many and divides the Liberal base. He believed that this decision would come at a bigger political gain outside the party base, but such a gain must never be made at the expense of the base. You can stray from the long time party position for some on-the-fence votes, but you can't do so at the expense of your most reliable voters, or of the upper workings of the part itself. 

Second, he made the decision to vote in favour of C-51, the, depending on who you believe, responsible, well thought out anti terrorism bill, or the irresponsible, unnecessary, turn-the-RCMP-into-a-police-state bill. In any case, this was Trudeau's second mistake. It was a calculated risk that he took - the inner polling said that it would be best to suck it up and vote in favour - but another fundamental mistake. In this seemingly long election campaign ahead, Thomas Mulcair looks like the freedom-fighter, while Justin Trudeau gives off an air of "we'll do what we have to do to win." Not only this, but he once again upsets his base which weren't completely satisified with the bill. It would have been wiser to abstain than vote in favour after having their amendments rejected.

Eve Adams is Trudeau's third mistake. And perhaps the most damaging to his base of voters. In endorsing a hypocritical right-wing candidate who hasn't quite been able to sell the "I-hate-Harper-and-Conservative-policy narrative (though I do believe that many Tories dislike Harper), Trudeau ran a massive risk. Letting a right-wing candidate run for his party, and further associating himself with the right after the C-51 shambles. The first risk in the previous sentence seems to have been averted, but it comes at the cost of a mini-rebellion in the GTA region, and let's face it - the Liberal base was happy such a rebellion happened. This, once again, speaks to Trudeau's supposed inability to please his base.

Simply put, Trudeau's not playing the stray-from-your-base for other votes on the left or the right very well. His calculated risks are failing. He's upset some of his base in taking those risks. 

This does not bode well with over 11 weeks left until the federal election.

Welcome to ThreeThirtyEight

Not many teenagers with too much time on their hands spend it on politics. It's often considered a world for adults, with subject matter too complex reserved only to the post-puberty brain. In my other "blogging career", I write about Korean football/soccer as we say in North America, a nod to my half-Korean origins. But at one point, I found something simply perfect in the United States Supreme Court ruing to legalize gay marriage, something so glorious that I just had to bring it up in an article about the South Korean Women's National Team advancing to the Round of 16 of the FIFA Women's World Cup. That seemingly innocuous mention of a victory for rights and freedoms in an article about sports resulted in a two-hour argument (well, on Twitter, but it was still two hours) on gay rights. For two hours I went back and forth arguing with some Republican who, to my great frustration, could not comprehend the concept that the definition of marriage can evolve, and fervently refused the existence of a "gay gene" (although I had simply mentioned that it was quite clear that a person's sexual orientation was not something they could simply change). The argument finished when I was fed up with his revoltingly patronizing tone, so I gave him the finger behind my screen and left to watch Power and Politics.

So yeah, I'm a weird kid. There is, to me, something infinitely fascinating about the bustling world of campaign stops and House of Commons drama. I also, as a child who read too much (is that possible?) and thought too much (that IS possible) about difficult episodes in my life, such as my encounter with racism in the classroom (I'm not asking for pity, I'm just taking a life example which quite frankly does not affect me at all anymore), feel like I have developed a nose for any social issues which could potentially strike a nerve with me.

Since we're talking about me, and I like talking about me sometimes, although my obvious left tendencies on the political spectrum, I have learned that the world of politics must not be about the red or the blue (or the orange, the green, the cyan and yes, I haven't forgotten the emerald green of Forces et Democratie). It cannot be about simply siding with a certain party's stance on every issue. The reason I say this is because I consider myself to be a person full of contradictions, and on the flip-side of the coin, perhaps open-minded as well. I feel as if I can be a loyal comrade one day, and an arrogant thorn in the side the next. I can argue with a teacher over 0.5 points of 25 of 50 of 30 of 100%, or just close my eyes and not utter a word when he forgets the Governor General still has a veto. While explaining the Canadian parliamentary system with a diagram. With the Crown of the Queen on it. (I allow myself to be patronizing at times as well.)

The point is this: I believe that I am a person of not just one colour, but many colours, which often conflict with each other. I am not a person who will sit all day on the Poll Compass tool on CBC to try to align myself the most with the popular left-wing party (I've done it before) but rather an individual who enjoys the world of politics, and who shapes his opinion differently on each boring announcement or exciting pre-election move depending on the circumstances.

But enough about me. What will this blog be about? Well, as you probably know, unless you're a robot (some of my first pageviews!), there's an election in Canada this fall, where political parties all across the spectrum will vie for 338 seats across the country. The Conservative Party will attempt to maintain its majority in the House of Commons, while the New Democratic Party will attempt to form their first government. The Liberal Party will hope that voters will turn to their charismatic leader in Justin Trudeau, while the Green Party, Le Bloc Quebecois, Forces et Democratie and Independents across the country will be in pursuit of their own personal ambitions.

I make no promises with this blog, and if you're looking for a place to read the news, there's certainly other, far more credible organizations to provide you that content. This blog will serve merely as a place for my personal reflections leading up to that key day of October 22nd. I hope that I have not bored you in this post, and if you have survived these lines which I have written, I commend you for your admirable tenacity to endure my poorly written ramblings.

So there's the obligatory first post. Thanks for reading and a share on any social media (or by word of mouth, which is okay too) would be appreciated. :-)