The Liberals are letting themselves become Pierre Poilievre’s punching bag

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The Conservative Party’s recent $3-million TV ad blitz has been key to its ascendancy. The Liberals, despite having some money in the bank, have been feeble in responding; there has been no ad campaign.

What’s with the popguns, I asked some of them – why has the party been posing as Pierre Poilievre’s punching bag? Why is it letting him get away with pinning the blame on Justin Trudeau for everything but toenail fungus and typhoons in the Philippines?

“If you find out what our communications strategy is,” 26-year veteran Liberal MP John MacKay told me, “please let me know. I have no idea if there is one.”

Why no return fire? “It’s a great question,” said Gerry Butts, Mr. Trudeau’s former top strategist. “I don’t know. I assume they think an election is too far away for it to make a difference.”

It’s a big mistake, said pollster Frank Graves. “They’ve ceded the playing field to the Conservatives. Though they may be keeping their powder dry, it looks more like a deer in the headlights than a sound strategy.”

Mr. Poilievre has been effective in how he’s been able to hang all the responsibility for inflation on Mr. Trudeau. It doesn’t matter, apparently, that inflation has mainly been brought on by external shocks like the Ukraine war and the COVID pandemic requiring billions in relief spending.

“The thing is,” said Mr. MacKay, “the public doesn’t know that. My constituents think inflation is my fault. We’re blamed for things beyond our control.”

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The Liberals did enhance the prospects of inflation by spending excessively even before the pandemic, and their pandemic outlays were arguably excessive as well. But inflation would have been high in any case.

A skilled public relations campaign was needed to change the public perception, but none has been forthcoming. It’s very difficult for a government to try explaining that problems are not their fault, said Peter Donolo, who served as communications director for Jean Chrétien. “It puts you on the defensive.”

It would be easier, he said, to launch an all-out attack-ad campaign against Mr. Poilievre. He’s defined Mr. Trudeau in harsh light. Mr. Trudeau has to do the same to him.

Some Liberals think it best to keep their noses clean until the election. But doing that when you’re tumbling in the polls is risky business, especially when the Conservatives raised an eye-popping $16-million in the year’s first half, and are planning many more TV ad blitzes in the prewrit period.

The next election could be two years off. A lot could happen in that time, including, as many hope, the departure of Mr. Trudeau. In the unlikely event that he does leave, sources tell me we should keep an eye on Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, a close friend of the Prime Minister who is interested in succeeding him; he would have Mr. Trudeau’s blessing.

The Liberals, who are currently meeting in London, Ont., to plot strategy, raised more than $6-million so far this year. In Mr. Donolo’s view, an ad campaign should tie the Poilievre brand to the right-wing populism that has inflicted so much damage in the United States.

Mr. Poilievre’s hypocritical claims that he is a freedom fighter who will dispense with gatekeepers provide another opening. His claim is 24-karat claptrap. His track record while serving in Stephen Harper’s rigidly regimented government gave him more the look of a control freak. As minister of democratic reform, Mr. Poilievre introduced the so-called Fair Elections Act, which contained so many infringements on democratic freedoms he had to humiliatingly withdraw it.

For last week’s highly successful convention, his own gatekeepers barred members of the media they didn’t like from attending, including pundit Tasha Kheiriddin, who writes for right-leaning Postmedia.

Mr. Poilievre has scored against the Liberals by repeatedly running down the state of the country. Declining living standards, a dreadful productivity rate, a housing crisis and more have provided him with fine fodder.

He’s been helped by the fact that the Liberals have failed to mount a counter-narrative. A recent ranking by U.S. News and World Report on quality of life puts “broken” Canada at second-best worldwide, behind only Switzerland. In other surveys, Canada ranks well on education, on unemployment, on crime rates, on perceived racial equality, on welcoming immigrants, on quality of democracy.

A lot of it comes down to spin – to who’s winning the political communications war. The Poilievre team has been trouncing the Trudeau team on that front. It will continue to do so unless the Liberals quit being a party of patsies and start fighting fire with fire.