All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Our Mystery Mayor

Posted on September 29, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

At a party Saturday night, municipal politics was very much a front and centre topic of conversation. Perhaps my sample group skews that way, biased because of what I do on a daily basis. Hey! So what do you think about the election? Do you think candidate X is going to win?

Or maybe I’m just a single-minded social bully, forcing my conversation on anyone I can trap in the corner of a room. That’s some election going on, eh? You know what I think? Here’s what I think…

Four separate conversations I had during the evening — count `em, 4 – revolved around the strategic, fearful vote for John Tory in order to prevent Doug Ford from winning. There was no passion for the candidate. No seeming attachment to him except for the perception that only he could ensure that no Ford would be mayor come October 27^th.

“What if I told you there was no way Doug Ford was going to win this election?” I push-polled them. “Any way you slice it, his numbers just don’t add up. You can vote how you want. It doesn’t have to strategic.”

To a person, John Tory was an anti-Ford weapon of choice. Nothing more. A firm belief that nothing, not even John Tory, would be as bad as Ford More Years.

Such a sentiment is hardly surprising. That’s been the Tory tactic all along. He, and only He, can keep the Fords at bay.

The fact that no one I spoke to on Saturday night could articulate any reason to vote for John Tory aside from that speaks volumes to the blind path were heading down currently. When we should be asking what values a candidate represents, whose voices they are seeking to empower at City Hall, we’re only focussed on ridding the mayor’s office of our Ford shame. What comes after? Doesn’t matter. There’s only one battle to win right now.

John Tory. Because, It Could Be Worse.

But with exactly four weeks to election day, with the inevitability of a Mayor John Tory staring us hard and cold in our face, shouldn’t we be asking deeper questions of the candidate? What are his core values? (Why does he want to be mayor?) Whose interests is he running to represent?

We get Doug.

Like his brother before him, it’s all about the ‘little guy’ and ‘the hardworking taxpayer’. The angry. The disaffected. The disenfranchised. Those who see City Hall as the enemy, the source of the city’s dysfunction. The disillusioned and the delusional.

Those refusing to see that at every opportunity, Doug and Rob vote against their interests. Vote to cut taxes. Vote to cut services. Stoke divisiveness and promote resentment.

Many things can and have been said about this base, Ford Nation. But whatever it is, whatever you may think about it, it isn’t imaginary. It’s real, made up of real people.

Who does John Tory speak for?

Never forget that John Tory was an ardent supporter of Rob and Doug Ford in their respective runs for mayor and city council in 2010. So much so, he donated to both their campaigns. In his role as radio talk show host, Tory continued his vocal support of the mayor during the first couple, tumultuous years of his administration. toryandthefords Until the crack scandal broke, there was little daylight between the politics the Fords and Tory espoused.

So what does that say about the kind of mayor John Tory will be? Who will he advocate for? If John Tory becomes mayor who do you think will have a seat at the table of power?

As limp and as lifeless as Olivia Chow’s campaign has been at times (and do not get me started on the just completed Toronto Arts Vote debate stunt), it’s clear about what her priorities are. A push for increased bus service because a solid majority of transit users, especially in the city’s inner suburbs, depend on buses to get around. After-school recreation and nutritional programs for children, more affordable housing because the city is facing an unconscionable rise in childhood poverty. The disaffected. The disenfranchised. The voiceless.

Disagree with her all you want. Take issue with her policy ideas and platform. Same for Doug Ford. Chop his candidacy to bits. But at least with both of them, we know where they stand.

Can you truly say that about John Tory?

What does he stand for? Who’s he going to represent as mayor? What is the one word defining principle of a John Tory administration?

What does a Mayor John Tory’s Toronto look like?

Those might be the type of answers we should be looking for over the course of the next month instead of all needlessly fear rushing to a candidate who, so far, steadfastly refuses to respond to those questions.

— questioningly submitted by Cityslikr

The Tory In Us

Posted on September 24, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I arrived back home last night after just over a week away prepping some soul-searching about the expected mayoralty of John Tory. The late night snapshots I’d picked up out on the road pointed to not only a victory for Tory in next month’s municipal campaign but, if his numbers held up, a kick-ass win. What did that very real possibility tell us about the mindset of voters in this city?

Of course, I dropped back in right in the middle of the York South-Weston debate that featured the debut of candidate Doug Ford for Mayor. While a campaign of this duration will hardly turn on one debate, Tory’s wobbly performance should probably set of some minor alarm bells in his camp, given his historical electoral inability to close the deal. Being the clear frontrunner now, the presumptive favourite, Tory will be the main object of attack and, with whatever remains of the Ford machine lurching back up onto its hind legs, and with absolutely nothing to lose at this point, the attacks will be vicious, mindless and unrelenting.

That could play into Tory’s favour, serving as a useful bogeyman to scare more voters his way. Do you really want this guy running the city? You think Rob was bad? Come in under the big Tory tent for a warm, protective hug.

Which brings me back (conveniently) to my original intent.

In post-Ford Toronto, why is it to John Tory a plurality of voters are turning?

“A safe set of steady hands.” No wait. “A safe, steady set of hands.” No. “A safe set of steady hands.” Hmm. “A safe, stead set of hands”? Nick! Run that by a focus group, would you? See what people prefer, what’s the easiest way to say that.

John Tory wants to be the next mayor of Toronto but can’t really tell us why. His whole approach to date has been to generally riff on the theme, he’s not that guy or that guy or that NDP candidate. Toronto wants John Tory because it doesn’t want either of the Fords or Olivia Chow.

It’s a campaign of negative space. John Tory is the least worst, basically. Rally round, troops! Together we will… hunker down and hope the storm passes without leaving too much damage behind. Hunker down, troops.

Not that he’s alone in failing to fill the electorate with hope and create a wave of forward-thinking can-doism. That ‘vision thing’, as another largely negligible politician sniffed at back in the day. The amazingly disheartening thing about the 2014 mayoral campaign is just how lackadaisical in public spirit it’s been. If nothing else, the mugging the city has been subjected to over the past 4 years exposed many of its weaknesses, and not just the obvious infrastructure fault lines but how it’s failing too many of the people living here.

Yet, here we are, haggling over keeping to the rate of inflation with tax increases or still talking about finding efficiencies. We continue to talk the Ford talk despite the fact that with every passing day such blather gets exposed as pure fantasy and unfiltered bullshit. Clearly, John Tory doesn’t think so. The messenger’s the problem not the message.

And collectively we seem to want to believe that. That all the city’s problems and needs can be wished away and dealt with by somebody else or with fanciful plans on a map that won’t somehow cost any of us a cent. Pander to us, John Tory. Tell us what we want to hear. Fill our minds with delusion. The same trite shit we bought into 4 years ago.

Having surfed that nonsense into a firmly established lead with more than a month to go now, we should expect the Tory Turtle. Duck and cover. Make no mistakes. Engage only as needed in order to keep up appearances. John Tory has told us as much as he’s going to (or as little as he’s had to) about how he will serve this city as mayor.

We seem just fine with that. John Tory has more than met our lowered expectations. So we can now just get on with ignoring the problems at hand.

— grumpily submitted by Cityslikr

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Posted on September 5, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

When a capital ‘L’ Liberal leaning newspapers pronounces on Toronto’s vanishing NDP act, it’s pretty much required reading. Straight up, objective, no dog in the hunt opinionizing. A fair and balanced view, as they say.

That’s why.

“Rising support for Liberals in Toronto may doom Olivia Chow’s mayoral bid,” chirps the subheadline of Bob Hepburn’s piece.

Rising support for Liberals in Toronto? I get the logic from the last provincial election but should we draw a line from that to the recent uptick in support for John Tory in the mayoral race? If so, if Liberals are actually turning to John Tory as some sort of liberal alternative then, well, Hepburn’s article should really be about the disappearance of liberalism in Toronto’s Liberals.

Now look, you’re not going to hear from me any defence of Olivia Chow’s campaign to date. It most certainly has been listless. There’s been no one or two issues put forward that you can really sink your teeth into. No red meat for the base.

I heard apprehensive rumblings as the mayoral race began taking shape, back late last year, questioning the strength of Chow’s campaign abilities. Could she sustain a city-wide drive throughout the entire race? Perhaps there was some truth to such misgivings.

I was a constituent of hers, when she was both a city councillor and MP. The few times I met her during campaigns, she was very engaging and full of energy. But, in truth, I’ve seen little of that outside of her official campaign launch. So, are we, once again, looking at another race where the standard bearer of the left is not up to the task? Like Joe Pantalone in 2010, in the end, will it come down to the fact Olivia Chow could not sell a progressive vision for the city? The messenger unable to sell the message?

We shall see.

But about that message…

In the article, Hepburn points out that in putting together a campaign team, Chow “…recruited senior Liberals…including self-styled ‘progressives’ such as former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister George Smitherman…” Former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister? You mean, former failed mayoral candidate, George Smitherman?

I mean, seriously. George Smitherman?! Who the fuck thought that was a good idea? What knowledge was he going to bring to the table for Olivia? How to blow an early lead? Done. Tell us again, George, how you helped run Barbara Hall’s 2003 mayoral campaign into the ground.

To the wider picture, why is an NDP candidate, as her opponent, John Tory, has brayingly labelled her, seeking Liberal help in her campaign? Because they win, you respond. Not always, I reply. George Smitherman, for instance. Federally, not so much lately.

Provincially, however.

Yes. And who did they beat? Exactly.

Now, you might argue that Liberals know where the NDP’s weak spots are, offer advice on how to patch up the electoral holes. Liberals provide a good sparring partner in the war room. Pop you one on the chin when you drop the left hand. See? That’s what you’re doing wrong.

But here’s what I think.

Liberals, more than anybody, have internalized the 30 year neoconservative drumbeat against the notion of tax-and-spending, interventionist government. That’s what the triangulation bullshit has all been about. It wins some elections, sure, but it only minimizes the damage rather than ends or reverses it.

What’s so frustrating at this point, with the Chow campaign and the provincial NDP one in June, is we’re living the result of three decades of neoconservative/neoliberal rule. An infrastructure deficit. A lack of affordable housing with the unsurprisingly accompanying spike in homelessness. Inequality. Grotesque and incapacitating inequality.

Look at Toronto’s To Do list.

Transit. Transit. And more transit. The horrendous TCHC backlog. Flooding and blackouts. Decreasing affordability for many people to live here.

The public good is wobbly under the weight of neglect, and there’s no finding efficiencies our way out of it. In aping Conservatives, Liberals have assisted in the piling on. The best the NDP can hope for, in copying the copy, is to, hopefully, make matters less worse.

Maybe it’s just me but what I was hoping for in the Olivia Chow campaign was a full on embrace of the tax-and-spender label. Yes, Mr. Tory. It’s time to start taxing and spending again. After years of pretending that this city is built on free swag, we now have to roll up our sleeves, pull out our wallets and start rebuilding.

She wouldn’t be out of line in saying such a thing. For the past couple years now, the city’s CEO, no raving lunatic leftie joe, Joe Pennachetti has told anyone prepared to listen that there’s not a whole lot more fat to be trimmed. “We don’t have all the revenues that probably are needed to ensure that we build and grow a city that we all want,” he said last month.

Hand the ball over to any progressive candidate who wants to run with it. Off you go! To the ramparts!

But no such luck. It’s all been minor measures, tweaks here and there, avoid the big idea because it will demand a big solution. What’s passed for boldness is pretend maps paid for by pretend money, to paraphrase the only mayoral candidate talking to us as if we’re not drooling imbeciles, and he’s mired in the low single digits with regular backroom discussions about whether to continue on in the race.

Contrary to what the Toronto Star’s Bob Hepburn thinks, it’s not that NDP support in Toronto has vanished. There’s just nobody talking their language, speaking to their values. Maybe in hushed tones or in a code, over late night drinks. It’s just not enough to rally around, go to bat for or champion.

— grumpily submitted by Cityslikr