Clearly he was a failure. He avoided the media, he didn’t get his messaging across clearly enough, he didn’t do enough to tie Mark Carney to Justin Trudeau. He couldn’t even win his own riding.
This SHOULD have been Pierres election to win. 10 years of disastrous Liberal governing which left Canada in shambles, the economy in tatters, unchecked immigration, rampant drug abuse everywhere etc
The polls had the Conservatives easily decimating Trudeau’s liberals but then Carney came in and re energized the Liberal party. Which shouldn’t have happened if Pierre was more on point with his messaging. It should have been easy for him. He just needed to tie Carney more to Trudeau and emphasized that his Canada First policy would be harsher on the US and better able to deal with Trump. Instead he avoided the media and kept letting the liberals take pot shots at him tying him to Trump. And the Liberals were effective at convincing the public that Pierre was a bad incompetent dude. It worked. Pierre did nothing to fight against it.
So as a Conservative I’m obviously extremely disappointed in Pierre. This should have been an easy win for conservatives and instead we get a 4th goddamn liberal term that will continue to destroy Canada and ruin us. Pierre was incompetent. Any half competent conservative leader should have won this election. I can’t believe this shit…
He didn’t blow anything yet cause the election hasn’t been held yet.
A lot of Quorans seem to put down Pierre and have this misplaced confidence that Liberals will somehow ‘demolish’ Pierre and the Conservatives in the election.. this is a bit of deja vu for me because I noticed the same thing on Quora back in Oct 2024 when 9 out of every 10 answers on Quora predicted that Kamala Harris would beat Trump in November and ‘it wouldnt be close’.
Quora is left leaning. I get it. However.. it’s important to get some facts straight and stop some rampant speculation ok?
My question is why has everyone shifted towards Mark Carney? How is Carney different than Trudeau?
Before Trump got elected, the Conservatives were headed for a sure victory because if you look at the last 10 years, Canada’s population has increased a whopping 24% mostly based off of immigration, while wages and salaries have stagnated and there has no appreciable likewise increase in jobs because most of the immigrants that Canada has let in were not entrepreneurial meaning they don’t create any jobs they just take jobs away from Canadian citizens. In addition to that you have rampant drug use and of course inflation issues during the last 10 years too. That’s why people wanted to vote out the Liberals.
Then Trump came in and Mark Carney became the new Liberal leader and now everyone’s flocking to him. Why? Because he’s smart and can deal with Trump better?
First of all, Carney has no political experience as all his experience is in finance – that’s fine but there’s been no track record of him being able to handle a political office. Him having a PhD is not relevant to politics.
Secondly, there’s a perception that Carney can handle Trump better and I’m not sure why.
It’s not like Pierre doesn’t have a plan to deal with Trump and it’s not like he’s going to just bow down to Trump. I’m not sure what people are thinking because where’s the evidence that Pierre can’t handle Trump and Carney can?
People think the Conservative platform is too similar to the Republicans. But “Canada First” logically speaking, would be tougher on the US because it’s a protectionist platform much like Trump’s “America First”. That’s what protectionist policies are they are tougher on other countries in order to protect Canada. So I don’t understand why people think Pierre somehow won’t be tough on Trump but Carney will.
So what I’m seeing is, people are just completely forgetting that the Liberals damaged Canada badly during the last 10 years all because Carney is smart and *seems* like he can handle Trump better. I haven’t seen any evidence that Carney will be any different than Trudeau. Maybe he’s just a smarter Trudeau, who knows.
But I’m not falling for the Carney hype, I’m voting Conservative and no Pierre didn’t blow anything, the polls are getting closer because of Trump, not because of anything Pierre did.
Tough to say, I think it’ll be a close election between Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre. You see, the Liberals under Justin Trudeau have been massively unpopular the past few years amidst similar reasons as to why the Biden administration was unpopular – high inflation, rampant drug issues, too many unskilled immigrants coming into the country – and Trudeau was poised for a historic election defeat had he not stepped down.
Take a look here at downtown Vancouver to see just how bad it’s gotten over the past decade – Toronto’s downtown is even worse. So it’s easy to see why Canadians are not happy with the status quo and want change – for similar reasons why Americans wanted change and elected Trump.
However, the difference being that we don’t have anyone as crazy as Trump. Poilievre has prior political experience as part of the Parliament and as part of Stephen Harper’s cabinet. He’s not a delusional madman like Trump but a normal level-headed politician.
So.. easy win for Pierre right? Well, no. Because of Trump’s rhetoric towards Canada and trying to take Canada’s sovereignty away and insulting Canada saying we are ‘nasty’ neighbors etc Canadians have rallied more or less behind Mark Carney more. Why? Well although Mark has no political experience per se, he has a LOT of experience in the financial sector and he’s perceived as being better to handle Trump.
Although personally I think both candidates will go against Trump well.
It’s not like Pierre is just going to back down to Trump or anything. No Canadian head is going to back down to Trump when Trump is so widely reviled by Canadians right now. So I think Mark Carney’s advantage against Trump is just a perceived advantage since Pierre’s party aligns more with the Republican party (but not really, because Conservatives in Canada are quite a bit more to the left than US Republicans are).
So.. yeah the election will be close because although the Liberal party did a lot of damage to Canada under Justin Trudeau, Trump’s trade war has made Mark Carney and the Liberals more popular again.
I personally will be still voting for the Conservatives in April. Not that I dislike Carney. But he has no political experience and I’m a bit iffy about that (Trump has no political experience and we saw how that turned out). Now Carney is for sure more intelligent than Trump, but still.. I’d rather take a guy with more political experience. And also yeah, because of all the damage the Liberals have done to Canada over the past 10 years, we all know that. So my vote will go to Pierre. But it’ll be a close election.
PS: Note that although I’ve been a registered Conservative and voted Conservative my whole life, I’ve never attacked Liberal candidates personally the way that Americans seem to attack each other. I don’t know why when Kamala Harris lost, everyone seemed to attack her and denigrate her and hate on her. That kind of hate doesn’t make any sense to me. You can’t just blame one person for all your troubles nor does it make sense to. You can blame the party sure.. but why all the hate towards one person? I don’t get that. Americans seem to attack and blame their Presidential candidates personally which I don’t understand why.
Despite alot of blame being pinned on her, I actually don’t think the reason she lost has that much to do with her but rather with people being unhappy with the status quo and wanting change.
I keep hearing people say stuff like ‘she’s the worst candidate ever’ ‘she has nothing to offer but word salads’ ‘she has nothing of substance’ I think these are all knee jerk hindsight hating responses. Honestly even Bill Clinton or Obama could have ran this year and still lost. Kamala Harris had 100 days to run a campaign, did the best she could, campaigned in the swing states viciously (something Hillary did not do), and still lost – because the economic climate was just that bad. Incumbents worldwide have been losing elections – what other Democratic candidate would have done better?
Besides Bernie Sanders I can’t think of any other Democratic candidate that would have been the ‘change’ candidate people wanted. Ultimately people voted for Trump again not because they liked him because they wanted change. They saw their egg prices go up, they saw tons of immigrants flooding into the country, and drug addicts everywhere and they wanted change. That’s really all it is. What could have Harris done better? Differentiate herself more from Biden even though she was the incumbent VP? No, she was fighting an uphill battle from the beginning and there wasn’t much she could do about it.
I really think people should stop with the knee jerk hating responses
This is getting ridiculous. She did not lose in a landslide. 312 votes for Trump and 1.5% margin in popular vote is not a landslide. If it was then almost every US Presidential election in the 20th century except for a handful would have been a landslide. Look up the definition of a landslide, people!!
It’s only because she lost that you lowlifes came out of the woodwork to hate on every little thing about her. Now ‘she lost in a landslide’ ‘she’s the worst candidate ever’ ‘she has word salad answers’ is repeated over and over again. These are ridiculous exaggerations. ‘Word salad’ is a stupid term to use when her opponent can’t even make a coherent sentence. If Trump was some kind of gifted orator then it makes more sense, but he definitely isn’t anything close to that. Trump literally said people ate cats and dogs and still won. So don’t give me this BS about the way Harris talks. That’s not why she lost.
She ran a respectable campaign given the odds and her limited time – she actually ran a much better campaign than Hillary Clinton did btw – and sure she lost, but losing doesn’t automatically make someone the worst candidate ever. Stop it with the ridiculous overexaggerated hating on Harris. Mitt Romney had a bigger margin of defeat in 2012 and yet I don’t hear anyone saying he’s the worst candidate ever, they don’t make fun of his laughs and they don’t say he lost by a landslide.
I’m still reeling from shock of Trump winning the election. Up until Election night, I was 99% sure Hillary would win, because I believed all the polls, all the forecasts, all the betting websites and prediction websites, and boy were they all wrong.
Let me assure you that 2016 is the year that taught me that underdogs always have a chance. First with Cleveland Cavaliers beating the Golden State Warriors (a 73 win team, the most in NBA history), and losing $2500 on the bet there. Then with Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton (with all the backing of the mainstream media), and losing $5500 on the bet there. In total, I lost $8k this year from betting on the favorites. Had I bet on the underdog, well I would have been a lot richer now. Instead I’m quite poorer than before… but I learned my lesson this year.
Its kind of a lesson we all should learn, really. When someone becomes too arrogant, and predicts an early victory, there’s always a chance they will be humbled. Certainly an $8000 dent in my wallet has been humbling to me. In the future, I will be more cautious of picking the favorite, because you never know anymore. In retrospect though, it makes sense.
Lebron James is a transcendent player, and Golden State relied too much on 3 pointers. Live by the 3, die by the 3 is a common saying. In the playoffs, anything can happen, and it came down to literally the last 2 minutes of the series, when Kyrie Irving hit a clutch 3 and sealed away Golden State’s chances. It was really a 50/50 kind of outcome. Golden State should not have been favored. Just because they won 73 games in the regular season doesn’t predict how they will play in the playoffs. Past results don’t indicate future performance
Similarly, in retrospect, it was easy to see why Trump won (even though Hillary won the popular vote). The polls only polled likely voters, and missed a lot voters who chose not to answer. This so called silent majority went and prevailed for Trump. Hillary was more hated than people thought. And they underestimated just how much people wanted change in America, myself included. People were so anti-establishment this year, especially in the Midwest where many people disliked Hillary ALOT. Pollsters falsely assumed that the same demographics that came out for Obama in 2012 would come out for Hillary but thats just not the case. Hillary doesn’t have the same charisma, and she has too much baggage/scandals/controversy to be the same as Obama. And Republicans have historically had more enthusiasm to vote than Democrats have. Obama was an exceptional candidate who mobilized people to vote, and Hillary just isn’t the same.
So, it was deeply humbling for me to lose both these bets and be down $8000 in the hole (exactly the same amount I won betting on Obama in 2012, what goes around comes around I guess). As for the new President Trump, I do have a few worries about his inclination to repeal or replace NAFTA (thats the agreement that gives Canadians like me a special visa to work in the USA). Because of his anti-immigrant stance, and I am a US immigrant on a US work visa, it does affect me. I hope nothing too drastic will happen, but who knows? Trump is so far the only US president without any prior political or military experience, so no one really knows what will happen. I really do hope that he becomes a great president. I really don’t believe that he wants to start wars or be a dictator like people think. But at the end of the day, life will go on, and the sun will come up again, so we will see. Hey, At least weed in California is legal now!
Edit: I just want to make clear that politically, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Since 2009, I have been a registered Canadian Conservative voter, but in the US, Republicans are sometimes too crazy for me, though I believe in conservative policies. I have always believed in fiscal conservatism and reduced spending, with more individual liberties. Since I have lived in South Korea (a very conservative Asian country) for the past 2 years, I have become more socially conservative as well. I don’t specifically oppose gay marriage or abortion or illegal immigration, but I’m not in favor of those things either. In truth, I don’t really care about any of those things since it doesn’t really affect me. Korea has definitely made me believe in traditional gender roles a lot more than before though, and that has really caused to me oppose feminism these past 2 years. In that sense – Trump winning the election doesn’t really affect me that much – and I don’t really oppose any of his policies, which is why you won’t see me rioting in the streets like some other Californians.
I made a video ranking US presidents out of sheer boredom..