ELECTION FEVER

So Monsieur ‘Arpeur is to spin the wheel on October 14. What will the electorate think? Will it rise with a single voice to admonish the blackguard for his naked political opportunism? Or will it swallow the bullshit about parliament being “dysfunctional” and return the rascals with even more seats, perhaps a majority?

As they say on the Ontario-Quebec border, je ne give un fuck pas. Well, okay, maybe un soupçon d’un fuck. As games of chance and skill go, politics can be somewhat diverting - though the game currently being played to the south is high stakes poker to our penny-ante gin rummy.

Here on the jobsite, politics is never a hot topic. Guys in their twenties dominate the site. Apprentices, labourers, helpers, equipment operators, and so forth, these guys elect to go to the best bar for pussy on Whyte Ave; campaign to get their colleagues out to the paintball tourney on the weekend; poll each another on the calibre of the tits on today’s "Sunshine Girl" … okay, enough. Those who will actually vote, will probably vote Conservative for cultural reasons – we are Albertans - but I'd guess most are probably among the 40 per cent of the voting-age population who never consider voting.

“I’m not really into fuckin’ politics, man,” confesses a big, 23-ish drywaller with a the build of a bouncer, a soul patch on his chin, and one of the higher fucks-per-sentence averages on site. “Like they’re all the fuckin’ same, these fuckin’ politicians. Just a bunch liars livin’ large on the fuckin’ taxpayer.”

Here he hawks up a loogie and propels it to the floor not far from my feet. It raises a satisfying little dust cloud, like a missile disturbing the white sands of some Lilliputian Arabia.

“Hey, we’ve asked you guys to stop spitting on the floor,” I remind him.

“Aw, shit, man; fuckin sorry. Won’t happen again.”

But of course it will. Stopping drywallers and tapers from spitting is like keeping dogs from peeing on poles. Breathing that plaster dust all day – and only a fag, I’ve been told, wears a dust mask - sandpapers the throat. A constant barrage of loogies is the result. I'm sure there's a political metaphor here somewhere.

The supers and bosses are less likely to spit but more likely to vote. Merrick the electricians’ superintendent, a pudgy former farm boy now in his mid-30s with a wife, a couple of young kids, and a home in the semi-rural Edmonton dormitory town of Morinville, says he guesses he will be voting Conservative.

“You can’t bitch about these guys unless you vote,” he philosophizes, but wishes aloud that Preston Manning and the Alliance were still around. “Now there was a good politician,” says Merrick. “Remember that equality bill of his? It would’ve meant nobody got special treatment …”

And here he goes off on a familiar rant about the special treatment accorded Indians. Merrick used to be a west coast fisherman out of Rupert and can talk your ear off about the depletion of salmon stocks caused by over fishing by our thirst nations excused from quotas.

Brian, in the trailer enjoying a smoke with Merrick, acknowledges that Presto was a good leader, but that he somewhere along the line got co-opted by the powers that be in Ottawa. He tends to be a bit of conspiracy theorist. “I’ll bet Chretien sat him down and said, ‘This is the way things are going to be, boy.’ And that’s how he got so rich. Am I right?”

Brian’s a good carpenter and a good site superintendent, but a political analyst he is not. Or at least I don’t think he is. Maybe Chretien and Manning did collude to somehow enrich themselves. Maybe Dion was dropped on Parliament Hill by a UFO?

Brian, 43, probably won’t be voting anyway. “I’ve never voted in my life,” he confesses to me later. “Maybe I should, huh?”

As for my own expectation on the outcome of this election, I should point out that I’m no longer paid for political prognostications and even when I was, my record was no better than the next pundit’s.

Bearing this in mind ... My gut feeling for Oct 14 is a slightly increased minority for the Cons. The two main parties are polling virtually the same as they were before the 2006 election - about neck-and-neck in the most electorally important provinces of Ontario and Quebec (despite Harper’s habtual fellating of the francophony), somewhat ahead in the West, and somewhat behind in the nearly irrelevant theme park we call Atlantic Canada. All things being equal, I’d bet at on the Harperions getting 132 seats, the Libs 99, the Bloc 46, the NDP 28, and Greenies 3.

But there are things that aren’t equal, notably the Liberal leader. Paul Martin, the last time around, was a reasonably presentable, perfectly bilingual leader who, while not as engaging as Jean Chretien (the federal version of Ralph Klein), was a former finance minister who had turned a deficit into a surplus, and presided over a relatively unified caucus.

The stick available to the Conservatives was the sponsorship scandal. They used it to beat the Liberals and Martin, supporting a message that the Grits were an old, tired, corrupt machine. The Conservatives, although a bit “scary” (i.e. socially conservative) and led by a sphinx of a man neither charismatic or lovable, were the party that could end such corruption and were thus elected.

Two and a half years later, Sponsorgate’s a dead issue and the Tories are forced to run on their record, which, unhappily, includes the fixed election law – Bill C-16 – that Stevie (to use Danny Williams' pet name for the lad) has so grossly flouted.

On the plus side, the Liberal leader is a doofus, unloved by much of his caucus, undermined by pretenders, and without nearly the amount of campaign werewithal that his predecessor had in '06. In terms of popular approval, Dion trails Harper and the ever-smilin’ Jack Layton. (A poll released a week or so ago had Harper at 50%, Layton at 29% and Dion at 19%. Although polls, as Dief pointed out, are for dogs. Meaning, I suppose, that one pisses on them when one must).

Aping the Liberal behavior he once excoriated, the icily expedient Mr. Harper is, in calling an election a year early, kicking the other guys while they’re down. The Liberals might be hypocritical in criticizing a practice that was their trademark, or in chiding Haper for flouting a bill that they vehemently opposed, but Harper’s hypocrisy trumps theirs.

But if Dion and his mutinous caucus meet their low expectations - although I still have this horrible feeling that Dion might somehow morph into a loveable little doofus of an engine that could ("I t'ink, I can; I t'ink I can!) - this election could be Jack Layton’s opportunity to move into the opposition slot. He’s polling 10 points ahead of Dion in popularity and has been kicking around long enough now to assume a certain elder-statesman gravitas (or something) among those able to stomach condescendingToronto lefties. If Jacko plays his cards right: calling Harper out for his C-16 mendacity, playing on current Canadian doubts about the Afghanistan mission, presenting a catchier alternative to Dion’s inscrutable Green Shit scheme, and laying the wreckage of the Ontario economy at Stephen’s feet, then the NDP could conceivably cause leftist Liberal voters to say what the hell have we got to lose? and shift allegiances. Maybe the Toronto Star will endorse the NDP. They’ve done it before.

As for the traditionally NDP CBC, I’m detecting a bit of waffling. Elizabeth May, she of the immense behind and Raging Granny rhetoric, is a natural favourite among the women of similar attributes who dominate the Ceeb. Her Green Party now boasts a turncoat Liberal as its one-man caucus. And May has also recently acquired that all-important feminist victim status - the “old boys’ club” of broadcasters refused to allow her into the TV debates. This should get the CBC plumping for her over laughing Jack – who, after all, is one of those unfortunate middle-aged white guys.

But I’m not sure as the CBC matters much any more. And if audacious Jack truly intends to be the next prime minister – as his campaign fantasy has it – he should get rid of that moustache. There has only been one moustached prime minister: Robert Borden (Cons., 1911 – 1920), remembered for the conscription crisis and the imposition of that “temporary” expedient known as income tax. There hasn’t been a US president with a moustache since – well, who was that fat guy who got stuck his bathtub? Back then moustaches suggested a certain military bearing. Now they suggest dictators and gigolos.

So shave it off, Jack. The defoliation could be the high point of what is shaping up to be the most unexciting campaign in Canadian history (which is saying a lot.)

Meanwhile, thank goodness, we 've got the high-stakes poker game to amuse us. Brian may not vote, and would hard-pressed to name the federal MP in his own riding, but he lights up when the subject of the US presidential election is broached.

“Who’s that guy, Mc …Mac..?”

“McCain.”

“Yeah, I like that guy. He’s got one hell of story. That prison in Vietnam? Can you imagine that? Torture? How long was he there? Shit!”

Ah, those American bastards! We can't take our eyes off them.