so, what is doug ford?

well, he's not donald trump. and, by that, i mean he's not going to come out hard against immigration, or fight against trade agreements. that's not what doug ford is.

to begin with, the fords actually come out of a fairly migrant-heavy area of toronto, and have always relied fairly heavily on the votes of brown and yellow people to gain office. there were some racist anecdotes attributed to rob ford when he was alive, but the fords, as a family, have actually gone out of their way to appeal to a sense of disenfranchisement amongst the first-generation migrant poor in the areas that they have represented in city council. further, doug has always been seen as the less stupid of the two, and he is no doubt well aware of the need to appeal to non-white voters in order to win an election in toronto, and by extension in ontario.

so, doug ford is not going to run on immigration (which is largely a federal concern) or xenophobia; to the contrary, expect him to run a fairly inclusive campaign that reaches out to minorities along conservative cultural grounds, to the exclusion primarily of the queer community. following a strategy engineered by jason kenney, and that is becoming standard amongst conservatives across the country, he is actually going to try to tap into conservative sentiment in the various religious minorities. one of the ways he's going to do that is to push looking into the sex-ed curriculum in ontario schools, which has substantial opposition from various christian and non-christian religious groups. america may actually want to look at this carefully, as doug ford is actually quite likely to succeed in building coalitions between christian, muslim and other religious groups to enforce more of a classical right-wing social agenda.

but, again following the harper model, the intent is just to string them along - there's not going to be a change in the sex ed curriculum, or provincial laws against abortion, or any of the other wild fantasies that keep money pouring into the party.

and, this campaign will be targeted, and probably actually kept a little bit quiet. one of the tricks that conservatives have used in the past is to run ads for religious minorities in the languages they speak, so the white majority doesn't catch wind of it.

what doug ford is going to run on is a classic economic libertarian policy - cutting red tape, reducing government waste, lowering business taxes, that kind of thing. it will be a classic business conservative campaign, free of open dog whistling or white supremacist race-baiting.

and, when you look for the dog whistles and do find them, buried, you'll be surprised to see what they are, to the point that you'll have to ask an ontarian to make sense of them.

i know the fords get some coverage outside of the country. doug ford isn't going to get caught smoking crack at an unrequited high school sweatheart's town house. his statements are not likely to be nearly as gauche, either. but, this is still a race worth watching.

the pc election is at the beginning of march. the provincial election is at the beginning of june.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.