i'm just going to be clear about this mackay v trudeau thing.

mackay is a largely non-ideological old money aristocrat that in truth isn't very smart and is just going to do what the banks tell him.

that is, he's exactly the same thing as justin trudeau.

there was a time when the liberals were better than this, but we need to learn from reality as it happens, and one of his legacies is that they aren't, anymore. they were always a bankers' party, but they were a smart bankers' party; today, they're just the same neo-liberal front group as any other late capitalist institution is.

so, the reason mackay seems so much less scary than conservatives of past years has less to do with mackay being some kind of "moderate", and more to do with how far to the right that trudeau (and his cronies, apparently led mostly by freeland) has pulled the party.

it's very hard to argue that you need to vote for the liberals to keep the conservatives out when the conservatives and liberals are essentially the same thing. i'm consequently not particularly scared of voting for a third party to punish the liberals, under the understanding that the conservatives will probably win.

the other three candidates have ideologies, and the calculus is not the same, with them. o'toole is scheer part two (or day part three) and sloan scares the hell out of me. they will have their own agendas, and will need to be stopped.

but, mackay is just a mindless front, who doesn't have an original thought in his pretty little airhead to even mention.

we'll see how the pieces fall on the board, but i'm likely to be more aggressive about supporting a third party in the imminent election, because the differences between the two major parties are going to end up too minimal to really discern as meaningful.

and, the liberals do not have much time to reverse that perception - and even seem to be moving in the opposite direction, of trying to leap-frog the conservatives to the right.