i want to expand on my "running for election in california" quip, because i've said this before but never really got into it.

trudeau is actually probably more popular in the united states than he is in canada right now. this is recent: his numbers have crashed over the last three months, to the point where he's running in the high 30s. now, canada has a multi-party system, so running in the 30s is not the catastrophe here that it is there. regardless, if you're looking at raw numbers? he's running at 36%, compared to trump's 37%.

so, i'd suspect trudeau is doing much better in california than he is in canada right now. there was really never the kind of coverage in canada that you saw on sites like vox. our press is overwhelmingly conservative, but, even in the small left press, it just didn't happen. there was just a lot of skepticism.

in fact, i might suspect that trudeau and his advisers pay more attention to vox or even daily kos than they do to canadian sites like rabble, partly for the reason that canada has a left and the left-press is more interested in that left than it is in the bourgeois liberal party and partly for the reason that being bourgeois in canada means you probably spend a lot of time in the united states.

the liberal party intelligentsia has a lot of these bourgeois canadians that have spent good portions of their lives in the united states, and are consequently more connected to american politics than they are to canadian politics. some of them went to school in the states. particularly awful is that some of them went to law school in the states, and learned about the wrong constitution and the wrong system of government. some of them sought careers in the states. they all came back different people than they were when they left. and, if you realize the nature of the problem, it's actually very easy to point it out.

there are a number of issues on the table right now where the liberals sound exactly like democrats, and are being applauded for it by democrats. but, as this is happening, they are being nailed in canada by liberals for exactly what they are being applauded for in america by democrats. and, it's not always clear that they even realize it, because they've spent most of their lives disinterested in domestic perspectives. they seem to get their validation from the democratic-leaning sources that they've always consulted, and then don't even realize that they're getting nailed at home.

the previous leader - michael ignatieff - was absolutely roasted by the previous government for basically this issue. he spent a lot of his life globetrotting. he was a talkshow host in britain and a professor at harvard. he came back with subtle arguments in favour of torture that would go over astoundingly well at the fucking brookings institute or something, and seemed unable to grapple with the premise of leading a party that voted against the war in iraq on the grounds that it was illegal under international law. he was in a culture shock. but, he put a lot of the party that trudeau inherited in place.

i'm not even trying to attack anybody the way that the conservatives did. i just think that it's imperative that the ruling party ground itself in it's country of origin, and take steps to ensure that it is being directed by people that understand the views of the people that live in the country.

so, when i say that trudeau and his team of advisers think they're running for re-election in california, this is more than poetic license. there is a starkly dangerous level of truth to it. the reality is that a lot of them would be more comfortable discussing american politics, and that a lot of them see canada from outside in rather than inside out, or ground their perspectives in absurdly misinformed premises like "canadians and americans are basically the same".

if this government wants to survive, it will need to change it's perspective on how it sees itself in the world by cleaning it's house of americans.