As we move closer to election day, beware the backups

by Angus Reid | June 7, 2019 10:31 am

By Shachi Kurl, Executive Director

OK, can we talk about backups? Everyone’s got them: your backup vacation home checker, in case your first choice has a record of drowning house plants. Your backup babysitter when brother-in-law wants a night off. Your backup dogwalker when Fido has trust issues with the designated primary. Your backup date to that wedding at the cottage later this summer, just in case your current, nascent romance doesn’t quite last that long.

In an online, app-based world when our relational and consumer choices are endless and never quite locked in, to be a backup is an important position. In party politics, it could be everything.

It was indeed everything to Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals in the summer of 2015. The leader who began the campaign season in third place slowly, winsomely crept to power as the backup. While Thomas Mulcair and the New Democrats and Stephen Harper with his Conservatives faced off as the perceived primaries, Trudeau was content to just be on our contact lists, waiting for the call when things fell through. And fall through they did. As Thomas stumbled and Stephen staggered, there was Justin, looking better than ever.

For the rest of this piece, please view it on the Ottawa Citizen’s site[1], where it was initially published.

Source URL: https://angusreid.org/as-we-move-closer-to-election-day-beware-the-backups/

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