Roundup: No, it’s not a mini-midterm

Posted on by

Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I am taking the opportunity to call out some of the absolute worst practices in Canadian political journalism, one of which was on display this weekend courtesy of CBC, where a preview of the forthcoming byelection in Mississauga-Lakeshore was termed a “miniature midterm election,” and my eyes rolled back so far in my head I almost did a full-body flip.

No. Stop that.

It is nothing like an American midterm election, which is a general election for the entire House of Representatives and a third of their Senate. Even Americans have special elections equivalent to byelections, so in every single way the comparison is flawed, and no, you can’t excuse it by trying to claim you’re piggybacking on an American story to tell a Canadian one, because it just perpetuates the false notion that our systems are at all equivalent, and that their politics are more interesting or exciting than ours are (which they are not—theirs are simply more insane, and we should not be looking to mimic or envy that in any way whatsoever). Furthermore, the story goes into the history of the riding and of certain byelections in order to try and carry on the tortured framing device to try and use it as a way of trying to divine messages about the current government, but with a boatload of caveats to say that it might not mean anything at all, in which case, what was the point of this whole exercise? It could have been a profile of the riding, the candidates, the fact that the Liberals once again ignored their own promise of open nominations to appoint a provincial has-been, or about the ground-game the different parties have in the riding as compared to the messages their parties are putting out. There is so much more you could do with this piece that would be useful political journalism than try to put this into some bastardised American context. Honestly, what is the gods damned point otherwise?

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 264:

Much of the news remains the liberation of Kherson, with police officers returning, along with things like television, though the city remains largely without power or water, and Ukrainian forces are trying to stabilise the situation there, which some are calling a humanitarian catastrophe. As well, some seventy percent of that province remains in Russian control, so there is still work to do. Some 2000 explosives have been removed from Kherson and the surrounding region in the past few days, and to the east, Russian forces continue their grinding offensive at Bakhmut.

https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1591525567698194432

Good reads:

  • At the ASEAN summit in Cambodia, Justin Trudeau made $333 million in pledges behind their Indo-Pacific strategy, plus $1 million for clearing area landmines.
  • Mélanie Joly says she won’t meet with her Russian counterpart in the coming days, but is open to working with China on certain issues.
  • The US military has been soliciting applications from Canadian mining projects for funding as party of their critical minerals security strategy.
  • Here is a look at some of the young Indigenous and Northern delegates at COP27.
  • The Star has a look at where the public inquiry stands with four weeks out of six of testimony completed.
  • Here is a recounting of changes Poilievre is making to his party’s inner workings, including the avowed shitposter as one of his new directors of communications.
  • Doug Ford is planning to extend his “temporary” gas tax cut into next year.
  • Now that Danielle Smith leads the UCP, are her candidates also going to be ivermectin-pushing Russia supporters? One has already been disqualified.
  • Chantal Hébert calls out Poilievre’s strategic silence on the actions his political brethren in the provinces have been making that could put him in a tight spot.

Odds and ends:

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.