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Utilising reactionary anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine rallies in Melbourne organised this week, police forces have unveiled an array of new weapons and equipment. This includes pepper ball firearms that shoot hard pellets the size of marbles, stinger grenades, and paramilitary-style vehicles and body armour.

As the World Socialist Web Site has previously outlined, the anti-vax protests have no legitimacy whatsoever. A small layer of construction workers appear to have been involved in one of the rallies on Tuesday outside the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) office (see Australian anti-vaccine, extreme right demonstrators target construction industry). Numbers of reports, however, point to the predominantly petty bourgeois layers involved in the other events, including small business owners and contractors.

Politically, the rallies are dominated and led by extreme right-wing libertarian and outright fascist individuals and organisations. Some of the administrators of Telegram accounts promoting and organising the protests have previously been exposed as admirers of Adolf Hitler. Supporters of the fascistic Proud Boys and the now defunct United Patriots Front have been involved in the rallies.

The police are exploiting widespread hostility towards the protests and their homicidal calls for an immediate end to lockdown measures as the pretext for trialling new weaponry and a massive state mobilisation.

Senior police previously expressed concern over how the population would respond to the use of new, so-called non-lethal weaponry.

In 2018, police put on a display of their enhanced firepower for selected journalists. The weapons included VKS Pepper Ball firearms, capable of firing blunt force pellets or dye markers to brand people for later arrest, baton round launchers capable of firing larger rubber or plastic bullets, stinger grenades that release nine rubber projectiles, and sound/flash bombs that release noise, light and smoke. This was accompanied by new body armour and paramilitary-style police vehicles.

An Age journalist noted at the time, we have been given a sneak preview of gear that looks more like Star Wars than regulation police equipment.

Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton declared: It is an ugly look to see police in riot gear in a suburban street. It will be confronting to watch. We now have some equipment that has not been seen before that may alarm people.

The Melbourne Activist Legal Support noted that the new weapons posed severe dangers.

Pepper Ball pellets, the organisation reported, can blind, maim and leave permanent injuries depending where they hit the body, while the baton round launcher has resulted in significant injuries and fatalities around the world, [including last year] a 25-year-old protester [who] was killed by a rubber bullet in Paraguay. In addition: The flash/noise distraction grenades designed to shock and disperse crowds are routinely being used in Israel/Palestine and other conflict zones and have maimed children, can burst ear drums and generate dangerous fear and panic in crowds.

For three years, this equipment has gone unused. Now, however, the anti-vaxxer rallies have provided the police with the hoped-for pretext.

The real target of the repressive build-up is not the extreme rightmany of the fascists enjoy close relations with sections of sympathising policebut the working class.

The state Labor governments bolstering of police powers and weaponry has always been driven by the fear of social unrest and working class and youth protest, fuelled by escalating social inequality and attacks on living standards and democratic rights. Labor Premier Daniel Andrews has boasted of his law and order credentials. In 2016, his state government committed an unprecedented $2 billion in additional spending to expand the police by 20 percent, with 3,100 more officers employed. The government has since boasted that its annual police spending is 35 percent higher than its Liberal predecessor.

The police operations against the anti-vax events represent a warning as to how the state is preparing to respond to a genuine movement of the working class in defence of its independent interests.

Numerous acts of police violence were recorded by witnesses and uploaded to social media. This included the gratuitous use of pepper spray on already restrained people, indiscriminate firing of plastic pellets, and one incident in which a person speaking with officers at Flinders train station was grabbed from behind by another cop without warning and body and head slammed into the concrete floor.

In another incident, a passer-by who was not involved in the right-wing protests recorded three masked men wearing khaki-coloured armour emerge from an unmarked car and aggressively force a person to the ground. These were members of the Special Operations Group police branch, an elite unit usually reserved for counter-terrorist responses and incidents involving firearms or explosives.

The confrontation recalled the police-state operations coordinated by US President Donald Trump in the final weeks of his presidency, including having unidentified police in Portland hauling protestors into unmarked vans for interrogation.

In another precedent-setting move, on Wednesday the police had the Civil Aviation Safety Authority declare central Melbourne a no-fly zone. This aimed at preventing the broadcast of aerial footage of the anti-vax rallies. Police later permitted overhead media coverage, but insisted that video broadcasts from helicopters be delayed by at least an hour so that live police operations were not visible to protestors. The ban on live overhead coverage was subsequently overturned by the Federal Court.

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Australian police exploit extreme right-wing, anti-vax rallies to deploy new repressive weaponry - WSWS

The Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C., August 5, 2021(Brent Buterbaugh/National Review)

If youre like me, you will have enjoyed reading the legal commentary thats been published ahead of the Supreme Courts oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization on December 1. At issue in the case is Mississippis 2018 Gestational Age Act, which prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormality. The scholarship on the issue both in formal amicus briefs and in longer-form essays has been richly educational. That so many constitutional-law professors, advocacy groups, and nonprofits have decided to submit their thoughts for consideration isnt surprising, given that this is perhaps the most consequential case the Court has decided to take up in decades. Mississippis law although modest and broadly popular is self-evidently incompatible with the Courts prior rulings, and therefore threatens the abortion regime thats been constructed over the past half century.

I was surprised, then, when I learned that the Cato Institute the prominent libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., which boasts a center dedicated to the study of constitutional law has decided not to file with the Court in this case. Surprise quickly turned to confusion when I read Ilya Shapiro, the centers director, on its justification for not doing so.

Cato hasnt and wont be filing in Dobbs, as we havent in any abortion case, for three reasons: (1) libertarians in good standing span the gamut from the staunchest pro-choice to the staunchest pro-life, (2) we have nothing unique to add about what an undue burden is or how it may apply to any particular abortion regulation, and (3) while Cato lawyers may each have our own views on when rights attach see point 1 this is fundamentally a philosophical, theological, and thus ultimately political question, not a legal one.

Lets consider each reason in turn.

First, Ill take Shapiros word for it that libertarians, both at Cato and elsewhere, hold a range of views on abortion. Yet maintaining a wide range of opinions on abortion does not preclude Cato or any of its fellows from opposing Roe and Casey, which they ought to do on constitutional principle alone. Indeed, any pro-choice libertarian in good standing should advocate exactly this position. More on this below.

Next is the admission that they dont have anything unique to add about what constitutes an undue burden the standard established in Planned Parenthood v. Casey for determining whether a state restriction on abortion pre-viability is legitimate. As a constitutional matter, this is fair enough. The undue-burden standard has been sufficiently, even exhaustively, examined. Take, for example, a brilliant new essay from Mary Ann Glendon and O. Carter Snead in National Affairs. In making the case for overturning Roe and Casey, they note that the standard has been an exceedingly vague concept since its creation. The new standard, they write,

doubled down on Roes freewheeling derivation of a constitutional right based on the justices own normative balancing of competing interests: a womans interest in being free to make intimate, personal, and self-defining reproductive choices on the one hand, versus the states interests in defending the unborn, preserving the integrity of the medical profession, and promoting the respect for life more generally, on the other.

It failed, yet again, to ground the Courts abortion jurisprudence in the Constitution. As it so happens, made-up rules tend to beget more made-up rules.

Consider, too, this brief description from Chief Justice John Roberts, on the sort of balancing act that Casey demanded: There is no plausible sense in which anyone, let alone this Court, could objectively assign weight to such imponderable values and no meaningful way to compare them if there were.

So, in short, yes: Casey is well-trodden ground. To posit this as a justification for not filing in this case, however, is unpersuasive. One could write about any number of things unrelated to the undue-burden standard and, indeed, the majority of those filed in support of the state of Mississippi have done just that. But beyond this, the case itself hardly turns on whether the states law constitutes an undue burden prior to viability. Its ban with minimal exceptions at 15 weeks pretty obviously amounts to one. Mississippi does not even argue otherwise; it knows its law violates the Supreme Courtmade standard. Instead, the state put forth a wholesale stare decisis argument against Roe and Casey.

Last is the contention that rights-attachment that is, when the fetus retains the rights attendant to personhood is a philosophical, theological, and political question. Here, too, Shapiro is generally correct. (Some noteworthy conservatives such as Robert P. George and John M. Finnis disagree, advancing the notion that unborn children are constitutional persons entitled to equal protection pursuant to the 14th Amendment; in other words, it is fundamentally a legal question.)

But to maintain that this is expressly political as Cato says that it does is to have sufficient cause to support Mississippis case. That the question of when rights attach is a political matter, without any inferable language in the Constitution, supports the Courts doing away with its precedent that treats it as a constitutional matter, thereby kicking deliberation back to the states, where it belongs. Shapiros comment then is indeed a justification just not in the direction that he imagines it to run.

Finally, some also may suggest that to overturn such precedents would be dangerously political. But the opposite is true: Roe itself was the original political sin, and the Courts removing itself from that sphere would be entirely apolitical. As has been discussed in these pages and elsewhere the Courts abortion jurisprudence has no legitimate grounding in the Constitution. Roe, in the words of pro-choice legal scholar John Hart Ely, was not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be. Its hardly political, then, for the Court to correct a serious mistake that has caused significant negative jurisprudential and real-world consequences. To do so, in fact, would arguably enhance its legitimacy and restore its proper place in our constitutional order.

The opportunity before the justices is grand. So, too, is the one before the Cato Institute. Its unfortunate that Cato has chosen to sit it out and doubly so, that this is its reasoning for doing so. The Court must fight the temptation to do likewise.

Originally posted here:
Cato and the Court - National Review

ALEXANDER SALTER| Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

In a democracy, public policy rests on the consent of the governed. The great economist James Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in 1986, wrote that the status quo matters in a democracy because its from that point--wherever we happen to be--that the conversation about policy change begins. Our starting point, here and now, is the U.S. Constitution: its text, duly ratified amendments, and judicially interpreted meaning.

For lovers of liberty, the Constitution is an impressive document. Although lacking in some ways compared to the Articles of Confederation, our current national charter has the clear benefit of durability. The Constitution has been the basic law of the land for 232 years. Many of those years were prosperous. Some were tumultuous and destructive. The Constitution endured it all. It provides the basic backdrop of order against which liberty finds its meaning.

Libertarians like me admire the Constitution. We just wish our fellow citizens admired it as much as we do! While the Constitution isnt a fully libertarian document, its arguably the most pro-freedom compact in existence. When libertarians have a problem with the Constitution, its usually because too many politicians, bureaucrats, and sadly even voters ignore parts of the text they dont like.

The ways in which the Constitution protects freedom are obvious. Separation of powers and checks and balances are built into our governance system. This makes it incredibly difficult for political coalitions to seize absolute control of the government. And even if they do, the Bill of Rights, buttressed by the courts, stand guard over the citizenry. We Americans cherish our rights to speak freely, assemble freely, worship freely. We take pride in our protections against arbitrary seizure of property. And we know that these rights are natural rights, given to us by God. The Constitution recognizes them, but does not establish them.

In fact, the 9th Amendment explicitly says this: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. In other words, the rights of the people are far too numerous to list. Just because the Framers didnt write down a specific right doesnt mean we dont have that right. The Constitution is meant to limit the government, not the citizens.

Another support for liberty is the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. While libertarians lament the omission of the word expressly from this amendment, its nonetheless a demonstration of the Founders fondness for federalism. That government which governs best governs closest to the citizens themselves.

What parts of the Constitution do libertarians dislike? There are a few: the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Commerce Clause, and an unlimited power of taxation are the most obvious cases. The Necessary and Proper Clause, unless carefully interpreted, could easily result in an almost-unlimited federal government. Likewise, the Commerce Clause has been used to justify federal meddling in any situation which could conceivably--not even actually!--affect trade across the United States. The lack of strict controls on the taxing power has resulted in tax rates that are downright confiscatory. All of these yield a government that is too big, too intrusive, and too powerful.

But we oughtnt throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Constitution remains a respectable governance framework for a free and virtuous people. We can work within the Constitutional system to preserve its strengths and shore up its weaknesses. Unfortunately, the greatest obstacle to Constitutional renewal is the mass of politicians who are sworn to uphold it.

Republicans and Democrats are quick to praise the Constitution on the campaign trail or at a fundraiser. But when it comes to governing, their policies are a Constitutional disgrace. One is reminded of the prophecy of Isaiah: These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. The sad reality is that government-run-amok is a bipartisan consensus. No party believes in keeping Washington, DC within the bounds of the Constitution. Many libertarians became libertarian because theyve had enough of our political duopolys two-step between Constitutional rhetoric and un-Constitutional policy.

The Constitution isnt perfect. No governing document is. But thanks to the Constitution, life, liberty, and property have been reasonably secure in the United States for more than two centuries. Libertarians seek to rein in the federal government by forcing it to follow the law of the land. While we can be reformist in our political programs, we must be radical in our aims.

American exceptionalism comes down to the rule of law: the idea that governed and governors alike must play by the same rules. Libertarians demand, as a matter of natural right, nothing less than the restoration of the rule of law. A crucial first step is to reinstate Constitutional constraints on government. Any other way of governing is profoundly un-American.

Alexander William Salter is the Georgie G. Snyder Associate Professor of Economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University and the Comparative Economics Research Fellow at TTUs Free Market Institute.

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Salter: The constitution and the concept of liberty - LubbockOnline.com

It was a landslide victory for Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday when a large majority of Californians voted against his recall. Had that not been the case, conservative talk-show host Larry Elder would have been elected the first Black governor in the state's history, as he easily beat the more than three dozen others on the ballot seeking to replace Newsom.

In a 32-minute post-election interview, Newsweek got Elder's thoughts on what went wrong, what went right and what comes next, and the media-savvy former candidate didn't pull any punches.

Newsweek: Are you still a Libertarian or are you now a Republican?

Larry Elder: I was always both. I was always a small "L" libertarian and registered Republican, just like Milton Friedman.

Newsweek: Has the Republican party made you an offer to head the RNC in California or nationally?

Elder: Has anybody called me and said, 'Hey, do you want a job?' No. But have I gotten support from Republicans up and down the state and nationally? Yes. I haven't gotten an offer to head the RNC, nor would I expect one.

Newsweek: So you'll be getting your own TV show?

Elder: I have no idea. I was not running to get a TV show. I've been on television many, many times. By the way, I started out in television, even though people call me a radio host. When offers come, I'll consider them. But right now, I'm just chilling, figuring out what to do with my new-found footprint that I didn't have before.

Newsweek: But you said you're not going back to your radio show.

Elder: I didn't say that.

Newsweek: At your election party you referred to yourself as a 'former radio host.'

Elder: That was tongue in cheek. My goodness. I wasn't hosting radio during my campaign, but I didn't mean I'd never go back to radio. Really, Paul, look into my baby brown libertarian eyeballs I honestly don't know what I'll do next.

Newsweek: Why did you lose to Gavin Newsom?

Elder: Because he outspent me five to one and we're outnumbered two-to-one Democrat compared to Republican. Even independents outnumber Republicans in California, and Newsom was successfully able to scare people into thinking I'd do everything but reenact slavery. The only actual issue he discussed was that I am anti-vax, which I'm not. I would have had a very different approach to coronavirus, and that's accurate. He never defended his record on crime, homelessness, how he shut down the economy or how he shut down schools while his kids were enjoying in-person private education and he was yucking it up at the French Laundry while incurring a $12,000 wine tab. I don't know what he was drinking, but it sure wasn't Mad Dog 2020. He didn't mention wildfires and how he mismanaged forests, or a water shortage, or rolling brownouts, or how people are leaving California for the first time. All he did was say "Republican takeover" over and over and show Larry Elder and Donald Trump side-by-side, and it worked, because 83 percent of Democrats believe Trump is a racist, and 61 percent believe all Republicans are racist slash sexist slash bigoted.

Newsweek: The ad with you and Trump was funded by Netflix founder Reed Hastings, and it claimed it was a matter of life and death that you be defeated. Did that surprise you?

Elder: Nothing surprised me. I've been critical of the media for a long time. When I decided to run, I knew that the wrath of God was going to come down on me. The flat-out lies didn't surprise me, like "Larry Elder is anti-vax." I'm vaccinated and I encourage people to get vaccinated, but I also encourage freedom.

Newsweek: I spoke to celebrities who supported you and they told me that the ad from Hastings sent a chill through conservative Hollywood, as if to say, 'if you want a relationship with Netflix, you'd better not support Elder.' Does that make sense to you?

Elder: Of course it does. Two high-profile Hollywood people who support me, Clint Eastwood and Jon Voight, said that I could say they support me but that they wouldn't put out a statement. Voight later allowed me to post a picture of me and him. And I'm not mad about them not giving a statement, I'm just telling you that this is how it rolls in this state and in this open-minded, tolerant industry.

Newsweek: So you're saying the media didn't cover you fairly?

Elder: I put a tweet out, Paul, saying that only in America could a Black man become president and be called the Black face of white supremacy. And not one reporter has said to me, 'well, Larry, you got smoked on the recall, but, my God, you smoked all these Republicans. You got 47 percent and the next Republican got nine or 10, and you were only campaigning for seven weeks!' Paul, it is stunning what I have done. I am actually stunned by the margin of my victory.

Newsweek: So then you have further political aspirations, perhaps nationally?

Elder: Stay tuned.

Newsweek: What's the biggest problem in California and how should Newsom solve it?

Elder: Crime, the fact that people are leaving because they can't afford a house, and homelessness. I have no idea what he'll do about those because if he did, he would have mentioned it in his commercials. He didn't. He's clueless. He lives in a $5 million house in a gated community. He got attacked during his campaign by a mentally ill homeless person and his security crew took care of it. The things that working-class people have to deal with don't affect him at all. I believe it will take California hitting rock bottom, like an alcoholic, before we turn this around, because all he had to say was 'Trump' and 'Republican takeover,' and people got scared and pulled the lever for him. They hate Republicans more than the rise in crime, rise in cost of living, rise of homelessness, rolling brownouts and wildfires. It's a remarkable achievement by the left and they did it with the complicity of the media.

Newsweek: Was it a fair election with no irregularities?

Elder: We know that a bunch of people in Republican districts tried to vote and were told they already voted. It was investigated, and they eventually were able to vote, but if that's not an irregularity, I don't know what is. When all is said and done, with the margin of victory, whatever shenanigans there may or may not have been won't matter, but we all should have an interest in making sure the election was handled with integrity. I'll tell you one thing more, Paul; I was asked repeatedly by reporters if I thought Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square. I told several reporters, and none of them did anything with it, that just once I'd like them to ask Newsom if Trump won the 2016 election fair and square, because for four years Hilary Clinton said the election was stolen from her and that Trump was illegitimate, and the result is that 66 percent of Democrats, according to a YouGov poll, believe that Russians changed vote tallies. Never mind a 1,000-page report that said the Russians did not change a single vote tally ... a greater percentage of Democrats believe the 2016 election was stolen than Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. Even if Newsom said he believed Trump won in 2016, the next question should be whether Hillary Clinton should have her social media platform shut down for pushing the big lie the way Trump has had his shut down. Nobody ever asked him. Nobody. One reporter said, 'well, that's what-aboutism.' I said, 'no, it's called consistency and being fair.'

Newsweek: Do you regret your decision to run?

Elder: Not for one moment. Nor am I surprised about anything. I complained about being called 'the Black face of white supremacy and 'the Black David Duke,' but I certainly anticipated it, because I have zero respect for the media. They are the public relations bureau for the Democrats. They long stopped even trying to be objective. I just hope that now people are seeing what I've been seeing for decades. I know that even people at the L.A. Times were embarrassed about a columnist calling me 'the Black face of white supremacy,' because they told me they were. But not only was she not fired, she was on PBS, so our taxpayer dollars were hosting a woman who said that about me. Scottie, beam me the hell up.

Newsweek: So at your election night party, your handlers told you not to talk to me. Did you like having handlers?

Elder: Every candidate has handlers. It didn't bother me. But ultimately the candidate decides what to do. I got advice I didn't follow, and was happy I didn't. I also got advice I didn't follow and later regretted it. Most candidates have been at it for years and have relationships, but I had to do it on the fly with people I didn't know. I went through a few campaign managers before finding the right one.

Newsweek: What's an example of you not taking advice, or taking it and regretting you did?

Elder: I did an interview with the L.A. Times where I jumped all over them for calling me 'the Black face of white supremacy,' and my communications manager was not happy with how combative I was. But she soon learned that that's why people like me, because I'm authentic and I fight back, so she began to tailor her advice to my personality. Another time, the Today Show asked me if I'd appoint a Republican to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein. I knew it was a question designed to upset Democrats, so I didn't answer it directly. Afterwards, one of my handlers told me I should have just said, 'yes,' and I should have. I regret fumbling around and not being myself.

Newsweek: You did sound a little more stifled on the campaign trail than on radio, no?

Elder: Oh come on. It's a different thing. On the radio I'm taking calls and giving my opinion on events of that day; on the campaign trail I was discussing issues.

Newsweek: At your party, there was a guy dancing around with a giant cutout of your head. Is that sort of adulation giving you a big head?

Elder: No, but there definitely was adulation. There's no question. I was treated like a rock star; like a Beatle. Experienced people told me they've never seen anything like it. I thought I'd have a connection, but, my goodness, middle-age men, forget about women, came up to me crying because they were thinking of leaving California until I entered the race. I did not expect that.

Newsweek: Well, you've painted a grim picture of California. Are people right to be moving out?

Elder: Do you think things are going to get better? I don't see any evidence of that. Just recently at a restaurant on Melrose that I've eaten at, people in masks held up diners at gunpoint and took their purses and watches, and Newsom has released 20,000 convicted felons early, even though studies say the majority of them are likely to re-offend. We have a law that allows people to steal up to $950, not just a day, but at multiple stores in a day, without any fear of going to prison because they're not a felon, and we have district attorneys who are soft on crime and support cashless bail, and there's no consequences if they simply don't show up to court. You tell me if people should leave. It's bleak in California. I wasn't kidding when I said it's got great resources where else can you go surfing in the ocean and skiing in the mountains in one day? but it's being ruined by horrible leadership.

Newsweek: The accusation I have heard that hurt you most were reports saying you wanted former slaveholders to get reparations. Is that the case?

Elder: Oh good grief. No one on the campaign trail ever asked me about that, just members of the media. I was being interviewed by Candace Owens, and I said that reparations is the extraction of money from people who were never slaveholders to people who were never slaves. If you really want to play this game, the Dred Scott decision called slaves property. It was vulgar, but that's what the Supreme Court said. But people always leave this part out; the slave trade could have never existed without African chieftains selling people to Arab and European slavers. Should we get reparations from them? It was a long conversation that was boiled down to, 'Elder believes white slave owners should get reparations.' It's totally unfair.

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Larry Elder Speaks to Newsweek on Why He Lost to Gavin Newsom and What He May Do Next - Newsweek

Janet Clarkson knows what happens when Canadian voters have unrealistic expectations about a politicians leadership in office: They vote you out. Period. And that can happen to Prime Minister Trudeau in Mondays election.

Clarkson should know. She was mayor of Trent Lakes in Ontario for two terms before losing to a challenger. Four years later, she ran again and retook the mayors office.

My loss was over stopping quarries, she said, but his challenges are much more complicated.

Justin Trudeau faces the polls on Sept. 20 after calling a snap election in an attempt to grow his Liberal Partys power in the House of Commons. Once confident of a victory, he is now neck and neck with his Conservative Party candidate Erin OToole. The prime minister has 31.6percent support compared to 31.3 percent for his right-leaning opponent, according to the CBC. Other parties with substantial backing include the New Democrats with 19.8percent, the libertarian Peoples Party with 6.1 percent and the Green Party with 3.5 percent.

Clarkson said Trudeau is partly in trouble for the way he handled the pandemic. There are people out there who critique him for the shutdowns and the financial [subsidies] ... and the spike in inflation that has gone along with it, she said.

Consumer prices in Canada rose 4.1 percent in August compared to the same period last year, marking the highest annual inflation rate in the country since March 2003, according to Statistics Canada.

But there is also a backlash because he called this election during a pandemic and people say this was not the smartest move, added the mayor, who said she still supports the prime minister while recognizing his problems with voters.

The decision to call the election before its 2023 scheduled date has been unpopular, agreed Western University of Ontario political science professor Matthew Lebo. It also seems misguided because smaller political parties like the right-leaning Peoples Party and the left-wing Green Party are gaining greater traction.

Libertarians have grown more vocal in the wake of the pandemic, leading to the trending hashtag #TrudeauHasToGo on Twitter. They are the angrier ones, having protests about masks and mandates in schools, Lebo said. In some provinces they are at 10 percent support.

Meanwhile, the Green Party is unsatisfied that [Trudeau] has done enough with climate change and see this as an opportunity to make their frustration heard, Clarkson said.

When Trudeau called the elections in August, polls were in his favor, with both liberal and conservative voters supporting his vaccination mandates for federal public servants and rules requiring proof of vaccination to fly, take trains or enter indoor spaces. Currently, Canada has the highest vaccination rate of single and double doses anywhere in the world. Eighty-two percent of the eligible population aged 12 and up have received at least one dose and 70.3percent are fully vaccinated.

If Trudeau loses, it will be because he failed to give voters a good reason to go to the polls after they were told for more than a year not to venture out in public, Lebo said.

The day he announced the snap election, he was looking great in the polls, Lebo said. That all changed within days of announcing he was calling an election.

In short, voters perceive the move as an exercise in vanity and power.

When Trudeau first ran in 2015, he won in an upset that resulted in a healthy majority, marking the end of nine years of Conservative Party rule. The 49-year-old was seen as having the vision of his father former Premier Pierre Trudeau, the charisma and optimism of his mother Margaret with this energizing youthful style and liberal brand of politics people were looking for, said Clarkson.

Four years later, the discovery that he dressed in blackface multiple times cost him 20 seats and his majority rule in the House of Commons. He was forced to form a minority government and rely on support from small rivals to govern.

In the final days of this months election, OToole has framed the contest as a fight against a selfish elitist who called an election during the pandemics fourth wave.

Every Canadian has met a Justin Trudeau in their lives privileged, entitled and always looking out for number one, OToole said in a recent speech. He was looking out for number one when he called this expensive and unnecessary election in the middle of a pandemic.

Trudeau, meanwhile, has had a tough time of it during his campaign as angry protesters and hecklers have hounded him at nearly every stop of his cross-country tour.

After six years of being the liberal darling good-looking, young, bilingual, cosmopolitan the bloom has faded and people are starting to get sick of the party in power.

Hes been in office six years, Lebo said. The clock is ticking.

Salena Zito is the co-author of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics (Crown Forum).

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How Justin Trudeau went from liberal darling to possibly endangered species - New York Post