Rob Ford Uber Alles ... For the Moment

So, it turns out that when I'm wrong about something, I'm really wrong. My great consolation is that so was everybody else. This is turning out to be an incredibly strange year in electoral politics and it's hard to take anyone's predictions seriously anymore, including mine.

As my out of town and foreign readers might not know, Rob Ford was elected Toronto's 64th mayor on Monday, winning by a huge and unexpected margin of 12 points. Exactly none of the polls were predicting anything like that in the campaign's last week. One poll had him up by 8 late last week, but most people thought it was an outlier. Most polls had it at about a three point race.

As much as I don't like the guy, I have to congratulate him for running the only smart and disciplined campaign out there. When people like me were kicking Team Ford in the balls, they studiously ignored the sniping and stayed on their message, regardless of how ridiculous it was. The spread was so massive that you can't blame it on Joe Pantalone staying in the race. The people of Toronto clearly elected Rob Ford.

Of course, there's always the reason of why we did that. Ford's platform was so short on concrete details and long on wishful thinking and outright lies that it's hard to believe that his ideas were endorsed on Monday night. By early spring, we should start seeing that.

First, the election was an overt repudiation of the status quo. Not only was Ford elected, but nine members of council retired and another six were defeated. Those are unusually high numbers in a city where City Council is as close to a career gig as you're likely to find.

Second, everybody else ran such terrible campaigns. Pantalone was the only one who didn't run as a populist to some degree, and he was campaigning for the deeply unpopular David Miller's third term. George Smitherman took a huge early lead and basically threw it away. The incompetence of the Smitherman campaign is certain to be studied by future generations of political junkies everywhere. Rocco Rossi tried running as "Rob Ford with a human face" and looked truly silly in the process.

I also think Furious George's stellar ass-kicking was, in part, Toronto's distant early warning to Smitherman's former boss, Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty. I don't think that McGuinty is in serious trouble next year, but if there are growing holes in his 416 firewall, there are huge reasons for him to worry. It's hard to imagine an amateur like Tim Hudak beating even an unpopular McGuinty, but no one seriously thought Ford would be elected mayor a year ago, either. And I would be willing to wager that most of Ford's campaign team is talking to the Ontario Conservatives about jobs right now.

Of course, the main force behind the victory of Rob Ford is John Tory. Had Tory run, Ford wouldn't have, nor probably would Smitherman. While Tory has a long and storied history of losing to lesser people like David Miller and Dalton McGuinty, it would have been almost mathematically impossible for Rocco Rossi or Joe Pantalone to beat him.

Now Ford gets to govern, which is going to be endlessly entertaining to watch. He never did much of anything during his ten years on Council and almost everyone there hates him.

Given the size of his victory, Ford will have a honeymoon that stretches into the spring, and the fifteen new councilors are a wild card. That means that he'll get the easy stuff done - like car registration tax - done right away. However, things like reforming Council and Ford's fairy tale of a transit plan are going to come up just as his political support evaporates. He doesn't have the broad legislative base that Barack Obama did in Congress to steamroll things through, and a lot of Ford's platform just doesn't make sense.

In the end, Toronto is going to wind up with three and a half years of gridlock, which is probably the best thing that any real conservative can hope for. The tax and spenders won't pass anything substantial, but neither will Ford because his financing schemes are insane Bush Republicanism. Too many of Ford's promises are premised with McGuinty riding in to save the day with provincial money, which ignores the fact that McGuinty has about $25 billion of his own debt to contend with and absolutely no political motive to help Rob Ford look good.

So let's hear it for nothing getting done!


Editor's Note: I meant to write this up sooner, but I had a wisdom tooth yanked out of my noggin early yesterday morning and I've been drugged up to the tits. Thanks for your patience.