Bruce Dowbiggin
Yes, Virginia: Taking Aim At The Woke Regency
Tuesday was the night the political zeitgeist may have flipped. Instead of Oz the Powerful there was suddenly a corrupt U.S. political class shouting, “Ignore that man behind the curtain!” The hype and bluster had faded to the apologetic figure of Joe Biden exposed, begging forgiveness.
It’s usually a mistake to read too much into any U.S. gubernatorial election during an electoral off-year. Newly elected presidents typically get a rebuke when the glitter of election night turns into the smeared mascara of governing.
In part, that’s what happened in Virginia, New Jersey and other states holding elections for governor down to school boards. President Biden’s sheen wore off in the failure of his congressional agenda, the border crisis and the humiliation of Afghanistan. The GOP won almost every major office on offer Tuesday— and may yet get the New Jersey governorship.
Hey, it happens.
Except this November night seemed different. Governing in the post-Donald Trump reality has transcended the norms: As seen from the COP26 conference in Glasgow, the anointed fly by private jet to meet other grandees to decide the future of the planet. They don’t care who is offended by their privilege. They’re worth it. It’s free-spending blue-check elites imposing double standards on the governed.
They assume their purity gives them the divine right to negotiate away the rights of the voters (capping emissions on the Alberta energy industry, for instance). They talk of “wars” on climate that are actually wars on people seeking an affordable lifestyle. “We need a vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector,” Prince Charles told the loyalists. “With trillions at its disposal.”
It will come as no surprise that the man with 210 servants thinks a one-world, unelected body to fight climate is the solution. To aid him in this “war” he has the Big Tech oligarchs in Glasgow to censor opposing messages and banish inconvenient facts. “It’s quite stunning to see liberals applauding censorship,” writes a disbelieving Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the Democrats’ martyred hero, “particularly the muzzling of bullied mothers of injured children, in order to protect pharmaceutical companies from criticism.”
But that’s the hubris of today’s Woke regency. Trust-fund poseurs like Justin Trudeau were born on third base and assume they hit a triple. Their constituency is Bill Gates, Al Gore and the other gladhanders who flew 400 private jets to Scotland to talk about cutting emissions. Their toughest job is masking their disdain for the people whose taxes support their lifestyle.
These lofty presumptions stretched all the way to Virginia, where a former governor and Clinton pal Terry McAuliffe thought he’d cake walk to the governor’s mansion again in a reliably Democratic state.
But something novel happened. Despite influential friends like the Clintons and Obamas the powerful Oz was suddenly alone. The curtain was pulled back. McAuliffe was abandoned as suburban votes poured in for his opponent Glen Youngkin, a Republican business type who rode a wave of school-reform to the job.
His denunciation of CRT and BLM in schools smashed cherished MSNBC/ CNN assumptions of the ruling class and the Media Party that everything be seen through Marxist prisms of privilege and race. And Youngkin won.
While Youngkin was the star attraction of the night, no one epitomized the pushback more than a former Marine named Winsome Sears, who won the Virgina lieutenant governor’s chair, the first black woman to do so.
A self-made success story, her campaign signs featured a picture of a resolved Sears holding an AR15. “I’m telling you that what you are looking at is the American dream,” Sears said during her victory speech. She took immediate aim at the MSNBC/ CNN race hustlers. “There are some who want to divide us, and we must not let that happen. They would like us to believe we are back in 1963 when my father came (from Jamaica)” she explained.
She sketched a different America from the one loathed by limousine liberals in Hollywood and New York. “We can live where we want, we can eat where we want. We own the water fountains … I am living proof. In case you haven’t noticed, I am black, and I have been black all my life, but that’s not what this is about.”
“It’s a historic night, but I didn’t run to make history — I just wanted to leave it better than I found it. Hold on, Virginia, help is on the way — the cavalry has arrived.”
Naturally Sears was savaged by DC pundits who construed a win by a conservative black woman in Virginia as equivalent to racism. Or Donald Trump. Or both. Joy-less Reid of MSNBC hissed, “The Youngkin campaign discovered that this contingent of angry, willfully ignorant white people was the key ingredient needed to elect a GOP governor in Virginia for the first time since 2009.”
CNN’s Van Jones sniffed that it was the “Delta variant of Trumpism… In other words… same disease, but spreads a lot faster and can get a lot more places.” And so on. But the era of tossing racism around like pizza dough seems to have taken a hit.
And the era of Trump is tarnished, too. Youngkin/ Sears won without him. As conservative Kyle Becker tweeted, “No more riding a politician’s coattails who claims to be doing the work for us. It’s lazy and counter-productive. The only people we can depend on are ourselves.”
Watching it from Canada, where smugness about America is endemic, it was hard not to respect the American capacity for re-invention and self reliance. There is now a genuine chance that average Americans will slough off these leeches with their Marxist visions of world government.
Would that Canada find similar courage. Or a Winsome Spears to articulate a vision apart from our grandees sashaying around Europe. (Leslyn Lewis?) But then you realize it has just let the same crew of gormless Trudeau radicals and timeservers have another term of the same old/ same old. Pitting one side of the nation against the other. Races against each other. A “net-zero financial system”. (Doesn’t sound ominous in the least).
And to not concede: This country is as good as lost.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand has been nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan is called InExact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
This week we are heading over to Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida, to see how MLB is getting along with its new ABS system for calling balls and strikes. According to our source at MLB the challenge system is being readily accepted by fans. If it goes as well as the time clock and catchers callig pitches elctronically it will be welcome.
In planning for seeing a game we had a choice between seeing the homestanding Miami Marlins or St. Louis Cardinals, who share the stadium in the spring. Our 16th-row seats for the Marlins/ Washington Nationals game are US $16 each. Had we chosen a Cardinals game versus Washington the next day that same seat would cost US $79.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is called dynamic pricing. The unloved Marlins can’t draw flies. The Cardinals— even a bad Cardinals team— are still a big draw. The gap between the two realities is growing fast. Leading many to say, What about parity?
As we wrote in December of last year, “MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.
Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.
There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.
So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury-tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care anymore the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.
Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 our book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to win the Stanley Cup, and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”
And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year demanding changes. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.
Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”
It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.
The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Expos draftee Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.
While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.
The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.
Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.
In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.”
When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice. “
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Breaking: “Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum believes she will have a deal to avoid U.S. tariffs by next Tuesday. Meanwhile Canada’s PM Skippy McDoodles— he of 22 percent approval— is flying around Europe delivering billions to the Ukraine bribery-recycling mechanism and chatting with 18% approval Macron in Paris. God help Canada.”
For a party that consumes language the way Prime Minister Trudeau’s plane consumes jet fuel the ruling Liberals seem willfully— blissfully— ignorant of the meaning of the word Urgent. As in, get something done yesterday.
While Mexico seemingly recognizes the value of time in coming up with a deal by March 4 to avoid tariffs and Trump’s displeasure, viewers of the Xanax Liberal debates on Monday and Tuesday were treated to a government languorously floating down a river of polite debate, staying inside the guardrails of good taste.
The prevailing take was “we f**ed up the past decade, okay? But you know us and can depend on us to keep pandering to your romantic notions that don’t include Chinese money laundering, drug kingpins and cyber crime.” Apparently that should be enough for Canadian Boomers to flock to them like the swallows at Capistrano.
As most know by now the elders of the party disqualified two leadership candidates, Ruby Dhalla and Chandra Araya, from the debates because they couldn’t be relied upon to spare the cadaverous banker Mark Carney who famously has three different passports, a passel of corporate board seats and a halting grasp of French.
But who needs debate? The Liberals have settled on their enemy and it’s not Pierre Poilievre. It’s Donald Trump. They’re convinced themselves that targeting Beelzebub Trump, not addressing the tariff crisis, is all they need to expunge the Trudeau Follies and win a March election. Instead of engaging in serious talks (see: Danielle Smith) they’ll talk amongst themselves. The recent hockey win over over Tyrannus U.S. has apparently inspired Canadians to reward Liberals with another five years of sitting in first class while paying economy.
Emboldened 1A) candidate Chrystia Freeland, the former Finance minister and Truck Convoy caudillo, blasted Trump on Tuesday, urging Canada to join with… Denmark. “The U.S. is turning predator, and so what Canada needs to do is work closely with our democratic allies, our military allies. I would start with our Nordic partners, specifically Denmark who is also being threatened.”
Maybe she can do an anti-Trump rally at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen? The problem being— for those who applauded Nazis in the Visitors Gallery— this fatuous nonsense all makes perfect sense. The capacity for denial in the Libs aging Boomer base seems inexhaustible. Currently they’re memory-holing the Rez School buried babies claims that the PM recited before the U.N.
While the social-justice Left was routed in America in 2024, Team Carney is acting as if Canada’s culture cancellation scheme still works. Meanwhile the Libs seem unaware or uncaring about South of 70— the collapse of the CDN dollar— and the hollowing-out of Canada’s GDP (the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period).
Economist @TrevorTombe writes that it’s Code red time. “Real GDP per capita in the U.S. was 43% higher than in Canada in 2023. In 2024, I estimate this gap will widen to nearly 50% … This stunning divergence is unprecedented in modern history.’ But no sweat, Carney will print all the money Canada needs to keep diversity programs functioning.
It all mirrors the last desperate, flailing attempts by the U.S. Democrats to save their grasp on ultimate power in the 2024 election. Having used the Media Party that hid Biden’s bribery schemes to disguise the senility of Joe Biden for four years they discovered they would be wiped out by Trump in the voting. Presto change-o, they tossed the primary results, threw Biden into the dumpster, got friendly pollsters to make its look like Kamala Harris was ahead.
In the American model the DEMs still got smoked—every state voted more for Trump than 2020. Trump easily won the Electoral College. But Canada’s Libs seem assured that they can make an end run on the CPC’s big lead. Already the Media Party pollsters are showing a Lazarus-like ascent from Trudeau’s 22-percent approval to a lead in some polls and a closer call in others.
There are no Rasmussen polls as there were in the U.S., which consistently showed Trump on the road to his win. And Canada has yet to digest the full Carney record. Already his controversial record on climate and printing money has started to trip him up, as in recent revelations that he lied about his role in sending Brookfield’s head office from Canada to the U.S.
If all else fails Canada can still repatriate Wayne Gretzky. Donald Trump has made him a “free agent” again. “He’s the Greatest Canadian of them all, and I am therefore making him a ‘free agent,’ because I don’t want anyone in Canada to say anything bad about him… He supports Canada the way it is, as he should, even though it’s not nearly as good as it could be as part of the Greatest and Most Powerful Country in the World, the Good Ole’ U.S.A.!”
Besides, there are other Canadian fish for Trump to fry: “@Tablesalt13 If Donald Trump really wanted to hurt Canada he could offer (vetted) citizenship to any Canadian with an advanced degree or a sought-after skill. 40-50% of skilled Conservatives would leave… and only the socialists would remain….. This would be extinction level.” Just don’t call it urgent.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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