Campaign Gist: FG finds the voters revolting
Whoever the winner of the election turns out to be, it's clear the loser has been FG. This is the Campaign Gist.
Fine Gael entered this election campaign holding all the best cards. It had the most popular leader, the luxury of choosing the date to suit itself and it was the most popular party. It was convinced the people were behind it.
Five days from the election and the electorate is behind FG, but only in the way that a pursuing mob waving pitchforks and flaming torches is behind a fleeing Frankenstein monster.
Fine Gael have had a nightmarish electoral campaign. But there is nothing unusual about this. FG are always terrible at election campaigns. It is not for nothing that I launched the first Campaign Gist with the subheading "Fine Gael release traditional voter repellant campaign".
What's more interesting is to understand why FG are terrible at election campaigns. It is the same reason they keep being terrible at them. During an election campaign the party reveals its inner self to the electorate, who then recoil.
FG's core position is that they are right and the electorate should be grateful to have them.
This was their position when they lost to FF in 1932. It sulkily remained their position all the way through the next eight decades in the wilderness until their sudden catapult into the role of biggest party when FF collapsed to third place in 2011. And, oh boy, has it been their position since then.
Fine Gael: I am holding a gun and my feet are full of holes
Let's start with the video.
The sleeping giant in this campaign has been the government's failure to help people in need of disability services. In particular, parents of children with special needs- a bloc which spans geography and class- have been left carrying the pain and guilt of knowing their children need help and not being able to make the system that is meant to deliver it actually work. The HSE acknowledged that by the end of 2024, there would be a 20,000 child backlog of Assessments of Needs (the very first step on accessing assistance).
Two different sets of canvassers, from two very different parts of the city told me that the assessment of needs crisis was coming up spontaneously on the door, second only to housing. Immigration was nowhere as an issue by comparison. When the Irish Times followed a candidate around on the canvass they concluded "housing has been the dominant issue while out canvassing followed by health, services for children with additional needs and public transport."
But, until the Taoiseach walked away from a care worker whose voice was almost breaking, there was no real focus available for voters for this angst.
A poll out today from the Indo, taken before that video, shows FG's support falling and Simon Harris' huge lead in popularity ratings has evaporated. I think we can presume that his snubbing of a care worker hasn't turned that around.
It is worth understanding that a viral moment catches fire because it reveals something the viewer feels already. It turns unspoken, ambient impressions into a crystal clear, concrete event.
This one clocked up 1.8 million views in less than a day. For comparison, in the 2020 general election, the total number of voters was 2,202,192. That is a lot of people making their minds up.
How Dare You, says FG to public opinion
FG sent proxies out as the numbers climbed. They explained that was just a single moment and the Taoiseach was actually a sound sort who for some reason just this one time happened to be a thin-skinned arrogant pup when confronted with a woman overcome with emotion on behalf of those she cared for.
Except, those voters see something about Harris in that video. He walks away from the woman when she questions his personal sense of his own virtue. You can't talk to him unless you first acknowledge he is a good man. It is a low-key Trumpian trait in its self-centering.
He later released his own long, rambling video. It was reported as an apology, but I invite you (if you are prepared for excruciating second-hand embarrassment on his behalf) to watch it all. He doesn't open with an apology. In fact, he manages to never say the word sorry at any point in the video.
Instead we get a self-comforting stream of consciousness, all about Simon Harris and how, actually, he is a good man. From Simon Harris.
And Simon Harris may well be a good man, who isn't right about some of his politics. Life is complicated. But campaigns don't do nuance.
A TikTok Taoiseach who lives by the viral video, can die by the viral video.
What is seen cannot be unseen.
These are the rules of the medium.
