I can’t be the only one watching a growing concordance between Toronto’s corporate press and right-wing politicians over the last months.

The strategy seems to be: ignore or obfuscate the initiatives of Mayor Miller’s administration in one gesture, then drum up populist outrage over the “do nothing Mayor” in the next. He must be a “do-nothing!” I mean, have we told you about anything he’s doing?

A Mayor is one person, with one vote on Council and some influence over the decision-making process. In other words, a Mayor can really only be as good as her or his Council, and by that metric, sure, I guess Miller has been pretty useless, given a strong minority on Council who believe their entire job is to delay and dilute anything that comes from the Miller camp. In a war of attrition, it’s not whether you win, it’s how slow you lose, and who you drag down with you.

This puts lefties in an awkward position. There’s a lot about Miller’s administration that’s been problematic, but with no viable challenger from the left, progressives are required to put too much time in to defending one man, when we’d really much rather be building a constituency that could push the general drift of Toronto politics out in to a less constrictive space.

If I thought Council’s privateers were co-ordinated enough (there are intelligent right-wingers, operating from principled positions, who one feels obliged to engage with respectfully - this lot doesn’t qualify), I’d call it a masterful strategy - but they aren’t, so let’s just call it a morbidly fascinating side-effect: through constant and judicious application of what in political circles is called “so much fucking noise,” the common denominator of political discourse is kept as low as possible (that would be 2: the binary of black and white, left and right, Abbot and Costello), and people who could be engaged in building that progressive (dare I say radical) constituency are otherwise engaged in keeping the giant zorb of what’s considered reasonable from rolling downhill and rightward.

It’s not long before the “do-nothing Mayor” starts becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet even a cursory overview makes the the “useless” accusation baffling.

Miller was instrumental in opening up new revenue streams for a city saddled by ancient fiscal rules, and negotiating a provincial upload. He oversaw the first freezing of police spending (outside of wages and benefits, which are linked to arbitrated settlements) in memory. He is helping bring new rapid transit to Toronto. He’s prioritized some very promising climate-related initiatives. He’s championed an imaginative and concrete (if controversial) housing plan. He’s empowered staff to actually make progress on the Bike Plan. Among other things.

Just because these things aren’t useful to you personally doesn’t mean they’re useless.

I find the way in which he’s done some of these things (specifically rushing through the Streets to Homes plan) problematic. There are things I wish he hadn’t done. There are plenty of things I wish he would do. There are ways in which he could seriously improve his communications strategy. He could check in with the grassroots sat least, say, once every year or so.

And there were plenty of reasons to find the position the City took up against its employees during the strike really troubling.

Yet, judging the strike deal from the frame of city finances - which, after all, the dailies and news stations seemed to decide, was all we were supposed to talk about anyway - the negotiating position which Miller championed did just save the City a whole titload of money.

But then, those savings won’t happen all at once. Nothing constructive ever does. And that’s the major weakness of any progressive politician, anyone who wants to engage in city-building, as opposed to simple maintenance of the status-quo: it takes time, it consists in details, and requires some imagination - not to mention hope - to understand.

And there is a real, oddly enthusiastic undercurrent of hopelessness running beneath this town. For a particularly loud, slow-to-rouse but hard-to-placate minority, it’s a de-facto civic identity. Maybe that’s endemic to any big city. Maybe it’s just that short-term issues facilitate a whole lot of complaining, which is cathartic, and doesn’t imply the responsibility of optimism.

In any case, it’s the right wing’s bread and butter: bitch and moan about potholes. The taxes you pay are being spent on things. Music was better when you were young. Toast gets burnt more often now that homosexuals are parking hybrids under condos. That sort of thing. Keep discourse as simple as possible. That’s how you’ll keep getting elected.

So the cycle continues. And, with the exception of certain writers, the papers would appear to be eating it up and shitting it back out. You can almost hear publishers across the spectrum popping a collective chubby for the image of Miller swinging in the garbage-tinted breeze. The editorials take an ostensibly populist tone: We’re on your side, Average Toronto Citizen. Nevermind that the folks behind the big desks are all a sufficient number of tax brackets above you to piss down your chimney.

It’s a recession. In some ways, the only bones with any profitable meat left on them right now belong to the state. Miller’s made it pretty clear he’s not interested in privatizing. And let’s not forget that Land Transfer Tax. In a town being built on property speculation, that was tantamount to wealth redistribution. The post-Lastman honeymoon is well over, and I wonder if the decision hasn’t been made: Miller has to go. Because he’s a “do-nothing Mayor.” Facts notwithstanding.