Monday, November 05, 2007

What Color Is The Sky, Susan?

Susan Delacourt must have just come back from a Liberal Kool-Aid party. She seriously believes that removing Tory candidates in Toronto and Guelph will help the fortunes of the NDP? Really? Hands up Tory supporters who will now vote NDP as a result of those problems in Guelph and Toronto? In the real world, I suspect disgruntled Tories will either stay home or vote Green.

The NDP and Tories are just too far apart to make that leap for the vast majority of its voters. The myth of an NDP/Tory conspiracy makes for a pleasing story though, for Liberals who just can't understand why everybody just doesn't shut the Hell up and vote Liberal.

Update: Speaking of pleasing stories, it didn't take long for the Liberal blogging community to jump on this one.
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9 comments:

  1. I agree with you, for Ontario--and the idea that any such benefits could come about because of formal or informal deals between the two parties is just silly. But out here in western Canada, there are a lot of Tory-NDP swing voters. They're typically working-class, they live on the outskirts of major cities in apartment or townhouse complexes, and most relevantly here, they swing between the NDP and the Tories because they would never vote Liberal in a million years.

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  2. I agree with your analysis , but Ms. Delacourt is using Guelph and Toronto as specific examples of NDP gains thanks to the Tories. That is just Liberal preemptive self-justification, in case they lose either Guelph or Toronto Center(unlikely, but wow if it happens). The narrative will be "It isn't our fault, it's that damned conspiracy!" I can hear it now.

    Isn't it bizarre that Liberals just don't get the fact that you can be both anti-Liberal and anti-Conservative? They are stuck in the "If you don't vote Liberal, you must love the Tories" narrative. It is pathetic and frustrating at the same time.

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  3. I think NDP'ers are smarter than to gang up with the Tories on this one.

    What the Tories did was such a blatant disregard for democracy within their own party.

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  4. Folks - you miss the point. It's not about the NDP being part of a Harper conspiracy, it's about the NDP being part of Harper's strategy.

    It's simple math.

    Stephen Harper needs Jack Layton to succeed.

    That's not a values statement, or a judgment of anyone's motives, it's arithmetic. And it is a stated and repeated goal of federal Tory strategists (e.g. Flanagan, for one)

    How you decide to interpret or measure that fact is entirely up to you. But with every passing day that the NDP continue to focus their attack on Stephane Dion and the Liberals, the Canadian voting public will draw their own conclusions.

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  5. How you decide to interpret or measure that fact is entirely up to you. But with every passing day that the NDP continue to focus their attack on Stephane Dion and the Liberals, the Canadian voting public will draw their own conclusions.

    Mark, what you seem to miss is the fact that the NDP is not an auxiliary of the Liberals. They can be both anti-Liberal and anti-Conservative. Layton is under absolutely no obligation to sing Dion's praises.

    If I can convince you of this, I will have done my job. In my mind, whether Harper benefits tangentially from rising NDP support is irrelevant (and is only due to our stupid electoral system). In my mind the Liberals are just as bad an alternative.

    If you don't like the "mathematics", change the electoral system. It would be great if the Liberal Party championed a more democratic way to elect members. However, if your only message to voters is "Vote for the Liberals or else", then voters quite rightly will look for other alternatives.

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  6. An auxiliary of the Liberals??? Never said or implied that they were Greg. Never did. Never would.

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  7. You'd be surprised, though, Greg. I've jumped between the Tories and the NDP. The Red Tories are not all that far apart from the right wing of the NDP, and sometimes we jump from one to the other, skipping the Liberals, because we want a centrist party with principle. And the Liberals don't cover that.

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  8. Besides, Guelph has the NDP candidacy of Tom King. I'd vote for him if I could.

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  9. Stephen Harper needs Jack Layton to succeed.

    Except in BC and Sask, where such success exactly coincides with fewer Tory seats. If I recall correctly, the NDP has taken at least five in BC from the Tories since 2004.

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