Bright Spots?

jas wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

The only problem with that idea is that I doubt whether the woman has ever owned a Conservative membership card. She used to be a federal Liberal prior to going back into politics to seek the leadership of the BC Liberals. Her husband and family both had deep roots in the Paul Martin campaign team.

Bizarre. I don't believe that Socreds (which is essentially what the BC Libs are) have any affiliation with the federal Liberals? Did Christy genuinely think it was a Liberal party?

Anyway, that they would even float this idea confirms that the true BC Lib relationship has been with the federal Conservatives, not the Liberal party.

Christy Clark is not a federal Conservative.  Ditto Laura Miller, a federal Liberal who is the BC Liberal Party's Executive Director.  Ditto Deputy Chief of Staff Michele Cadario.  Ditto Ben Chin, Christy's Communications Director.  Given that Dan Doyle, her Chief of Staff, is a career civil servant, there are actually very few senior Conservatives in her inner circle within the Premier's Office.

Christy's 2013 pollster and chief campaign strategist Don Guy was working with Unifor and others this time toward taking out Harper with a "working families" style-campaign that was short-circuited by the early writ-drop. Christy's brother Bruce Clark and her ex-Husband Mark Marrissen (with whom she is still close) are both federal Liberals.

I would describe most (but not all) of them as being blue Liberals. There is no question that a lot of federal Conservatives are prominent in the BC Liberals as volunteers and fundraisers and also as MLAs and Ministers and of course, there are no real options further right other than the flakey BC Conservative Party, but the Conservatives' dominance of the BC Liberals has diminished since Gordon Campbell's time.

This would be a bright spot for you, surely?

The NDP won 13 races by less than 1.5% of the vote and lost only 3 by less than that margin.

The Liberals lost 13 races by less than 1.5% of the vote and won only 5 by less than that margin.

 

has anyone counted how many seats were won by smaller margins than the Green vote? In 2011 the Cons won 17 seats by fewer votes than what the Greens received. I dont think the number is nearly so big this time but I havent done the count.

I would count the poor showing of the Greens as bright spot because it allowed fewer Conservatives to wriggle through on split votes. The Greens overall fell from 3.8 to 3.1 on the preliminary figures.

KarlL wrote:

Christy Clark is not a federal Conservative.  Ditto Laura Miller, a federal Liberal who is the BC Liberal Party's Executive Director.  Ditto Deputy Chief of Staff Michele Cadario.  Ditto Ben Chin, Christy's Communications Director.  Given that Dan Doyle, her Chief of Staff, is a career civil servant, there are actually very few senior Conservatives in her inner circle within the Premier's Office.

Christy's 2013 pollster and chief campaign strategist Don Guy was working with Unifor and others this time toward taking out Harper with a "working families" style-campaign that was short-circuited by the early writ-drop. Christy's brother Bruce Clark and her ex-Husband Mark Marrissen (with whom she is still close) are both federal Liberals.

I would describe most (but not all) of them as being blue Liberals. There is no question that a lot of federal Conservatives are prominent in the BC Liberals as volunteers and fundraisers and also as MLAs and Ministers and of course, there are no real options further right other than the flakey BC Conservative Party, but the Conservatives' dominance of the BC Liberals has diminished since Gordon Campbell's time.

Well, colour me stunned. I don't pick that up at all from her conduct, except perhaps a hint during the English Bay oil spill in which she criticized the lack of federal response. On the oil & gas front and on the ideology of erosion of government (except where it can be used to bully) she appears to be as much of a crack-fueled hyper-Con as the rest of them.

KarlL wrote:

This would be a bright spot for you, surely?

The NDP won 13 races by less than 1.5% of the vote and lost only 3 by less than that margin.

The Liberals lost 13 races by less than 1.5% of the vote and won only 5 by less than that margin.

Clearly, this shows that God is an NDP party member, horseshoes aren't nearly enough to explain this.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

KarlL wrote:

This would be a bright spot for you, surely?

The NDP won 13 races by less than 1.5% of the vote and lost only 3 by less than that margin.

The Liberals lost 13 races by less than 1.5% of the vote and won only 5 by less than that margin.

Clearly, this shows that God is an NDP party member, horseshoes aren't nearly enough to explain this.

I didn't say that it was the Kalahari at high noon, but a bit of a bright spot, fortune-wise.

Winston wrote:

Bright spot this election?

*** SQUARE MOUSE HOLES ***

 +1

jas wrote:

Well, colour me stunned. I don't pick that up at all from her conduct, except perhaps a hint during the English Bay oil spill in which she criticized the lack of federal response. On the oil & gas front and on the ideology of erosion of government (except where it can be used to bully) she appears to be as much of a crack-fueled hyper-Con as the rest of them.

no she's a privatization Liberal and it's a common front between 'hyper-Cons' and so called Liberals here. the ground they could meet on with the BC Reforms. plus some churches got plum BC government run services to make the coalition work.

Christy is a Liberal and the so-cons hate her but put up with her so the NDP can't get in again. she has a fine line to walk.

the ongoing and up coming privatization of the BC public school system is for private business and the churches. another mutual ground but for differing reasons.

politics is a woman's sport in Vic. you do spa treatments on career bureaucrats and politicians you learn about the inside. not so much the outside view but the inside pressures.

felixr wrote:

Voter turnout?

Voter turnout is up every time a government is replaced. However, this turnout was still low for a change in government and didn't even hit the median turnout of 70ish%.  Still, it wouldn't have been possible to heave steve without an increase in turnout so it was still somewhat of a bright spot.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Even as the NDP was going down in flames, this was the fifth consecutive election where the NDP took more seats from the Conservatives than went the other way.

Sounds like a baseball stat.  Does it mean anything?

ReeferMadness wrote:

As I breeze through this thread, it seems pretty clear that most people seem to interpret "bright spots" as bright spots for the NDP.  Does anyone care about the country or is it all about the party?

Personally, I take a lot of satisfaction in getting rid of Harper.  And if the Liberals carry through on their commitments, there will be lots of things to be happy about.  Marijuana legalization will give the police one less tool to use to hassle poor minorities.  The electoral reform commitment gives us the best shot at PR in living memory.  Trudeau has committed to an MMIW inquiry and to end boiled water advisories in First Nations communities.   Pulling out of the pointless ISIS bombing mission.  And an end to the Harper attitude of governing only for a base.

So buck up.  You can whine some more when and if he starts to break his promises.

 Most of us believe that Trudeau's promises are fiction, so why would we get excited about them? We've been lied to by the Liberal Party so many times that I'll wait till something meaningful happens to get excited. 

 And honestly to many of us the success of the NDP is a health indicator for the countries future.

 And yes getting rid of Harper is good, but I've seen nothing to indicate that Trudeau is any less an asshole then Harper was, he just hides it better. Maybe now that's Prime Minister we'll see a change in attidude, but I won't hold my breath.

ReeferMadness wrote:

As I breeze through this thread, it seems pretty clear that most people seem to interpret "bright spots" as bright spots for the NDP.  Does anyone care about the country or is it all about the party?

Well in that case, might as well swallow one's pride and offer that the strategic-vote advocates had a point--given how much share a lot of those defeated Cons (esp. in places like the GTA) still held in defeat, maybe it was better that, say, Andrew Thomson didn't poll in the 20s-or-better.  Unless he was poised to grab Joe Oliver votes, of course.

ReeferMadness wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Even as the NDP was going down in flames, this was the fifth consecutive election where the NDP took more seats from the Conservatives than went the other way.

Sounds like a baseball stat.  Does it mean anything?

That the NDP can beat Conservatives in good elections and in bad.

ReeferMadness wrote:

As I breeze through this thread, it seems pretty clear that most people seem to interpret "bright spots" as bright spots for the NDP.  Does anyone care about the country or is it all about the party?

Has it escaped your attention that the Liberals voted with the Conservatives on several bad policies including C-51? Does that mean that bad policy is okay if it's proposed and supported by the Liberals?

ReeferMadness wrote:

Marijuana legalization will give the police one less tool to use to hassle poor minorities.

You really think the police won't just find something else to hassle them with?

ReeferMadness wrote:

Personally, I take a lot of satisfaction in getting rid of Harper.  And if the Liberals carry through on their commitments, there will be lots of things to be happy about.

I agree. Unfortunately Liberals have a history of doing the opposite, especially in a majority situation.

Yes, I was assuming some gerrymandering would be happening with the 30 new seats. If it was, it didn't seem to help the Cons at all.

ReeferMadness wrote:

As I breeze through this thread, it seems pretty clear that most people seem to interpret "bright spots" as bright spots for the NDP.  Does anyone care about the country or is it all about the party?

Personally, I take a lot of satisfaction in getting rid of Harper.  And if the Liberals carry through on their commitments, there will be lots of things to be happy about.  Marijuana legalization will give the police one less tool to use to hassle poor minorities.  The electoral reform commitment gives us the best shot at PR in living memory.  Trudeau has committed to an MMIW inquiry and to end boiled water advisories in First Nations communities.   Pulling out of the pointless ISIS bombing mission.  And an end to the Harper attitude of governing only for a base.

So buck up.  You can whine some more when and if he starts to break his promises.

That's not really fair. They are still reeling from the loss. Trying to see bright spots from the perspective of an NDP supporter dosen't mean they don't care about Canada. They came within a hairsbreath of forming the first NDP federal government only to drop to third. That hurts.

jas wrote:

Appreciate this analysis, quizzical. I had assumed Christy was merely a puppet figure to replace Gordon Campbell, who came in with an extremist agenda and executed it in a way that had citizens and opposition groups reeling.

Christy had a very negative relationship with Campbell (on which anyone need only read ex-Campbell Chief of Staff, Martyn Brown's daily savaging of Clark in the Straight during the last campaign, for which he wears vast amounts of egg on his face).

She has also explicitly rejected running for the Conservative leadership.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-premier-christy-clark...

 

Pondering wrote:

ReeferMadness wrote:

As I breeze through this thread, it seems pretty clear that most people seem to interpret "bright spots" as bright spots for the NDP.  Does anyone care about the country or is it all about the party?

Personally, I take a lot of satisfaction in getting rid of Harper.  And if the Liberals carry through on their commitments, there will be lots of things to be happy about.  Marijuana legalization will give the police one less tool to use to hassle poor minorities.  The electoral reform commitment gives us the best shot at PR in living memory.  Trudeau has committed to an MMIW inquiry and to end boiled water advisories in First Nations communities.   Pulling out of the pointless ISIS bombing mission.  And an end to the Harper attitude of governing only for a base.

So buck up.  You can whine some more when and if he starts to break his promises.

That's not really fair. They are still reeling from the loss. Trying to see bright spots from the perspective of an NDP supporter dosen't mean they don't care about Canada. They came within a hairsbreath of forming the first NDP federal government only to drop to third. That hurts.

As a Green supporter, I can understand the disappointment of watching good candidates with good ideas fail to succeed.  But my party is only a means to improve the country - it's not and end in itself.  The NDP may have been a victim of strategic voting but the Greens were hit even worse.

Regardless of how the party did, the government we will have is much better than the one that is leaving.  And that's more important.

 

adma wrote:

I'm not talking about voters, so much as actual elected officials and the like.  (Did Ujjal Dosanjih declare himself still a provincial Dipper during his federal Lib tenure?)

Ujjal was like Bob Rae only his hate for the NDP was more obvious and unrelenting.

When he ran I told all my NDP friends that he was a liberal but they didn't believe me. I still believe that Corky Evans would have held on to way more seats than two. Gustafsen Lake was enough to make me despise Dosanjh and his claim to be a progressive person.

Unionist wrote:

I personally will not miss Peter, Paul, or Pat. Do those count as bright spots?

Their defeat, along with Wayne Marston, Fraçoise Boivin, and Nicole Turmel, are definite bright spots for me.

The repudiation of the NDP's leadership's centrism and zionism came not only in how many NDP MP's lost their seats, but in who lost and who won. It wasn't totally clear-cut, as Megan Leslie also lost; but the worst NDP MP's from the last caucus are mostly gone.

Those NDP MP's that won are mostly those who a) distinguished themselves from Liberals, and b) earned a repution as solid constituency MP's. That's a definite bright light as the NDP moves into a rebuilding phase.

ReeferMadness wrote:

Pondering wrote:

ReeferMadness wrote:

As I breeze through this thread, it seems pretty clear that most people seem to interpret "bright spots" as bright spots for the NDP.  Does anyone care about the country or is it all about the party?

Personally, I take a lot of satisfaction in getting rid of Harper.  And if the Liberals carry through on their commitments, there will be lots of things to be happy about.  Marijuana legalization will give the police one less tool to use to hassle poor minorities.  The electoral reform commitment gives us the best shot at PR in living memory.  Trudeau has committed to an MMIW inquiry and to end boiled water advisories in First Nations communities.   Pulling out of the pointless ISIS bombing mission.  And an end to the Harper attitude of governing only for a base.

So buck up.  You can whine some more when and if he starts to break his promises.

That's not really fair. They are still reeling from the loss. Trying to see bright spots from the perspective of an NDP supporter dosen't mean they don't care about Canada. They came within a hairsbreath of forming the first NDP federal government only to drop to third. That hurts.

As a Green supporter, I can understand the disappointment of watching good candidates with good ideas fail to succeed.  But my party is only a means to improve the country - it's not and end in itself.  The NDP may have been a victim of strategic voting but the Greens were hit even worse.

Regardless of how the party did, the government we will have is much better than the one that is leaving.  And that's more important.

This is very true. I thought I would feel happy that Trudeau won, but my strongest emotion is just relief that Harper is gone.

I am hopeful that the Conservatives will disintegrate.

We should be clear where the roots of that culture lie. The nastiness of Tory politics under Harper, the mindless partisanship, the throttling of backbench MPs, are not outgrowths of conservatism. They were born, rather, of its repudiation: of the decision to sterilize the new party of any ideological convictions, the better (it was supposed) to remove any obstacle to its electability.

Politics fills a vacuum: in the absence of substantive differences with your opponents, partisanship takes its place. If, what is more, a party no longer stands for much as a party, then its policies will default to whatever the leader decides. And the leader, having been given that power and that assignment — win at all costs — can tolerate no deviations from MPs still under the impression that the party harbours some lingering principles.

There has been much talk of how Red Tories were made to feel unwelcome in the party. But the truth is no sort of conservative could really feel the Harper government represented them: not fiscal conservatives, $150 billion in debt later; not social conservatives, forbidden even to say the word “abortion”; certainly not old-time Reformers, the sort of people who went into politics to make governments and leaders more accountable, not less.

The only party faction that was really served was the yahoo faction, the “toxic Tories” as a friend calls them, to whom this government truckled and whose loyalty was rewarded in turn. MPs who were willing to say the opposite of what they believed, or believe the opposite of the facts, were promoted; those who were not found themselves out of cabinet, or indeed out of the party.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/national/andrew+coyne+conservatives+...

There is going to be a leadership battle and there are a lot of unhappy reformcons that will no longer have a leash on them.

The Harpercons thought they could win over immigrants with social conservatism instead they revealed themselves as racists and stood in the way of family reunification instead favoring immigrants who could buy their way into Canada and temporary workers.

Harper is history and that is a bright spot.

 

 

A sort of bright spot, I suppose, is how the polls in Kenora were suggesting Greg Rickford easily prevailing over a split left--yet in the end said "split left" drove Rickford to third, instead.  (Yeah, I know; Nault was the victor rather than Hampton--but, still...)

 

And yes, I know the polls may have underestimated FN voters.

Pondering wrote:

There are 22 seats open in the Senate. I am shocked that Harper didn't fill them giving the Conservatives a majority in the Senate for a long time to come. 

Trudeau is going to put in a new selection process which hopefully means quality appointments. 

This is at its most importent for electoral reform.  A full, Harper-stacked Senate could have blocked any move to PR/MMP.  The Conservatives are going to regret not having filled those positions as the balance shifts back to the Liberals in 2016

alan smithee wrote:

Pondering wrote:

 

 

What's left is racists and social conservatives. People who are against gay marriage and abortion. People who would fit neatly in the tea party. It's a side that is becoming a shrinking fringe group and not every fringe group has representation on the national stage or in parliament. 

 

True. Check out what Harper's base is saying today.

https://twitter.com/FBconservatives

I was surprised that there were so many ignorant,fascist leaning people in Canada. Let's hope they shrink to a fringe party.

global all across Canada? lmao they were so pro-Harper it was sickening.

I fail to see how electing Liberals is a good thing. Their Leader has put on the whip on the TPP, a bill that massively empowers Mulitnational Corporations and takes away the power of people. But of course, we should celebrate because Harerp lost. The really bright spot in this election is it may finally cause the NDP to look at this election, and realize that it has to be the one to frame election, and not let the Libs lie and dupe Canadians of all stripes into voting for them. An alternate view that could be taken is that voters in Atlantic Caanda think its OK to beat up teachers and uions, that it is good to deny woman choice, and that multi national Corprations success is the only way economies in thrive. In Winnipeg North an alternate view is that the voters in that riding think it is ok for Kevin Lamoureux to dictate wheterh woman should have control over their bodes. I  have siad it before, this election is a real opporutnity for the NDP to move forward past Jacks centerism. It comes down to who gains control of the party. And it is also a chance to finally force the NDP to look at and find an answer about why visible minorities, instinctively vote against their own best interests and vote LPC.And before you attack me, Russ Diablo, who worked for the Libs in 2000, has been tweeting the same thing on twitter, and says the Libs cannot be trusted. Dont' argue with me, argue with Russ Diablo. I'm just quoting what he said. He must be an expert; why else would the Libs have used in 2000? I'm just sayin'.

ETA: Russ has tweeted that he is very sorry that Pat Martin lost to RFO. RUSS TWEETED THAT! NOT ME!