I've kept the NDP at arm's length all my life, a convenient place from which to observe their astonishingly convenient memories and full-bore, unrepentant hypocrisy. Hell you would think they were Reformatories in liberal clothing.
I nearly flipped my biscuits today when I read this agitprop bullshit warning Greens that they could be Harper's salvation, drawing just enough of the vote to let Beelzebub squeak back into power.
This coming from the party of Layton and Mulcair that has done more than any other to first help Harper ascend to power and then to deliver him his majority. This from the party that has completely abandoned the Left to become Latter Day Liberals for raw political opportunism, thus greatly assisting Harper achieve his fundamental goal to move Canada's political centre well and permanently to the Right. Hell, if they'd played their cards better I'll bet Harper would have found a way to put the lot of them on the Conservative Party payroll.
It's a giggle to see how the NDP and the Libs are getting all touchy-feeley greenish in the runup to the election. Sorry, buttwads, but you're a little late to the game to salvage any credibility on that front. You're still solidly behind the extraction and export of the filthiest, highest carbon petroleum on the planet. Oh yes, you'll raise the carbon levy. So what? Is that it, is that all you've got? And what happens when you change your mind as you have on one issue after another. That's a little better than the incoherent garbage coming out of the Libs but that only means you're just a little better than incoherent.
So spare me this agitprop bullshit and feeble guilt trip. It's good to see you haven't lost any of your real skills. As for this strategic voting business, have you ever heard the phrase "pound salt"?
As an NDP the views expressed are not mine, I happen to believe the reason to vote NDP is because the NDP for the most part have better policies, the better team, and because they are ready to form government. And yes they are better positioned then Greens doesn't hurt, but I do not vote NDP because its the only way to stop Harper, that would be blackmail I know other NDPers who don't support using blackmail to win either, I support the NDP because I believe in Tom Mulcair and his team, he will rebuild Canada into a better place.
ReplyDeleteIn my area I can vote for whomever I want because the Conservative contender will win. He will win if he is the least qualified candidate, which he is. He will win if he is a dead dog. He will win if Steven Harper gets caught eating his kids. It absolutely doesn't matter whom I vote for because the Conservative will win. Been there; done that.
ReplyDeleteShameless and self righteous... comes in many shades of orange.
ReplyDeleteFunny I went back to the piece after seeing your post (I'd skimmed this dim article the first time.)
The writer, Ehring, cutely avoided the term "strategic voting". He is calling for Green-self-sacrifice-strategic-drop-outs. The awkward stance is taken so dippers don't have to come out and call for strategic voting. As Michael Laxer points out ... strategic voting would help dippers more than Libs at the moment. But having condemned it in the past (and worrying about their future beyond 2015 in a continued FPTP system?) they have to try and disguise it.
Some of us will vote strategically and some will vote with their hearts. I respect both decisions don't resent it when people try to persuade me to follow their cause.
I often vote strategically and may this time too. And barring a Red or Green surge, I may even (gawd-forbid) vote for the shameless orange folks. If I do, it will be my personal decision, based on my gut feel in the privacy of the ballot booth. (Not based on a Leadnow poll interpretation.) I might even try and (robustly) persuade folks like you to follow my lead but I respect your choice.
and here is part of the comment I left on Laxer's latest foray into this discussion. (He apparently votes for ultra left wing candidates? In Etobicoke?)
Michael:. You will vote your heart cause the main parties, including the NDP are bourgeois. Fair enough but ....
I am amused at your take as it sounds exactly like the die-hard NDP supporter you admonish.
(Your choice is truly progressive, their's isn't!)
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2015/06/unintended-consequences-attacking-leadnow-and-strategic-voting
@Northern PoV
ReplyDeleteNever vote with your heart first.
Politics is not for the faint-hearted.
Vote for the NDP or Liberal candidate in your riding who has the best chance to defeat* cons. When in doubt, vote NDP.
When even "eating his kids" is not going to do the trick, only then, let your reason rest and vote with your heart.
*the first objective is to have proportional representation
A..non
I am voting Green not from emotion but out of conviction that climate change is the greatest threat my kids and theirs will face this century and the major parties cannot and, critically, will not respond to it. They'll make gestures to try to skim off Green voters but, especially at this point, anything less than a comprehensive policy is little more than pandering.
ReplyDeleteI realize there are many good people who will vote Orange or Red, often according to how they're badged, who simply cannot deal with the enormity of the threat posed by climate change. I get it. In fact I think a healthy dose of cognitive dissonance/denialism underlies their choices.
No doubt you are correct MOS.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Gyor, enlighten me about Tom's "team." Who are the real powerhouses on the NDP bench - excluding Tommy boy. Parliament isn't a backwater village council. Governance takes talent and when that's in short supply usually it leads to an iron-handed thug to rule as we've seen over the past decade. Who does the Angry Beard have or are we in for the standard one-man show, the one trick pony act so popular in Quebec.
ReplyDeleteMound, your decision to vote Green makes sense to me if the said candidate could win the riding.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, I have voted Green to indicate my frustration with lack of proportional representation. Everyone was aware that my ballot was a protest, as NDP candidate was winning for years, hands down.
However, this time, when carrot of PR is available, I will go for it.
Perhaps my earlier post was suffering from too much brevity.
I meant: go and get the carrot first and then (after 4 years), reach for the stick.
A..non
I'm not voting Green as an act of protest. To me, it's the only party I can support. There's no way in hell I'll ever hold my nose again and vote for the "slightly less worse" alternative. I'm voting Green because it's the only party I can believe in. And, no, they won't win my riding.
ReplyDeleteActually the Liberals are the ones who always play the strategic voting card. Claim a vote for the NDP is a vote for the neo-con party. They campaign left then govern right. NDP supporters are typically opposed to strategic voting.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that partisan Liberals develop an irrational hatred of all things NDP. Hate them worse than the Cons. Their claim the NDP is responsible for Harper couldn't be more absurd.
For one, the 13-year Chretien-Martin government was a sell-out of all liberal and progressive values. They campaigned against Mulroney then became the Mulroney party. As a centrist betrayed by this government, I celebrated its fall. (I later mourned when the Liberals voted Stephane Dion as leader for obvious reasons.)
Second, the Liberals could've ousted Harper in 2008 with a coalition government (the norm in the developed world.) But they chose to prop up Harper instead.
This election vote ABC: anyone but conservative. This excludes Canada's two conservative parties.
(The NDP is obviously not conservative moving to the center the Liberal party abandoned 25 years ago. Liberal partisans couldn't be more disgusting claiming the NDP is a right-wing party after they abandoned the successful Keynesian center for failed right-wing ideology. According to them privatizing electricity is a left-wing policy and daycare a right-wing one. Just as Orwellian as the Cons.)
I've called out the NDP for being equivalent to the Harpercons in their "groupthink" and all around hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteI have no time for the Liberals for similar reasons - always ready to justify outrageous policies and decisions on "we'll make it better". Basically they are whores for votes.
"Who does the Angry Beard have"
ReplyDeleteIf smears are wrong when the Cons do it...
It's not a smear, Ron. Do you need the pictures? They're plentiful and you can find them everywhere. And, besides, I completely left out any reference to those "serial killer" eyes.
ReplyDeleteRon is personally invested in the myth that the NDP are always and only infallible saviours. It's a myth that's been around for a very long time and it's just as pervasive as the myth that conservatives are always the superior fiscal managers.
ReplyDeleteThere's no factual basis for either one of those myths but that doesn't prevent the stupid or the gullible from swallowing them whole.
I am no partisan. I presently support the NDP because they are the closest thing to the economic Keynesian center, where the Liberal party was 25 years ago. Fake liberals over the past 25 years have run on left-leaning platforms then betrayed voters after the election by cementing in place neo-con reforms and bringing in their own. The Neo-Liberal/Neo-Con tag team has successfully destroyed the Just Society built up by Liberals and New Democrats during the post-war era.
ReplyDeleteNo one can accuse me of cognitive dissonance. When a party adopts disgusting policies I abandon the party, I don't change my principles.
Certainly the NDP is a right-leaning centrist party. But they can be trusted to move the political football back towards the center and eventually to the left-of-center. Trudeau has revealed himself to be another captured plutocrat pawn. His speeches sound exactly like Mulroney speeches.
Harper cut taxes by $50B/year. Reduced Canada's tax revenues as a percentage of GDP from 35% to 30%. What's Trudeau's response? "Canada is taking in enough taxes." Believes corporate tax cuts create jobs. This is the position of a small-government conservative. Not the position of a centrist liberal (which I consider myself to be.)
There is no factual basis in believing there is anything liberal or progressive about the New Liberal party. It's a myth only the uninformed are gullible enough to swallow whole.
And then, just to drive the nail in a little deeper, he assumes that anyone not singing from his hymnbook, in his church basement must perforce be a Liberal.
ReplyDeleteThere's just no point really...
LOL. Give me a break. I don't know you from Adam and you are making generalizations about my political decisions. I simply explained them. A lot of Liberals out there believe the Liberal party is centrist and progressive. I stopped voting Liberal because they abandoned their principles.
ReplyDeleteI never said anything against the Green party. If that's the party you support. I said this election vote ABC: anyone but the two main conservative parties.
I choose NDP over Green for a number of reasons I won't get into here. If you like the Greens, good for you. Best of luck.
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/mulcairs-secret-meetings-with-the-tories/
ReplyDeleteRon would have us believe he's objective about the NDP but then this: "Certainly the NDP is a right-leaning centrist party. But they can be trusted to move the political football back towards the center and eventually to the left-of-center."
ReplyDeleteThey can be trusted. Says who, Ron, and what do you base that on except for belief? You're a little too ready to vouchsafe for a party and its leader based on - let's be candid - nothing. And that's why, Ron, people conclude you're just in the bag for Mulcair.
They're all neoliberal now, Ron. They're all market fundamentalists, your bunch included. Why would I trust the Angry Beard. Remember his posturing when Israel rampaged through Gaza last year. At first he was all for it and then, toward the end, he got all mealy mouthed. He's played the same bit of hopscotch on Canada's bitumen peddling. And we're supposed to trust him, why? I trust his raw opportunism, full marks for that. I just won't trust him with my vote. Not a chance.