Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Just How Did Jagmeet Win South Burnaby?
Every party needs a leader in the House of Commons so best wishes to NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, the honourable member for South Burnaby.
The nation has no shortage of those who cast bones and read entrails to make sense of these things. I'm not one of those. While I may not have answers, I do have questions.
What role did Trudeau's Trans Mountain pipeline play in the Liberal's defeat?
What role did the Jody Wilson Raybould fracas play in the Liberal's defeat?
What role did the first Liberal candidate kerfuffle play in the Liberal's defeat?
The folks in Burnaby, where the Trudeau Memorial Supertanker Tank Farm/Dock is based have been among the fiercest opponents of the prime minister's climate wrecking scheme to flood the world with toxic, high-carbon sludge petroleum. When they get in their boats to head out for a sail or a day salmon fishing they pass the fortified, razor wire compound. Not nice. Looks like a prison or a concentration camp.
What role did the supposed mauling of ex-Justice Minister Jody, another Lower Mainlander, play in Jagmeet's win? There's not a paper on the coast, all owned by staunch Conservative supporters, that hasn't filled its pages with the SNC-Lavalin business in recent weeks. I suppose that also gave Jagmeet a welcome leg up.
Of less concern was the Liberal candidate fiasco. The first offering was booted because of some unfortunate remarks she made about Jagmeet. She wasn't very impressive anyway. It seemed like a staged Asian (Liberal)/South Asian (NDP) standoff.
In any case, Jagmeet won with 38 per cent of the vote. Don't smirk. Hell, this is Canada. We can elect a majority government on 38 per cent of the vote. Think of it as Vox Populi Not.
Ordinarily I wouldn't dwell on a by-election win but October is drawing closer and the Trudeau Liberals, whose fortunes seem to be flagging in other parts of the country, may be desperate to keep as many of those coastal BC seats as possible in the general election. I'm not sure they deserve to hold onto any of them.
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2 comments:
If you look at the numbers, Jagmeet would've won a majority on ranked ballots.
Of course, if he didn't have a perfect storm working in his favor, it could've went the other way. Half the riding population is Asian. So he got a big break when the Asian Liberal candidate made the "racist" remark.
One could say the universe has given Singh a big opportunity to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. But he's really going to have to whip the hippies into shape. There's no way Singh is going to out-identity-politic Junior.
Mad Max made a big splash getting 11% of the vote! (IMO, he's the Stephane Dion of the lunatic right. A 'ficus plant' would get better results.) But his movement is going to saw into the Con vote like Social Credit and Reform.
(The only 2 PMs to rule over a united Con party since 1935, when both the CCF/NDP and Social Credit formed: Mulroney and Harper. When the Cons are united its easy-peasy to hold onto power. 40% of the population is conservative and 40% of the vote gives a party absolute corrupt power.)
A nice outcome would be a repeat of 1972: Liberal/NDP coalition. And Singh would have to play it a lot smarter than David Lewis did. He was back to being a nobody in less than 2 years. Trudeau Sr. played him like a fiddle. PET even later admitted to the poison-pill budget that won him a fake majority in '74.
(Just little bits of history repeating...)
Good point on the 74 election. That's where I really got to know David Lewis and his delightful wife, Sophie. I spent six weeks on a lumbering twin-prop Convair used by the NDP in that campaign. The best part was that, while Trudeau and Stanfield on their DC-9s would get in 2-3 campaign appearances every day, the NDP's prop job often meant just one stop to cover on many days. Which meant more time for partying for the press corps.
Trudeau played both of his rivals. "Zap, you're frozen." It siphoned the union vote away from the NDP.
That campaign interrupted a planned holiday and so, when it was over, I caught a flight to the UK. I drove around and had a great few weeks, getting back to Ottawa just in time to watch PET take to the airwaves to announce wage and price controls, the very issue he used to demolish Stanfield and suck support from the NDP. That has to be the most underhanded thing I can remember the "real Trudeau" ever doing.
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