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[Soulliard]

I don't think so.

[starsrift]

This "Fair Vote" stuff is based on an overwhelming assumption: That Canadians are voting for their party or their party's leader, not their local MP.

Inasmuch as I'm unhappy with the total results of this election, I have always supported the person in my riding who I thought could do the best for it. And despite my innate discord with the nationwide Tory platform, I've supported a Tory candidate before, because I believed in him - not because I believed in his party.

[FrankieSmileShow]

This "Fair Vote" stuff is based on an overwhelming assumption: That Canadians are voting for their party or their party's leader, not their local MP.

I am sorry to say, but in the current context in Canada, it is quite a fair assumption.

As I mentioned before, many of the NPD candidates who were elected were never meant to be elected. A lot of them did not do any campaigning whatsoever. One elected candidate was in Las Vegas during the elections. Some candidates are students fresh out of college. The candidate who beat GILLES DUCEPPE (leader of the Bloc Québecois party) in his OWN CITY is a granny with obviously no political experience who herself said she never expected to win, that she saw it as an unreachable dream goal.

Also, on the conservative end, it is even more striking. The conservative party is notorious for having a very strong party cohesion, representatives of it very rarely vote against their party's overall direction. I personally give them more credit than that, but I heard people call the conservative MPs opinion-less puppets of Harper, which is very bad news in a majority government. It means that as long as they keep that party cohesion there is NOTHING the opposition can do, being outvoted by default on every issue. The opposition can only voice their dissent and let frustration pile up as every single law and decision passes unhindered, as their own propositions always fail, the same 166 hands going up and down mechanically in unison. Voting in this case becomes just a formality, and democracy drops down a few more notches. You can surely understand why that, in this case, the "fair vote" stuff becomes quite important.

What is sad about this, is that the only way to combat party cohesion is for the opposition to have the same amount of cohesion. And in this case, the opposition being made up of inexperienced kids, its going to be even more striking. We would end up with two groups of people raising their hands angrily at one another, and one of the two wins every time...

But again its more complicated than that, sometimes its neither the local MP or the party leader that people vote for, it can also be a more ideological vote based on the perception of what the parties (should) stand for, it could have been a populist vote in protest of today's politics in general...

But who knows, the conservative MPs might surprise us there.

[Movius]

Opposition party leader moves no-confidence motion and his party's vote collapses so badly at the resulting election that they get forced into 3rd place by the commies. Is he neurologically impaired or was it a spectacularly inept campaign a la Australian Labor Party in 2010?

[PowRTocH]

I wouldn't say so. I think it was moreso how effective the Conservatives' smear campaigns were coupled with the BQ/Quebec silliness. I for one really like Michael Ignatieff (thoug he doesn't have Layton's dad-appeal) but he can't even win his own riding and I think he comes across as too coldly intellectual to most people...

[Aquin]

I didn't care for Ignatieff.  He seemed so...disingenuous.  Also, I never really got a clear sense of the Grits' political platform.  They had a lot of words, but little in the way of policy.

I watch CBC/CTV News every day, so it's not a matter of ignorance on my part.  They just had an unclear strategy with an unappealing leader.  Really, I'm not surprised they lost (whether they deserved such a thrashing or not.  34 seats, yikes!)

I'm a bit pissed we have a majority government, but I am heartened by the low popularity of the conservative party and the strong opposition the NDP bring to the table.  I think they'll make for a good opposing party in this climate.

Think about it:  the media/public will be scrutinizing every move made by Harper (possibly more so than usual) and since we can't force Harper to answer tough questions, the NDP can do that for us.  Don't forget, Harper's backed off on controversial issues before because of public pressure (although now he's got carte blanche.)  Sure he's a conservative, but hopefully he remembers his place:  he runs the government, but the people run the country.  We're his boss. 

That's a perspective that's dangerously lacking in some neighbours I could mention.  I hope Harper doesn't lose it or he's in for a rough run.

[MeshGearFox]

Layton.
DILF.

[PowRTocH]

I didn't care for Ignatieff.  He seemed so...disingenuous. 

That's the smear campaign.

[Aquin]

Well, since you seemed to like him, let me ask you this:  why exactly did you like him?  I honestly couldn't see anything redeeming about him in his body language, behaviour, or rhetoric.  He was a pretty hokey act whenever I saw him on TV.  If there was a smear campaign, he was its prime engineer.

[Matt Thorson]

Well, since you seemed to like him, let me ask you this:  why exactly did you like him?  I honestly couldn't see anything redeeming about him in his body language, behaviour, or rhetoric.  He was a pretty hokey act whenever I saw him on TV.  If there was a smear campaign, he was its prime engineer.

His campaign was 1000x more personable than Harper's. Harper read a teleprompter to the crowd then bee-lined for the door and capped questions at 3. Rick mercer even wrote an article titled "Is Stephen Harper a hologram?"

Ignatieff did speeches sans teleprompter (which Rick Mercer, in that same article, described as some of the best a canadian has ever delivered) and took questions until the crowd had none at every stop.

People are getting their perception of him solely from the smear campaign and the CBC interview that he screwed up pretty bad.

I didn't vote Liberal, but Ignatieff is not even close to as bad as people seem to think he is. He's a professor, so naturally he's going to be way better in a townhall situation than a TV interview one (where Harper the born politician thrives). He really shines when he's talking directly to canadian people - like the reason he missed those 50%+ of votes in the house was because he was constantly travelling the country doing townhalls.

[PowRTocH]

What Matt said. He's also extremely intelligent and has already done and achieved more than any party leader in recent memory (but I'm young so that doesn't stretch back very far).

[Aquin]

Well, you both sound like you know a lot more than me on this so I'm willing to concede.  I admit, my opinion of him is from just watching his speeches each day of the campaign.    I definitely agree he's more personable than Harper (which is saying really nothing, Harper is less so than mayonnaise), but he still kinda struck me as.. I dunno, lame?  I got really bad vibes from him in general.

The fact he did his speeches without a teleprompter and was willing to answer so many questions actually kinda surprises me.  You think that energy would come through in his performances, but he always seemed very stilted and closed to me.  I don't really know anything about his political record, mainly due to the fact I only started really paying attention to Canadian politics in the last few months.

Well it doesn't really matter now.  I'm not sure how long it will take liberals to bounce back from this current state of affairs.

[starsrift]

Ignatieff did speeches sans teleprompter (which Rick Mercer, in that same article, described as some of the best a canadian has ever delivered) and took questions until the crowd had none at every stop.

I wouldn't argue with this, but I only took away two messages from the Ignatieff and the Liberal campaign this election.
Message #1: "Vote for us, the Conservatives don't respect Canadian democracy and they don't have the right to rule. We do."
Message #2: "We have an education passport for people going to school. We think that's pretty neat."
Message #1 grated on me like you wouldn't believe. Message #2 didn't matter to me. It might've if it was retroactive.

It could be that if I saw him in person, I would've liked his ideas a lot. But regardless of that, my riding didn't even start showcasing the Lib candidate until a day before the advance voting started(Or the Green). I even checked the elections site to see who was running, after the nominations closed, and both Grit and Green were "TBA". The Con and NDP were out first, and the NDP did a mailout and went door to door. No other party did anything except make some noise in the paper. I definitely got the impression that the Liberals don't care about my riding.

[gnat]

England is practically a future alternate universe of what happened in Canada. Voting reform is happening right now! http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=19374.0

Spread the word. The world is watching. Lets get this done!

[Aquin]

Actually, I think that's what killed Ignatieff in the end.  The truth of it was simple:  we didn't even have a liberal candidate in our riding.  That's pretty pathetic when you think about it.  I wonder just how many ridings liberals lost because they simply didn't have their people *out* there to take up the vote?

A lot of people claim that we vote federally and ignore our local constituent.  I'm guessing that's probably true (it would explain Quebec's latest moves), but perhaps not the whole truth.  If you don't even run at all, how can you be expected to win?