Canada 2011 Official Thread

[Marokai Backbeat]

Shouldn't NDP organizers be less depressing?

[Marokai Backbeat]

The Liberals' ads stink - disjointed with no coherent message.

Seems perfect for the Liberals, then.

[Marokai Backbeat]

If the NDP allows for some reason a Tory majority I'll be pissed. And if the NDP allows my retard MP to be reelected they can all go DIAF.

Oh come on. If through any circumstance there ends up being a Conservative majority there is only one party to blame and it's the Liberals for being weak, directionless, inept, and utterly uninspiring.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Also I finally got around to watching the english debate. I found it fairly interesting. Harper seems calm to an almost sociopath level, and Ignatieff seemed pretty good but only in a few moments, and incredibly arrogant in others. I don't understand why he thinks the sense of entitlement he assumes the Liberals have on government would make anyone more likely to vote for the Liberal Party. Layton seemed pretty good, but I'm biased of course.

Duceppe just sounded like a lunatic to me half the time, but that may just be because I'm not used to hearing separatists.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Plus, Layton supposedly did well in the French-language debate, boosting the NDP's numbers in Quebec.  I didn't watch the French debate, but Iggy stunk in the English-language debate, in my opinion - he came across as entitled, impatient and surly.

Iggy had a few good lines: "you shut down everything you cannot control"; "this isn't bickering, this is democracy"; "you treat the Parliament like a little debating society that gets in your way", etc. But overall, he sounded exasperated and, you said it, impatient. I don't think he said anything meaningful about the Liberal policies all night.

Not to mention extraordinarily arrogant and entitled. I half expected him at one point to turn to Layton and say "take your little party and piss off."

Frankly, he may as well have.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Those attacks on Jack layton seem a bit like what the UK parties tried to do to Nick Clegg during the Cleggmania of the debates. Once the momentum's started, it doesn't work.

It worked during Palinmania (which had McCain leading Michigan at its height).

Like most things you post, I don't think the two things are even remotely comparable. And besides, Palin was sort of deflating on her own more and more. The more people heard from her, the less they liked her. Layton is kind of the opposite, in a way.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The new Liberal attack on Layton is hilarious. Is anyone going to seriously believe Layton and Harper are the same?

[Marokai Backbeat]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw that story several days ago. It clearly hasn't had any noticeable impact, if it will have any at all.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Also, the NDP isn't really taking any abuse without having anything to counter it with. Their ads have been great, I think.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Layton

That, the heaviest advertising campaign in the NDP's history I believe, Mulcair, and Bloc fatigue.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The attacks on the NDP have long seemed desperate and ridiculous for several days now but this seems incredibly absurd. Does the media really hate the NDP that much?

[Marokai Backbeat]

His mustache is actually fake!

[Marokai Backbeat]

Basically, whoever the next Liberal leader is, they shouldn't become a Canadian Nick Clegg.

No, they should let the NDP form a government, and trigger an election when the government hits its first term blues. Its true the Tories wills stomp, but all that is important is that Liberals retake the official opposition. So if they are smart they wait a few months before knifing Iggy, and force an election of opportunity in partnership with Harper and the Bloc if there is an NDP minority. Everyone would have something to gain.

I appreciate your constant assertion that the NDP would be complete and utter catastrophe and incompetence in every conceivable way from Day 1, but that sort of immediate short term partisan strategy doesn't solve the problem the Liberals have been dealing with for several election cycles now. The Liberals aren't very used to dealing with the NDP in the position it's in now, and the Liberals have been slowly bleeding support for several years. People don't seem to see any reason to vote for the Liberals anymore.

The Liberal campaign this cycle has boiled down to Ignatieff being incredibly snotty and entitled. Ask him why people should vote for the Liberals, and he'll just respond with "because we're the Liberal Party." Well that doesn't seem to be good enough at this point anymore, especially with a much more noticeable left-wing alternative in the mainstream at the moment.

With Conservatives, you know roughly what you're getting. Layton is the most explicitly issues-focused of all three of them. Layton is giving people reasons to vote for the NDP. The Liberals haven't been able to do that at all.

Your strategy is a good one, I guess, if we go along with your assertion that the NDP is hopelessly incompetent and doomed from the minute they take any sort of power on the federal level (which I think is an incredibly stupid and presumptuous thing to assume before the election has even taken place) but it still doesn't solve the larger problem aside from the Liberals saying "we're not the other guy, we should govern because we're Liberals!"

It may give them one more opportunity to differentiate themselves, but the Liberals have given basically no indication at all that they know how to do that or what they want to differentiate themselves as.

Love them or hate them, the NDP is actually explaining what they are and what they want to do, and giving people a reasonable idea of what you get for an NDP vote. And whaddya know? People seem to be receptive to that.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Max's riding is also one of the more contentious Quebec ridings. It's practically a 4-way race.

[Marokai Backbeat]

It seems like the NDP and Liberals have key policy differences that would prevent a merger.

Which are what, exactly? Most of the difference between them is just a matter of priority and how far they're willing to take certain policies. Liberals wanted to raise the corporate tax rate, NDP agreed, but wanted to raise it more than the Liberals did. The Liberals proposed a large credit for people caring for their ailing parents, the NDP agreed, but wanted to provide more than the Liberals did. The Liberals want out of Afghanistan soon, but are willing to stall on it, while the NDP wants out immediately.

Alot of that is really the main difference.

[Marokai Backbeat]

It seems like the NDP and Liberals have key policy differences that would prevent a merger.

Which are what, exactly? Most of the difference between them is just a matter of priority and how far they're willing to take certain policies. Liberals wanted to raise the corporate tax rate, NDP agreed, but wanted to raise it more than the Liberals did. The Liberals proposed a large credit for people caring for their ailing parents, the NDP agreed, but wanted to provide more than the Liberals did. The Liberals want out of Afghanistan soon, but are willing to stall on it, while the NDP wants out immediately.

Alot of that is really the main difference.

Montreal Anglophones will not vote for the same party as soft nationalists long-range. The disappearance of the remaining Liberal rump in that Province would almost entirely result in them going Tory, since they are not voting Liberal for purely policy reasons.

I also think the Atlantic support would split pretty evenly, especially if Harper was succeeded by someone like John Baird. The fact is that the NDP is culturally a bad fit. Its not that its Quebec caucus is made up of students, activists, and randoms, its that the party as a whole is identified with groups that a lot of the Liberal electorate does not want representing them even if they agree with them politically. If the Liberals and NDP were to merge while the NDP is artificially inflated by their Quebec win, a party of professionals would be replaced in the Toronto suburbs with a party of inner city activists, and that would be devastating.

This is not to say a merger should not happen. But it should not be a merger into the NDP. I have serious doubts that the NDP could ever win a 1-1 national election against the Tories in any circumstances. So a merged party would have to maintain the Liberal's respectability, something that is not possible until the current NDP caucus sorts itself out.

I can certainly see alot of cultural and regional issues involved in a possible merger (though I still think some sort of NDP-Liberal unity play is necessary at this point if they want to take back power) but I was just responding to a point he made about policy differences specifically.

Though, the Liberal Party's "respectability" lately..