Revolutionary Moderation

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(This entry posted by occasional RevMod guest-host, Bear)



It's never good form to attack the electorate over election results, but after watching Jack Layton's urban agenda go up in smoke, I can't help myself. Libby Davies isn't spinning or blowing smoke about Paul Martin's fear-mongering, in B.C. it was a fact: the NDP lost Vancouver Centre, Kingsway, New West -Coquitlam, North Delta, and Victoria (although the Greens had a hand in the latter) as a result of the vote-splitting, actually costing the Liberals a stable coalition as the Conservative came up the middle in suburban Lower Mainland ridings.



Ditto in Toronto, where Liberal scare tactics plus the deployment of their immigrant electoral shock troops worked to lock down the NDP surge to Jack Layton's seat in Danforth. If you live outside Toronto or Vancouver, anything you hear about urban voters being more intelligent or sophisticated is, well, pretty much what Jack Layton said about a coalition with the Conservatives. Outside of Vancouver East where Libby Davies bludgeoned grit malcontent Shirley Chan, "Urban Canada" is a swath of self-centered poseur progressive cowards who place identity politics over class consciousness or the good of their community.



The best illustration would be Vancouver Centre, where Kennedy Stewart held a sizeable lead in the polls over Liberal Hedy Fry. Conservative (and openly gay) candidate Gary Mitchell, regarding by the Gay & Lesbian community as a queer Uncle Tom, was by no means a factor. In fact, no one was talking about the Conservative candidate until Martin swept into the riding on the last weekend of the campaign and squealed that the Barbarians were at the gate. The upshot is Fry, probably the biggest fear-monger in the Liberal caucus, now gets a return trip to Ottawa instead of a one-way bus ticket to Prince George with a cross and a pack of matches...



Funny how all the "progressives except on election day" (with a shout out to Vancouver's biggest gutless wonder, Mayor Larry Campbell) think that proportional representation will deal with this kind of mess, but went out of their way to stab its biggest proponents in the back yesterday.



As Kent Brockman put it "I've said it before and I'll say it again, democracy simply doesn't work."