(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Election results!

So far, so good: A monumental waste of time and money from the NDP (as their party platform insists), a failure of math and thinking from the PC (as their party platform insists), a complete failure in every respect for the GRN (as their party platform insists), and a victory by promising things many people want that they will partially fail to deliver for the LIB (as THEIR party platform insists).

Bonus hilarity: at the moment, Tim "9am Day 1: Burn the Province to the ground and salt the earth" Hudak is only *barely* winning his own riding. If it wasn't a FPTP hellhole, he'd lose. If more people understood how voting works, he'd have lost already.

Also: Apparently our "new" Premier is the first openly gay person to win an election and form a government in the Commonwealth. "New" is in quotation marks because she was Premier-due-to-inheritance-not-election before the election.

I didn't know she was gay. Canadian elections: it *never came up*. It probably got play when McGuinty retired and she became Premier, but I missed it at the time.

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Gay, and married to her long-term partner... and it completely was not an issue at all. We really are not socially conservative, and the Tories really need to learn this unless they want to go extinct in a generation.

-- Steve wouldn't mind a fiscally-prudent party in power, but the social conservatives can just go out to their fields and rot for all he cares.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The Liberals ARE about as fiscally prudent as it gets. Unless you think "slash 100,000 well-paying useful jobs that create a net public good, because MAGIC" was a prudent plan?

I don't mind individual NDP MPPs. I would happily have voted for the local NDP candidate if voting for him wasn't stupid. I've seen what NDP governments do, and Horvath's plan was "standard NDP, only worse", so I DEFINITELY didn't want an NDP win.

Really, this was an election between "My brother was MOSTLY good but kicked you in the crotch, and we chastised him, relegated him to the timeout square, feel bad, and promise to not do it again" (LIB) and "If elected, I will kick you in the crotch really hard" (NDP) and "If elected, I will kick everyone in the crotch unti they die" (PC).

And given that TERRIBLE set of options, "Liberal majority" is the best possible outcome.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The way I think of it, the PCs were all about the taxpayers, the NDP were all about the voters, and the Grits were all about the citizens... and I incline towards the latter. I'm no great fan of how sloppy the Liberals have been with public money, but I much prefer their sloppiness to the alternatives of efficiently-run slash-and-burn or who-knows-what misdirected policies.

-- Steve is not disappointed with the results, just surprised that they were as decisive as they were.

PS: NDP incumbent won my riding with a simple majority, at least at the last count. Curioiusly, that's actually lower than predicted by 308.com.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The PCs were emphantically *not* about the taxpayers.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm going to disagree with you on the grounds that they were all about their conception of the taxpayers, which does not, shall we say, "discriminate" between those who are made of flesh and those who are made of legal documents. Of course they go to no great pains to point that particular ecumenical stripe out to the rubes...

-- Steve rather liked how The Agenda's Steve Paikin held some feet to the fire on the subject.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

...and it completely was not an issue at all. We really are not socially conservative...

I could go for 'socially blasé'.

[jerril]

I was also mildly surprised, in a "I'm proud nobody thought that was interesting!" sort of way - but I was also sad to hear that Wynn's only the first. I'd thought we'd already broke that barrier at the provincial level.

[matgb]

Did the NDP actually say they wouldn't support the Liberal budget because it was "too left wing"? If so, am I fundamentally misundertanding something about Canadian politics and the supposed positioning of the main parties?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The current Ontario NDP tacked *hard right* for some weird fucking reason in the current election.

[matgb]

Ah, OK. I'm sorta used to that being used as an attack on us (because workig with the fucking Tories makes us the same as them, obviously), but for the supposedly left wing party to attack another for being too left wing is just weird.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Traditionally, we have had the PC (center-right), Liberal (center-left), and NDP (fringe left).

In the most recent election, we have the PC (extreme-fringe-right), Liberal (center-left), and NDP (center-but-leaning-right). And the Greens (incoherent) but they don't count because they're the Greens. The fact that Horvath took the NDP platform so far right is confusing supporters.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

If more people understood how voting works, he'd have lost already.

A common failing, unfortunately.