(Untitled)

[arielspirit]

Well. I don't know how the rest of y'all Canadians are feeling. But I think the Liberals really screwed up this weekend. I think they clearly chose an opposition leader. I don't think Dion has any chance at all of being the next Prime Minister of this country. So we all better get used to the idea of Stephen Harper sticking around for a while.Sad

Comments

[tigersong]

Possibly. I was thinking the same thing. I just didn't want to see Ignatieff in, even if he was sparkly. Sparkly and ebil.

[arielspirit]

Yes. I wasn't big on Ignatieff either. I was leaning toward Kennedy or Rae. Not for policy reasons at all - just from a pure charisma perspective.

[va1kyrie]

Nope, I don't agree. I think that Dion is going to do really well in the next election. He is on top of the most important issue to Canadians right now, the environment. I think he is going to give Harper a spanking. How hard of a spanking I am not sure, but I think Dion will be the next Prime Minister.

I think the Liberals made a choice that will be good for Canada. Unfortunately, it will be bad for the Green Party because it will be harder to make gains against the Liberals with Dion as leader. Ah well, that's politics.

On the whole I am feeling pretty good about the future of the country.

[arielspirit]

I think you have more faith in Canadians than I do. The question, unfortunately, is not whether or not the man has good things to say - the question is whether or not the average Canadian will listen to him say them. He's not very shiney.

[burnthappiness]

I wouldn't be too committed to positive or negative thoughts on Dion. He's pretty boring, but that doesn't seem a problem in a competition with Harper (I have a lovely image of the next leaders' debate, with people alternately dozing off as Harper and Dion speak, then getting whiplash when Layton says something exciting but ultimately foolish).

Right now, I'd say that the liberals really need one term in opposition, and at that point, the main leadership metric is a combination of lacking negatives with having room for growth. Both Rae and Ignatief had pretty serious negatives, while only Dion seems to have the potential for growth. In any case, scenarios that would allow the liberals to replace CRAP after 4 years are mostly dependent upon external factors (Harper messing up and the NDP imploding).

Despite the horror of Amerikkka, there is something to be said for a 2 party system.

[arielspirit]

I have a lovely image of the next leaders' debate, with people alternately dozing off as Harper and Dion speak, then getting whiplash when Layton says something exciting but ultimately foolish

LOL. Probably not going to be all that far from reality.

I hope that the NDP doesn't impolode all too much. I'm kind of old school, I think traditionally federal government has worked best (or we've made the best decisions) when Liberals were governing with a strong NDP opposition voice. As we all know the Liberals are morally and politically bendy.

I can see some advantages to the 2 party system - most of all that it cuts down on the splitting of the progressive/moderate vote. Unfortunately the Democrats don't seem too progressive these days which leaves progressives without a voice.

I think the multi-party system can work, but only with proportional representation - which seems very far in the future - if it'll happen at all.

Dion's Leadership

[processdualism]

Liberal's are pretty good on optics. So I would tend to go with the opinion of the convention. He plays extremely well on TV. Le petit gar de Montreal. He is a combination Trudeau and Chretien. He is a French Intellectual in a down home kind of way.
If Iggy had been PM then we would be in Iraq. Rae stands for Rae. He never explained to the party either a) why he was a Liberal (he always has been) or b) what he learned from his mistakes a Premier. So far as I can tell the only thing he learned was to be more like Paul Martin i.e. talk about social justice while slashing social programs.
Dion has the potential to pull the Liberals together, and Kennedy didn't. I doubt that he will do much about the environment. His three pillars: economy, social justice and sustainability sounds good. But he has the illusion that sustainability is good for the economy. Not our economy.