[CDN_PATRIOT]

So basically, we're fucked....


-J.

[Thanos]

You could always come to Alberta. We'll be ruled by the right-wing forever, if that's what you want. And we're pretty obviously the most fucked place in the entire country, thanks a million times more to the antics of our provincial government than to the federal one.

[Scape]

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

So basically, we're fucked....


-J.

Simply put if we resort to talking points and pandering to ideologies and gloss over and ignoring valid policy then we are doomed to repeat this. You can haggle over policy you can't over ideology.

Problem is, most people just shut off and just hear the jingles and slogans and say 'that's my guy' instead of actually holding their feet to the fire and asking them the hard questions of how they are going to do what they propose for fear of being seen as criticizing your own team rather than unquestionably following the herd.

[bootlegga]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

raydan raydan:

Do they actually want us to dust off the guillotines? Because that's how we get the guillotines dusted.

Tell me more, or do you publish a newsletter?

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

Metro Toronto will go full-NDP before it ever goes Conservative again. Those days where Toronto would alternate between Liberal and Conservative are comprehensively dead & buried.

The Conservatives are no longer a serious competitor in numerous areas where the old Red vs Blue rivalry prevailed. The Maritimes, Toronto, northern Ontario & Manitoba, and Vancouver don't want the Conservatives anymore, or at least not as they presently are. Maybe those voters would re-consider it if the old Progressive Conservatives would return. But they obviously want nothing to do with a Conservative party dominated by western Reform beliefs. The Conservatives better figure out what to do with themselves because none of those areas are going to go down the same route that Alberta & Saskatchewan did with becoming more right-wing and less moderate.

You'd think that losing three straight elections would convince conservatives that their ideas are simply not acceptable with large numbers of Canadians, but so far it hasn't.

My guess is that they believe that they simply need to wait for Canadians to tire of JT like they did of Chretien and then it'll be 'their turn again'.

Fortunately as you note, most Canadians aren't interested in the far right policy ideas that have so much support in most of western Canada. At the same time, moderate conservatives like Michael Chong have little to no ability to win over the base in western Canada. And so the CPC keeps spinning its wheels...

[bootlegga]

xerxes xerxes:

As much as we bemoan it, there is one thing we are clearly importing from the US and that is the urban/rural cleavage in political voting. The urban centres have become reliably liberal to one extent or another whereas rural Canada is solidly (but uniformly) conservative.

I don't know about that, Edmonton has been called 'Redmonton' for decades because of its propensity to vote in progressive politicians in a very conservative province. For most of my life, the official opposition was based here, and if very lucky, had a seat or two in Calgary as well. And I think most of Canada has considered Vancouver as the ;eft coast' for just as long, if not longer. Montreal also was largely a progressive stronghold, and it was only Toronto that flipped back and forth in the past, although that's changed over the past couple decades too.

I think it's more like what Scape notes - increased polarization has made it impossible for one side not to see the other side as the enemy, which prevents any sort of meeting in the middle to move the country forward.

[DrCaleb]

bootlegga bootlegga:

I think it's more like what Scape notes - increased polarization has made it impossible for one side not to see the other side as the enemy, which prevents any sort of meeting in the middle to move the country forward.

^^^ That.

[Zipperfish]

The Conservatives will sort it out in time. In BC, it's seems to be a pretty clear urban/rural divide. That wasn't always the case. Heck in North Van we had a Reform guy in for a while. And many of the rural ridings would often go NDP.

BC is over 60% urban so appealing to urban voters is a winning strategy. The Conservatives made a lot of inroads with the GTA (suburban) over the last couple of decades. I'd like to see more rural/analysis instead of East/West or what have you.

[llama66]

It's funny, I had someone I've known for years call me his enemy and oppressor, basically he harassed me until I finally just blocked him on facebook. The guy was off the rails. He thinks I'm discriminating against him because I support public health measures.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

Trudeau: "I have a clear mandate!"

Canadians: "GET BACK TO WORK, OR FRIG OFF!"

-J.

[JaredMilne]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Thanos Thanos:

Metro Toronto will go full-NDP before it ever goes Conservative again. Those days where Toronto would alternate between Liberal and Conservative are comprehensively dead & buried.

The Conservatives are no longer a serious competitor in numerous areas where the old Red vs Blue rivalry prevailed. The Maritimes, Toronto, northern Ontario & Manitoba, and Vancouver don't want the Conservatives anymore, or at least not as they presently are. Maybe those voters would re-consider it if the old Progressive Conservatives would return. But they obviously want nothing to do with a Conservative party dominated by western Reform beliefs. The Conservatives better figure out what to do with themselves because none of those areas are going to go down the same route that Alberta & Saskatchewan did with becoming more right-wing and less moderate.

You'd think that losing three straight elections would convince conservatives that their ideas are simply not acceptable with large numbers of Canadians, but so far it hasn't.

My guess is that they believe that they simply need to wait for Canadians to tire of JT like they did of Chretien and then it'll be 'their turn again'.

Fortunately as you note, most Canadians aren't interested in the far right policy ideas that have so much support in most of western Canada. At the same time, moderate conservatives like Michael Chong have little to no ability to win over the base in western Canada. And so the CPC keeps spinning its wheels...

The whole situation in Canada almost reminds me of what things were like 30 years ago leading up to the Charlottetown Accord and the 1995 Quebec referendum. Almost everybody was pissed off for one reason or another, and the worst assholes tainted everyone who could be associated with them (e.g. the guys who went to Brockville and photographed themselves trampling on the Quebec flag, to the dismay of actual Brockville locals) and created an ugly spiral that fed on itself.

The sad thing is that I think there's a lot more common ground among most Canadians than they realize. You have conservatives like Preston Manning saying that his movement needs more credibility on the environment; Indigenous people who support different kinds of resource development; Quebec separatism being in a coma; every single Alberta conservative I've ever asked has without exception supported public healthcare and handgun control; lots of people are worried about how they can make ends meet after decades of neoliberalism; lots of people say they want some kind of Indigenous reconciliation; lots of Indigenous people, even the thinkers and activists, still show a desire to work things out with the rest of us even after everything that's happened; a lot of the PPC's support came IMO from pandemic stress and anger and is not all conservative.

But how do we find that common ground and break down the polarization?

...That's the million-dollar question I've been trying to answer for half my life.

[Scape]

Hawkings said it best:

[raydan]

[CDN_PATRIOT]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

But how do we find that common ground and break down the polarization?

We don't. The election was proof of that.

-J.

[Thanos]

It's a hostile system and meant to be that way. The only time there's ever been any serious co-operation and non-partisanship was during international crises, like the world wars, where domestic political division would be suicidal in the face of the enemy.

Don't make stagnation out to be the worse possible thing to occur either. Going by what's happened to the United States the injection of extremist poison into the veins of the political system is by far much worse than anything that's ever happened in a Question Period bitch session. Much more of that rotten PPC-grade of Trumpism occurring inside Canada, courtesy of the kooks and radicals, and the rest of us will be longing for the halcyon days of mundane ethical lapses and sweet, sweet boredom.