Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Doug Ford Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party
The results were heavily delayed.

MARKHAM, Ont. — A heated battle for the reins of Ontario's Progressive Conservatives that exposed deep rifts within the party continued to smolder even after Doug Ford was crowned the new leader on Saturday.

Party president Jag Badwal announced the results seven hours later than scheduled, saying the former Toronto city councillor had narrowly eked out a win over former provincial legislator Christine Elliott on the third ballot.

But Elliott, who had made her third bid to lead the party, released a statement early Sunday morning alleging there had been "serious irregularities" in the vote and vowing to investigate further.

Her comments came after the party said it had reviewed certain aspects of the vote and cleared all issues before announcing Ford's victory.
Ford made little mention of the review or the delays in his victory speech, focusing instead on the June election in which he will now face Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne.

"The people of Ontario want the Ontario Liberals gone and they deserve nothing less," Ford, who was flanked by Granic Allen, told the sparse but enthusiastic crowd in Markham, Ont., that remained to hear the results.
"We're going to spend the coming weeks getting the party in fighting shape, because the people of this province are ready for change."
Ford said he hadn't spoken to Elliott, and vowed to hold a news conference "in the coming days" but gave no specifics.

Elliott said she had won the popular vote and the majority of ridings, and noted that very few electoral points separated her and Ford in the final count. She also said thousands of party members were assigned to incorrect ridings during the voting process.
"I will stand up for these members and plan to investigate the extent of this discrepancy," she said.
Toronto lawyer Caroline Mulroney placed third in the race, while social conservative advocate Tanya Granic Allen finished last.
The governing Liberals were quick to denounce Ford, who is known for being the brother of late scandal-plagued mayor Rob Ford.
"The Conservative party is going into this election with more radically conservative policies than Mike Harris, Tim Hudak or Stephen Harper ever ran on," Liberal campaign co-chair Deb Matthews said.
"The billions in cuts they are promising and the divisive social conservative policies they are championing will hurt Ontario's economy and change our province for the worse."

Doug Ford's victory was announced after 10 p.m., without any of the pomp and fanfare that was expected earlier in the day when hundreds packed a hall expecting to celebrate the start of a new and more positive chapter in party history.
Instead, after a 4.5-hour delay, the chair of the party's leadership election organizing committee dismissed the irate crowd Saturday evening with a terse statement about the need for a review of the results and announced the issue would be resolved in the "short term."
"There's a review underway of an allocation of a certain list of electors that needs to be resolved because it may have an impact on electoral votes," Hartley Lefton said, his words increasingly drowned out by jeers and boos.
Lefton dismissed assembled party members from the hall they'd occupied since late Saturday morning, saying the organization no longer had access to the premises.
William Coleman, a staunch Ford supporter, said he was angry at the party's handling of what should have been a turning point and worried the delays and confusion over who won could affect the party's image at a time when it is striving to appear united and authoritative.
"If we're going to win the general election ... stuff like this only makes things worse," he said.

Others appeared undisturbed, saying the hurdles would be long forgotten once a leader was chosen.
"Whatever it takes, as long as we get it right and then we're behind whoever the candidate is," said Jeffrey Thomson, a longtime party member.
More than 64,000 votes were cast in the hastily organized leadership race.
Cristine de Clercy, an associate professor of political science at Western University, said the party's handling of the delays Saturday was "a dismal failure."
"This was pretty much the most mishandled party executive communication exercise I've ever witnessed on television," she said.
"This party is very clearly very fractured ... That made it even more important that this executive running this election had to be perfect ... Unfortunately the thing blew apart today."
The contest was launched in late January after former leader Patrick Brown resigned abruptly amid allegations of sexual misconduct that he has consistently denied.
Brown tweeted his congratulations to Ford on his victory.
"We are all behind our new leader and focused on our common goal of defeating the disastrous Wynne Liberal government," he said.

Mulroney, the only candidate to be nominated in a riding, also tweeted her support for Ford and said she would be back knocking on doors Sunday.
"Today, we leave this convention united with one common goal, finally firing Kathleen Wynne," she said.
Saturday's delay in announcing a winner was the latest in a long list of challenges that have plagued the party since Brown's departure.
The party uncovered issues with its structure, problems with its nomination processes, and discrepancies in its membership numbers, leading interim leader Vic Fedeli to declare he would "root out the rot" before handing over the reins to a new leader.
Fedeli calls for unity in the party
The leadership race itself stirred strife and forced party brass to defend their decisions on a number of fronts.
Chief among these were a number of complaints about the complex rules for the online vote, including repeated claims that the necessary voting documents sent via regular mail were not reaching party members on time.
A lawyer even filed a request for a court injunction the day before the leadership convention seeking to delay the decision by a week to give more members a chance to receive their documents and cast a ballot, but a judge dismissed the request.
At Saturday's thwarted convention, Fedeli called upon the party to rise above the recent differences and pull together to defeat the Liberals in a scheduled June election.
"Our work does not end today because whatever differences (we have) as Progressive Conservatives, our differences are small compared to everything that unites us," Fedeli told the crowd before the announcement was due to be made. "The real campaign, the real test, still lies ahead of us."
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/03/10 ... _23382412/

Back in January the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party was forced to resign due to sexual allegations. Not going to go into details as to whether or not these details are true since its not the focus of the thread, but suffice to say it threw the PC Party into chaos not long before the June election.

As a result, a leadership contest was held this week and Doug Ford emerged as the winner. Who is Doug Ford, you might ask? Why, he's the brother and right-hand man of Rob Ford, the former Crack-Smoking Mayor of Toronto. Long before Trump ran for office Toronto had its experience with right-wing populism and the results weren't... pretty. In many ways we're still trying to fix the mess made.

Naturally the far-right won't take no for an answer, and with "Ford Nation" at his side Doug Ford went on to win the PC Party leadership contest yesterday and sweep the establishment figures away. With him as leader the "Progressive Conservative" Part of Ontario will become for intents and purposes the Tea Party of Ontario, with an anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-socialist, anti-environmental agendas, and plenty of lies being spewed all over the place.

Even worse, the current Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne has approval ratings so low they'd even make Trump blush (IIRC its ~15% right now), meaning that there is good chance that Ford Nation is going to win the next election. And the more they attack him, the more his support base will be riled up and come out to support him.

We're in for some interesting times.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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I think this should be a wake-up call to all the Canadians who look down on America as more backward and listen to the comforting delusion that "It can never happen here."

Speaking as a dual citizen of the US and Canada, in case anyone thinks this is just American bias.

Edit: I mean, Ontario isn't even the traditionally conservative part of Canada. And while you can say "well, he hasn't won yet", his brother Rob (before his death) was mayor of Toronto (one of the most multicultural cities in the world), in an administration plagued by racist and sexist comments, physical violence, and a crack scandal, among other things.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-03-12 04:55pm <snip>

Edit: I mean, Ontario isn't even the traditionally conservative part of Canada. And while you can say "well, he hasn't won yet", his brother Rob (before his death) was mayor of Toronto (one of the most multicultural cities in the world), in an administration plagued by racist and sexist comments, physical violence, and a crack scandal, among other things.
Ontario see-saws between Conservative (12 premiers) and Liberal (10 premiers). I'm not surprised at all that Ford might win this upcoming election.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Enigma wrote: 2018-03-12 05:32pm Ontario see-saws between Conservative (12 premiers) and Liberal (10 premiers). I'm not surprised at all that Ford might win this upcoming election.
Let's not forget the 1 NDP premier we elected just for fun :P

But yes, Ontario does generally see-saw between Liberals and Conservatives. Usually this is due to a combination of getting tired of the government and its scandals and said government straying too far from the perceived political centre. It is also not uncommon for Ontario to vote one way provincially while voting the other way federally.

This... is different. It's the first time in awhile we have a major party leader running who literally has no plan or agenda other than whipping up the "I hate gays, poor people, liberals etc) crowd into a frenzy. Even Mike Harris had a plan (however flawed it was), as did Doug Ford's immediate predecessor. Ontario's equivalent to the Tea Party is now in charge of Conservatives up here, and it's rather disturbing.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Its a familiar enough pattern that part of me is half-expecting to hear that Doug Ford has questionable ties to Russia before too long. I mean, they've tried to interfere in the politics of just about every other western country. Why not here? I'd be almost surprised if Russia didn't try to cultivate a Canadian Trump in the coming years.

But for now, this is a purely home-grown pile of shit. America may give them a bigger and louder platform, but Canada has them too, for all our reputation for civility.

Let's hope that we can crush this move towards Trump-style politics in Canada in its infancy.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by Zaune »

You know, I once asked my Occupy Windsor buddies if Rob Ford was noticeably worse at his job than Conservative mayors in other big cities who weren't coked out of their gourds most of the time. I never quite got a straight answer but I got the feeling he actually wasn't.

I suppose that speaks well of his brother's talent for damage control, if nothing else.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Zaune wrote: 2018-03-12 08:37pm You know, I once asked my Occupy Windsor buddies if Rob Ford was noticeably worse at his job than Conservative mayors in other big cities who weren't coked out of their gourds most of the time. I never quite got a straight answer but I got the feeling he actually wasn't.

I suppose that speaks well of his brother's talent for damage control, if nothing else.
More like Toronto city council doing some effective damage control, though as I said earlier we're still having to fix the mess (particularly on the transit file). Rob Ford's biggest success was in convincing suburban voters that they were the victims of those nasty, rotten downtown latte sipping liberals, and that they were somehow being "cheated" of their fair share (despite virtually all the planned major infrastructure projects being outside of the downtown core).
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Heh, considering what province I live in this is somewhat Ironic. Honestly hope he Doesn't get elected but other then bug my Ontario friends not to...

This is why Canadian family dinners can get just as politically charged as US ones despite the stereotypes...
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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CetaMan wrote: 2018-03-12 10:01pm Heh, considering what province I live in this is somewhat Ironic. Honestly hope he Doesn't get elected but other then bug my Ontario friends not to...

This is why Canadian family dinners can get just as politically charged as US ones despite the stereotypes...
My favourite part was Rob Ford convincing his electoral base that an entirely grade separated (and largely elevated) light rail line... runs in the middle of the street in mixed traffic with the vehicles blocking cars, clogging every intersection as they pass and causing traffic chaos. This despite the fact that much of his support base uses said line on a daily basis.

Back to Doug Ford, apparently he is working on one (he swears)... which will consist of five bullet points. Anything more than that would likely be far too confusing for his voting base.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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A quick look at the social conservatives influencing Ontario politics:
Social conservatives savour victory, thank immigrants

Canada has accepted about five million new immigrants in the past 25 years and they have irreversibly changed our political dynamics.

Twenty-five years ago, Quebec’s place within the Canadian federation was almost all we ever talked about. Today, the Quebec question has faded from the national agenda. All we seem to talk about now is diversity.

For most of us, this means ensuring that more women and minorities are represented in all spheres of Canadian life. We have branded ourselves as an immigrant nation that embraces people of all origins. “Diversity is our strength” has become our national motto, replacing A Mari Usque Ad Mare (from sea to sea) everywhere but on our country’s official coat of arms.

What our political elites have a hard time admitting, however, is that diversity is not a one-way street toward harmonious living – what the French call le vivre-ensemble – but a multilane expressway of competing and often colliding values, norms and ideas. Nowhere has this become as apparent as in the emergence of social conservatism as a political force in Canada.

Doug Ford’s election as the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party would not have been possible without the mobilization of social conservatives. That a strident anti-abortion activist – Tanya Granic Allen – was even on the ballot was proof in itself that this is no longer your father’s PC Party. That Ms. Granic Allen captured almost as much first-ballot support as the centrist Caroline Mulroney, and that her supporters propelled Mr. Ford over the top on the final ballot, was especially sweet for social conservatives.

The latter are now celebrating their new-found political clout — in dozens of languages. Immigration has swelled the ranks of Canada’s social conservatives. Polls shows that Canadian-born voters are less religious than ever, even when they claim to belong to a particular faith. That is not true of immigrants, who often identify more with their religion than their country.

Immigrants have increasingly shaped our communities, our schools and our self-conception as a country. So, it was only a matter of time before they began shaping our politics, too. It is unlikely Ontarians would be debating the province’s new sex-education curriculum at all if only Canadian-born voters were concerned. Resistance to the new curriculum has been strongest among immigrant parents. Some even pulled their kids out of school in protest.

Ground zero for the anti-sex-ed movement is Thorncliffe Park, in Toronto’s inner suburbs, where 70 per cent of the population was born outside Canada and almost 60 per cent of residents speak neither English nor French at home. They’re far more likely to speak Urdu, Farsi and Tagalog.

Campaign Life Coalition, the anti-abortion activist group that has led the fight against Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s update to the sex-ed curriculum, publishes some of its literature in 10 languages. The group claims to have signed up 9,000 new PC Party members during the leadership race to support Ms. Granic Allen as their first choice and Mr. Ford as their second.

“New Canadians are extremely important to CLC. It is probably our fastest growth segment in terms of general supporters and activists,” CLC spokesman Jack Fonseca said in an e-mail. “I do believe that their mobilization could shift public policy momentum on life and family issues.”

Not all social conservatives are religious. Chinese immigrants, whom Mr. Fonseca said have accounted for “a lot of growth” in his group’s membership, are among those least likely to practise a religion. But for most social conservatives, religion is the motivating factor in their political mobilization.

More than half a million Muslims immigrated to Canada in the 20 years to 2011, according to Statistics Canada’s National Household Survey. The 2016 census showed that Canada accepted more than 150,000 immigrants from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria— all Muslim-majority countries – between 2011 and 2016. Tens of thousands more came from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.

Almost 200,000 Filipino immigrants came to Canada in the five years to 2016, replenishing the pews of the country’s Catholic churches. As with most Canadian Muslims, these Filipino newcomers take their faith ultraseriously.

A 2016 Environics poll showed Canadian Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in 2015. But that was likely a result of the uproar surrounding Conservative attempts to ban the niqab at citizenship ceremonies and the party’s pro-Israel foreign policy. The same poll found that, among Canadian Muslims, “religious identity and practice are important and growing, in contrast to the broader secularizing trend in Canada.”

How long can these two trends co-exist without colliding? Doug Ford’s leadership win may just have given us the answer.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Soooo, the election is just about done, time to find out the winner!
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Unless something unexpected happens, PC majority. Biggest surprises so far are: Green leader won his seat, Liberals may get the 8 seats they need to remain an official party.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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It's more or less going as expected; major city centres are voting NDP/Liberal while suburbs and rural areas are voting PC party. From what I've looked at so far in some cases it looks like the PC Party is winning mainly due to progressive voters splitting their vote rather than due to the PC Party winning an outright majority.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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The sad thing is, under the Canadian system, you don't need anywhere near a majority of the votes to get a majority government.

So... I guess its official: Trumpism comes to Canada (right down to the candidate having mob ties). I've been expecting it. I had hoped it wouldn't happen this soon.

Maybe this will wake Canadian liberals and progressives up to the danger. Hopefully so. Because if not... well, the electorate tends to swing back and forth every so often, the NDP basically never wins, and Trudeau is the target of a lot of the same "anti-establishment" dissatisfaction as Clinton. Also, see above reg. our election system. So if we're not very careful, if we don't change course, then in a few years, Doug Ford or someone like him will be PM. And Canada has nothing like the checks and balances that the US does. A Canadian Trump with a majority government would very nearly be a dictator from day one.

I just feel so horribly depressed. That in Canada of all places, people could look at what's happening south of the border and decide "Yeah, I want me some of that." Is that really the world we live in? Is this really what the majority wants? To burn society down, rather than try to fix it?

The Left in Canada needs to take this seriously, and start mobilizing for a hard fight.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-06-07 09:51pm The sad thing is, under the Canadian system, you don't need anywhere near a majority of the votes to get a majority government.

So... I guess its official: Trumpism comes to Canada (right down to the candidate having mob ties). I've been expecting it. I had hoped it wouldn't happen this soon.

Maybe this will wake Canadian liberals and progressives up to the danger. Hopefully so. Because if not... well, the electorate tends to swing back and forth every so often, the NDP basically never wins, and Trudeau is the target of a lot of the same "anti-establishment" dissatisfaction as Clinton. Also, see above reg. our election system. So if we're not very careful, if we don't change course, then in a few years, Doug Ford or someone like him will be PM. And Canada has nothing like the checks and balances that the US does. A Canadian Trump with a majority government would very nearly be a dictator from day one.

I just feel so horribly depressed. That in Canada of all places, people could look at what's happening south of the border and decide "Yeah, I want me some of that." Is that really the world we live in? Is this really what the majority wants? To burn society down, rather than try to fix it?

The Left in Canada needs to take this seriously, and start mobilizing for a hard fight.
Actually it's kind of the other way around from the Ontario (and especially Toronto) perspective: Rob Fordism came to America in 2016, seeing as we elected our homophobic, crack-smoking alcoholic misogynist six years sooner :P

But yes, alt-right wing populism has now officially taken hold in Ontario, and in fairly similar circumstances. The difference perhaps being that we knew exactly what to expect going in, and voted for him anyways. Which means that's what a good chunk of the Ontario population wanted. It's very disturbing, but not surprising given that this is not the first time we elected someone like him into office.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Tribble wrote: 2018-06-07 10:14pm
The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-06-07 09:51pm The sad thing is, under the Canadian system, you don't need anywhere near a majority of the votes to get a majority government.

So... I guess its official: Trumpism comes to Canada (right down to the candidate having mob ties). I've been expecting it. I had hoped it wouldn't happen this soon.

Maybe this will wake Canadian liberals and progressives up to the danger. Hopefully so. Because if not... well, the electorate tends to swing back and forth every so often, the NDP basically never wins, and Trudeau is the target of a lot of the same "anti-establishment" dissatisfaction as Clinton. Also, see above reg. our election system. So if we're not very careful, if we don't change course, then in a few years, Doug Ford or someone like him will be PM. And Canada has nothing like the checks and balances that the US does. A Canadian Trump with a majority government would very nearly be a dictator from day one.

I just feel so horribly depressed. That in Canada of all places, people could look at what's happening south of the border and decide "Yeah, I want me some of that." Is that really the world we live in? Is this really what the majority wants? To burn society down, rather than try to fix it?

The Left in Canada needs to take this seriously, and start mobilizing for a hard fight.
Actually it's kind of the other way around from the Ontario (and especially Toronto) perspective: Rob Fordism came to America in 2016, seeing as we elected our homophobic anti-immigrant misogynist six years sooner :P

But yes, alt-right wing populism has now officially taken hold in Ontario, and in fairly similar circumstances. The difference perhaps being that we knew exactly what to expect going in, and voted for him anyways. Which means that's what a good chunk of the Ontario population wanted. It's very disturbing, but not surprising given that this is not the first time we elected someone like him into office.
I expect some of it is simply complacency- a LOT of Canadians, in my experience, look down on America and Americans, and rest secure in the self-assurance that Canada and Canadians are so much more progressive and intelligent. So because Doug Ford hasn't had the chance to be publicly abhorrent in such a high profile manner as Trump yet, there's probably some of the old "It could never happen here" syndrome going on, particularly among the less politically-informed.

There's also the split in the opposition between the Liberals and the NDP, which the Liberals deliberately exacerbated in one of the most blatantly selfish examples of short-sighted partisanship I've ever seen outside the United States, by telling voters to vote Liberal even after acknowledging that they couldn't win. This is one of my big gripes against the Parliamentary system- far from being more Democratic or representative, the presence of numerous parties makes it potentially much easier for a fringe group to gain power.

The other aspect, of course, is that there is a significant percentage of the electorate, in Canada as in America, who really want a strong man who will put women and minorities "in their place". And probably also a significant percentage who just hate a vaguely-defined "establishment", and have such a degree of tunnel vision on the issue that they really believe that the best course of action is BURN EVERYTHING NOW!

Edit: The truth is, Right-wing populism is an easier sell than progressivism, because appealing to peoples' base emotions: resentment, fear, anger, hate-will always be an easier sell with a lot of people than appealing to ideals of equality and empathy and political and economic justice. There is something that appeals to many humans, on a deep, perhaps instinctive psychological level, in the idea of just lashing out. That's not to say that we should give up the fight- simply to recognize that we will be fighting often at a disadvantage, because we are fighting against aspects of human society that have been ingrained into our psyches over thousands of years.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by Jub »

I hope that this change in a single province doesn't swing things towards voting in social conservatives in the next federal election. As important as Ontario is hopefully, Quebec and BC will stay socially progressive and balance things out overall. It will likely depend on if BC's anger over the pipeline and Trudeau's meddling there has died down by then and what if anything the NDP can do under Singh.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by Tribble »

The Romulan Republic wrote: I expect some of it is simply complacency- a LOT of Canadians, in my experience, look down on America and Americans, and rest secure in the self-assurance that Canada and Canadians are so much more progressive and intelligent. So because Doug Ford hasn't had the chance to be publicly abhorrent in such a high profile manner as Trump yet, there's probably some of the old "It could never happen here" syndrome going on, particularly among the less politically-informed.
Ontario and particularly Toronto has followed him closely for some time, ever since the antics of him and his brother. How else do you think he rose to the top of the PC Party and now Ontario so quickly? It's not so much complacency in this case as deliberate choice. Unlike say the US election where Clinton was generally considered the front-runner, the consensus in Ontario was that Doug Ford was going to win a majority, the only real question was by how much. This isn't a stunning upset, this was more or less expected well in advance. If anything, the real surprise was how much the NDP managed to close the gap (mostly at the expense of the Liberals of course).
The Romulan Republic wrote:There's also the split in the opposition between the Liberals and the NDP, which the Liberals deliberately exacerbated in one of the most blatantly selfish examples of short-sighted partisanship I've ever seen outside the United States, by telling voters to vote Liberal even after acknowledging that they couldn't win. This is one of my big gripes against the Parliamentary system- far from being more Democratic or representative, the presence of numerous parties makes it potentially much easier for a fringe group to gain power.
To be more specific, this is a significant problem in any first-past-the-post system. Proportionally speaking the PC Party should not have won a majority.
The Romulan Republic wrote:The other aspect, of course, is that there is a significant percentage of the electorate, in Canada as in America, who really want a strong man who will put women and minorities "in their place". And probably also a significant percentage who just hate a vaguely-defined "establishment", and have such a degree of tunnel vision on the issue that they really believe that the best course of action is BURN EVERYTHING NOW!
Yes, and in a lot of respects we already saw that with Rob Ford. Maybe it's surprising that Ontario would elect someone like Doug Ford to people who live outside of the province. For people who live here, not so much.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Jub wrote: 2018-06-07 10:37pm I hope that this change in a single province doesn't swing things towards voting in social conservatives in the next federal election. As important as Ontario is hopefully, Quebec and BC will stay socially progressive and balance things out overall. It will likely depend on if BC's anger over the pipeline and Trudeau's meddling there has died down by then and what if anything the NDP can do under Singh.
There is that, though IIRC there's a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment in Quebec, so that gives the neo-fascist types an opening there, maybe.

As I said, I think there's a real danger, due to the electoral system we have and the overall political climate, but its not an inevitability. I think that the Left in Canada needs to be organizing and mobilizing now with the foremost goal of preventing a Trump-style or Alt. Right PM from being elected PM in a few years (particularly with a majority government), and with the expectation that it will be a very difficult, but not unwinnable, fight.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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This is more of a "fuck you Wynn" vote than an "I love Ford" vote. Yes there are a number of shitbags who actually love Doug Ford, but it's more disgust & frustration with the Liberals and Wynn in particular than anything else, plus the NDP still has the stigma of Bob Rae hanging over it from 25 years ago. If you want to get the Liberals & Wynn out of office which a lot of folks did, the PC wins by default. Short of having Paul Bernardo as their leader, the election was in the bag for them.

The main issue with the left is they don't have a fucking message along with an image problem. Like it or not, the right has mastered the art of getting out clear messages & slogans to rally their voter base, and not only do they have an image, they know how to fling shit and make it stick on their opposition. I've been on a media blackout for most of this election campaign, but from the little I've seen the PC have been seal clubbing the Liberals and NDP with their election tactics.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-06-07 10:48pmThere is that, though IIRC there's a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment in Quebec, so that gives the neo-fascist types an opening there, maybe.

As I said, I think there's a real danger, due to the electoral system we have and the overall political climate, but its not an inevitability. I think that the Left in Canada needs to be organizing and mobilizing now with the foremost goal of preventing a Trump-style or Alt. Right PM from being elected PM in a few years (particularly with a majority government), and with the expectation that it will be a very difficult, but not unwinnable, fight.
Quebec doesn't usually vote Conservative though, in the last 4 elections they've gone Liberal, NDP, Bloc, Bloc and the Conservatives haven't even been second place. The chances that they flip hard enough to swing things for the Cons are pretty low, the larger issue might be the NDP making a comeback and stealing Liberal votes but that's far from a sure thing given how hard the NDP fell after Layton's death.

The thing is, parties usually don't go in trying to prevent one party from being elected. They go in trying to take as much as they can for themselves. The only way I think we see the Liberals and NDP band together is if they both feel they don't have a chance at greater than 33% of the vote and I just don't see both of them thinking that way.

On the plus side, the only way we see a conservative government that is a true threat is if they can win a majority. If they have to partner with anybody it's unlikely things get too bad and such a government is unlikely to grow their base into a majority win, especially as coalition governments rarely stretch out election cycles the way majorities tend to.
aerius wrote: 2018-06-07 11:05pmThe main issue with the left is they don't have a fucking message along with an image problem. Like it or not, the right has mastered the art of getting out clear messages & slogans to rally their voter base, and not only do they have an image, they know how to fling shit and make it stick on their opposition. I've been on a media blackout for most of this election campaign, but from the little I've seen the PC have been seal clubbing the Liberals and NDP with their election tactics.
I think this is the biggest issue and a hard one to deal with. The Cons have it easy as they can always run tough on (insert issue), tax cuts, and the thing that (insert largest vocal base) hates and use that as an identity. They're an opposition government even when they're in power because they usually want to maintain the status quo while taking a little slice for themselves.

It's harder to crystallize a message out of concepts like progress (to where?), spending (on what?), inclusion (but who?) when the right can always question it. It's harder to ask the same questions about things like tax cuts because that question is complex, to some voters a tax cut is free money and it's hard to keep them listening long enough to explain why the program being cut matters.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

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Damn, looks like the Liberals won't even retain official party status. Ouch.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by AniThyng »

Isn't FPTP the reason any fringe party will never really hold power except in one or two seats. What really happens is not the fringe parties get power, but they ensure vote splitting leads to the party most opposed to them gain disproportionate power and the mainstream party closest to them loses.
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by Eulogy »

Wild Zontargs wrote: 2018-06-07 11:34pm Damn, looks like the Liberals won't even retain official party status. Ouch.
Nothing is a better swift kick in the ass for a party, eh?
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Re: Doug Ford (A Canadian Precursor to Trump) Declared Leader Of The Ontario PC Party

Post by The Romulan Republic »

Eulogy wrote: 2018-06-08 01:17am
Wild Zontargs wrote: 2018-06-07 11:34pm Damn, looks like the Liberals won't even retain official party status. Ouch.
Nothing is a better swift kick in the ass for a party, eh?
And nothing is worse for the people than having that kick delivered by far Right crooks.

Hell, I've got no sympathy for the Liberals here- they should have worked with the NDP, not against them when it became clear they couldn't win, to deny Ford a majority. Hopefully, next time, the voters will support the NDP. And perhaps the Greens will be able to build on their initial success, as they have to an extent in BC.
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