05.11.2013 09:37 AM

Adrian Dix is going to win

I don’t have any skin the BC ‘2013 game. I’ve got friends in both war rooms, and I think they’ve all run impressive campaigns.

Adrian Dix was assisted by the fact that he’s no Glen Clark-style Dipper: he’s a centrist New Democrat, more like Roy Romanow than his former boss. On the other hand, he was hurt by his less-than-stellar debate performance, and his naive promise to stay “positive” when his opponent had been going neg, big time.

Christy Clark? Well, she’s a perfomer. I’ve known her since she was a Liberal staffer in Ottawa – but, then again, I didn’t. With Christy, I never really knew who or what she was: a Martinite? A Chretinite? Right? Left?

When she started chumming around with Stephen Harper and Preston Manning, I had had enough. It wasn’t that she was a conservative, per se. My problem was that she was, in her core, without a core. She was fake. She was phony.

Clark, at the campaign’s end, deserves to lose because you just don’t know what she believes in – or if, in fact, she believes in anything at all. She’s an actor, but not a leader.

Anyway. The mechanics of the thing are all against her: the NDP vote is much more efficient in BC than Easterners realize. And it’s concentrated in the Lower Mainland, too. Dix, therefore, is going to win.

Read my almost-boss Gary Mason on it, here. He gets it.

The desire for change, when it starts, is hard to stop. Change is coming to BC, and that is good thing.

23 Comments

  1. Stupid Globe paywall. Could not view the article. I will follow Mason on twitter, maybe I can clickthrough there.

  2. billg says:

    She’s BC’s Tim Hudak?

  3. dave says:

    Here in oil patch vote is always right. NDP candidate is doing well in all candidates and door knocking and such. But NDP candidates have done well before, and the vote here has remained right for all the decades I have lived here. an Independent is making a run here; he ran last time, and seems stronger this time, and the BC Lib incumbent is not strong. TheTyee has a riding by riding prediction chart which says our riding is a 3 way, too close to call riding. There is a Conservative running here as well, but he came in at the last minute, and is still catching up. Thursday and Friday more working people coming into the office to help out, and lots offering time this weekend, so the vim and vigour is picking uup.

    Provincially it is time for the high rollers to spend their bucks on whatever last minute stuff they can come up with to maintain their BCLib privileges. Lots of big money at stake in resource extraction and export here!

    I must work harder.

    • dave says:

      …oh, yeah, I’ve never met any of the leaders, but I have pretty much the same impression of Dix and Clark. With Clark, I’ve thought her a flakey opportunist for years. (She is good at it, though. If BCLibs don’t make it, if she doesn’t get her sonsituency, if the 801 group moves fast, she’ll make senate, or maybe a fed job in a consulate somewhere…LA maybe.)

  4. ‘in total agreement on this!

  5. Sheila says:

    Not only is the NDP vote “much more efficient in BC than Easteners realize”, these same Easteners have no idea how much disdain Christy Clark is viewed with in BC.

    • Cath says:

      Uh, yes we do Sheila. We have a good idea actually. Just ask us about Kathleen Wynne 🙂

    • Sometimes a little distance lends perspective. If she was held in such disdain, then howcome the big bounce in the polls. It is common for people to convince themselves that what they hear in their narrower circle is representative of what everybody is saying and hearing. That is often totally false ( while sometimes being true). We will all know in a couple of days anyway.

      • dave says:

        bgb

        You may be right about the polls…although, we do have rich history of bought and paid for poll and advertising tidal waves aimed at manipulating voters…in both municipal and provincial elections.

        For me, it’s between a possibility of a future for my kids and grandkids to to live and work in their own land, or a corproate controlled future designed by hucksters selling out our assets to foreigners just as fast as then can say”It’s all about economic growth and jobs…”

        • David says:

          Bluegreenblogger, the bounce in the polls was due to the collapse of the Conservative (Reform) vote from 10% to 6%. The Liberals are so desperate they are running full page ads for the Greens in Victoria in order to force 3 way splits and a Liberal candidate sneaking up the right side. Gordon consul in London and Christy consul in LA (she will get a movie of the week no problem) and socialist Glen Clark running Jimmy Pattison’s empire. The irony of it all.

  6. G. Mcrae says:

    Rarely in BC do people for “for” some; typically it is a vote against someone. I know a lot of people like this guy: http://pragmatictory.blogspot.ca/2013/05/i-voted-ndp.html.

  7. G. Barry Stewart says:

    Thanks for this, Warren — though a few days earlier may have helped some people stop before making a mistake at the advance poll.

    It’s good to see at least one Kinsella that has no use for Christy Clark!

  8. Danny says:

    As a West Coaster I share with resignation that the NDP will win. It is time for a change and the only viable alternative is the NDP.
    I do not share that Dix is middle of the road. I have friends in the NDP and they say he is from the left wing of the party. I think he is a good socialist and will give his buddies Ken Georgetti and Jim Sinclair of the unions plenty of say in drafting new legislation.
    He will kill any new energy projects like pipelines, mining, drilling. He will raise taxes. He will give more money to the movie industry unions. And his ethical history (backdated memos etc) do not bode well for how he will govern. Our only hope is that he doesn’t totally destroy our economy in 4 years at which point we will toss him out too.

    • Ole Nielson says:

      I am amazed at how many people equate the NDP with socialism, and then tie socialism to communism. I am an immigrant from perhaps the most socialist country in the world – Denmark. Do some work and inform yourselves about how Danes view their country, their government and their place in the world. Many surveys have shown Danes to be among the happiest people in the world. And many surveys have also shown that the economy is booming, and that Denmark is seen as one of the top countries in the world for investors. My point is that socialism is not a dirty word, just sayin’.

      • Danes have NOT got the diversity. Are all concentrated in a small country. Easy to govern. Have good government and are willing to pay the high taxes to support it.

      • monkey says:

        I am not sure I would describe Denmark as being socialist. From 2001-2011, they were ruled by a right wing coalition led by the Venestre who are a Liberal party but right leaning much like the BC Liberals unlike the federal Liberals who would be more like the Det Radikale Venestre. The left in after the right being in power for 10 years barely scraped by 50.2 to 49.8 and are now trailing by over 10% so if anything it seems the right has been having more success than the left as of recent in Denmark, mind you thats been the case in pretty much every European country. Also the Heritage Foundation placed Denmark in the top spots for economic freedom which is not something you will get from a socialist country. A more accurate description is they are socialistic in certain aspects like their generous welfare state, high personal income taxes, and high sales taxes, but more market oriented in areas such as openness to foreign investment, regulation of business, number of state owned enterprises (most have been privatized), and corporate taxation. In many ways they combine aspects of both which can work well. The problem is some in the NDP blindly follow the left wing ideology rather than taking what works and ditching what doesn’t. In the industrialized world there have been few socialist parties elected in the last decade and most get turfed after one term. Only those who stay close to the centre having any staying power. By contrast the right has been very successful in North America, Europe, Far East, and Australiasia in the past ten years.

        • monkey says:

          Also interesting when I was in Denmark in the summer of 2011 most thought the right wing coalition would be re-elected despite trailing by ten points in the polls. They actually loss by 0.4 points and those I talked to were in Copenhagen which is much more left wing than the rest of Denmark. In many ways those who dislike a government no matter what stripe are more vocal than those who are content.

  9. Domenico says:

    Spot on Warren.

    • Elizabeth says:

      I listened to her being interviewed on CBC, and found her to be really kind of – not very smart when asked questions she didn’t know an answer to. Not a thinker, that’s for sure.
      Maybe the polls indicated not that the Liberals would lose, but that BC didn’t want C. Clark.

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