BC election: too close to call

But if the ballot question is economy/jobs – and it usually is – then Christy Clark’s BC Liberals will win.  Take a look at this info-heavy Ipsos chart:

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She is also ahead if the dominate issue(s) is/are taxes, government spending, transportation, pipelines, or natural resources.

If, however, the ballot question is health, housing, education and social issues generally, John “I’ll watch you for a while” Horgan will do better.

I think my BC Liberal friends will still win.  One big poll today agrees.

What say you, B.C. folks? What’s the dominant issue out there in God’s country?


Le Pen, Trump, Brexit and the voiceless, rural unemployed person

The relationship is direct, and undeniable.  Look at this fascinating graphic from the New York Times’ extensive coverage (and their cool interactive map here).

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If you came from an area of high unemployment, you voted for the racist, anti-Semitic National Front.  There was a direct correlation.

Similar analyses were done with Brexit and Trump.  Check out this Brexit map via Oxford University, showing the desire to “leave” the E.U. was strongest in rural areas with low population density:

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Finally, here is a fascinating and portentous early, early graphic showing the demographic that Trump always owned – the ones who feel they didn’t have anyone to speak for them (and about whom I wrote yesterday, in respect of France).  These are the “voiceless” people, and they are found disproportionately among Le Pen, Trump and Brexit supporters:

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“People like me don’t have any say.”

Remember Trump’s inauguration speech, the one George W. Bush called “weird shit”? Trump may have sounded unhinged, but he said the words “voice,” “forgotten,” “our people,” and “American” and “America first,” many, many times. Why? He knew who his audience was, and it wasn’t the same audience as the presidents who went before him.

To note that there is an urban/rural divide – and a chasm between the employed and the unemployed, the powerful and the powerless – is to state the blindingly obvious.  It isn’t a shockingly new insight, at all.  The divide always been there.  But the divide – and the resentments they breed – has gotten worse.

And the political beneficiary has always been the Right.  The Right have always been better at trading in resentments.  They have always been better at passion instead of reason.

I wrote a book about it all, a few years back, and noted that progressives like me need to get better at the words and values stuff.  My take, which is as good a place as any to end, includes a chat with a leading American political linguist, and a discussion of…Donald Trump.

So when the billionaire birther Donald Trump was musing about seeking the Republican presidential nomination, [Geoffrey] Nunberg could only shake his head in disbelief. “It’s like the asshole of the month club,” he says of the Republicans, marvelling. “And they really are assholes. They were talking about Trump. So, when he was thinking about announcing [his candidacy], he went right to the top of the Republican polls.”

“[Trump and] the Right are better at values,” says Nunberg, who is taking a break from writing his next book at his San Francisco home to talk with me. “The Right has a natural advantage in the modern context, because a lot of the issues they are promoting are emotional issues – cultural prejudices that are easier to work with, linguistically, than some of the issues that Canadian Liberals and American Democrats are concerned with.”

Words and values: I’ve been saying the same thing for years. Want to beat the likes of Trump?

Reach out to the isolated, jobless and voiceless ones.  They don’t have to always agree with you.  They just need to hear from you.


The best explanation of the victories of Rob Ford, Brexit, Donald Trump et al.

The answer was right there in front of me, ironically enough. Brilliant.

A vote for the National Front was of course a vote tinged with racism and homophobia. My father looked forward to the time when we would “throw out the Arabs and the Jews.” He liked to say that gay people deserved the death penalty — looking sternly at me, who already in primary school was attracted to other boys on the playground.

And yet what those elections really meant for my father was a chance to fight his sense of invisibility. My father understood, long before I did, that in the minds of the bourgeoisie — people like the publisher who would turn down my book a few years later — our existence didn’t count and wasn’t real.

…the National Front railed against poor working conditions and unemployment, laying all the blame on immigration or the European Union. In the absence of any attempt by the left to discuss his suffering, my father latched on to the false explanations offered by the far right. Unlike the ruling class, he didn’t have the privilege of voting for a political program. Voting, for him, was a desperate attempt to exist in the eyes of others.

“A desperate attempt to exist in the eyes of others.” 

Want to preserve democracy, and civil society? Don’t just follow people who think like you on social media. Don’t regard disagreement as treason. And don’t ever think there are more votes on Wall/Bay Street than Main Street. 

There aren’t. There’ll never be. 


New York Times: The Rebel is “far-Right,” and is aiding a white supremacist 

…and, their “Washington correspondent” is involved in illegal hacking. See the full Times story, here.

The Rebel’s support for white supremacy and the Holocaust-denying National Front should surprise no one who has been paying attention lately – as seen here. Given what I used to believe about their founder, that surprises and disappoints me. But it’s real. 

So The Rebel has fully embraced the dark side. That matters, and that will have real consequences for all of them. 

But it also matters in this way: The Rebel initially promoted itself as a legitimate news organization. Many of us therefore (reluctantly) came to their defence when they were denied press credentials at the Alberta Legislature by the Notley government. 

Well, the Notley government was right – The Rebel is no news organization. It is a far-Right propaganda vehicle that trades in illegally-obtained material. 

It should be accredited as a news organization nowhere in Canada. 

New York Times: The Rebel is a far-Right organization that trades in illegal material.


My friend Greg Lyle knows BC

…and he knows BC elections, too. Here, his latest survey(s):


Can the BC NDP – who once had a double-digit lead – still win? Yes, says Greg:

However, an NDP victory is still possible: 40% of the electorate say they want to hear more before making up their minds. This is almost exactly the same number we saw at this point in the 2012 Alberta election, before a surprise PC upset at the very end of the campaign.

But can Comeback Clark take this one again? Still hard to say. 

But I agree with the Globe: the BC Liberals deserve to.


Government, lobbyists and the media

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From CP via CTV:

“I am very happy to see members of the press this evening,” Trudeau said early in his remarks, which drew subdued applause from the roughly 300-person crowd.

“We are very happy to see (journalists) among us and thank you very much for being here,” he said, looking at reporters and raising his hands to give a conspicuous, single clap.

The new system involves holding fundraisers featuring Trudeau or ministers only in public places, announcing them in advance, allowing the media to attend and disclosing the guest list within the following 45 days…

Liberal party spokesman Braeden Caley said there was “a pause” on national fundraising events throughout the first quarter while the new standards for open and transparent fundraising events were being prepared.

Some Liberals are pointing to that as one reason for lacklustre fundraising figures in the first three months of this year, when the Conservatives raised nearly twice as much money from a larger pool of contributors, even though they are in the midst of a leadership race that ought to be siphoning would-be donations to the party.

I must say that I found the single-clap thing – and drawing the media’s presence to everyone’s attention – to be a bit Trump/Harper-esque. It was unnecessary.  The media are doing their job, and their presence is a good thing.

Brendan Caley’s remarks also help to explain the fundraising gap I wrote about a couple days ago.  (The same thing has happened in Ontario: the governing Liberals hit “pause” on fundraising, to respect the new rules, while the two opposition parties did not.)

As I’ve written many times before: until the media give political parties free ad space – and until the taxpayer is willing to pay for everything that parties need to do during election campaigns – fundraising is obviously required.

The new rules ensure that it is all done out in the open, and without the possibility of undue influence.  That’s good, and deserving of more than a single hand-clap.