Christy Clark has pulled off the sort of miracle the Boston Bruins managed when coming back from a 4-1 deficit to the Leafs recently. One would be ungracious not to extend congratulations.
The story is more than a matter of manners, for the truth is that Adrian Dix blew the election – big time.
I warned the NDP over and over about how their campaign was letting the Liberals get back into the fight after the NDP had a 20 point advantage in the private polls.
With over two weeks to go in the election, I wrote in thetyee.ca and on this website:
It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again.
Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same.
Your position favouring LNG plants is puzzling, if only because you seem to be following Clark’s pied piper’s seductive path to supporting a dream that is almost certain never to come true.
To you, Mr. Dix, there is no way this government can win on its merits – you have to give it to them and you seem to be trying your best to do just this. What is truly troublesome is your amiable Adrian approach, with an endless stream of small policy announcements – sort of a fart a day.
I realize that people tell you that they want a politer politics in B.C. That’s what Bob Skelly tried in the ’80s and you know what happened to him.
Politics is a blood sport and your nicely, nicely approach is letting Premier Clark get away with murder. Despite a fivefold increase in the provincial debt, she’s painting you as wastrels and her government as careful money managers!
Your best issue, the appalling fiscal policy of the Campbell/Clark government, is being used as a positive thing for them and you are responding rather than attacking. We’re seeing a tactic similar to when agents acting for George W. Bush, a draft dodger, denigrated the much-decorated John Kerry’s war record so that he could lay claim to being strong on national defence. You’re becoming the essence of John Kerry, reacting weakly on issues that should have you on the attack!
On environmental issues you seem to be passive and non-threatening! These issues, along with the dismal Liberal record on money matters, ought to have you leading firmly, not cowering behind a cloud of good manners.
Mr. Dix, it’s yours to win and to quote the Baseball manager Lou Durocher: “Nice guys finish last.”
About 30 % of BC voters could not ever vote NDP. Never! And about 30% of voters are hard core NDPers and won’t budge. Overall, the balance must be persuaded to be part of one side or the other in the election being fought. To achieve this, the appeal must be led by a tough, well-informed leader who hits hardest and captures enough of the “swing” votes to win. That job is not for Goody Two Shoes.
The NDP are lousy campaigners. They should know that they really have only won one election – 1996 when Glen Clark, carrying the Raiwind-BC Hydro scandal, fought hard, out-campaigned Gordon Campbell and won in the trenches. The Barrett and Harcourt victories were as a result of the Socreds crashing. In 1996, the NDP had in the person of Glen Clark a leader who found the core issues and hammered them home.
How come the huge Campbell/Clark debt – 5 times higher than that left by the NDP – was not an issue?
Same with the scandalous private power scheme that has sent BC Hydro into virtual bankruptcy?
Same re: the pipelines and tanker issue?
How come Clark was able to portray the message that the Liberals, for God’s sake, were more to be trusted with fiscal issues than the NDP?
Where was the BC Rail fiasco?
By 9:30 on election night, champagne corks were popping in the corporations’ meeting rooms. The fish farmers won, big time! So did the pipeline/tanker gang.
If your eyes are young and steady you maybe able to see a faint, distant star. The Green Party elected a man who will bring a voice, if faint, for the environment. Vicki Huntington, a gallant fighter, will be there. So will be a man with good environmental genes and experience – George Heyman, who will likely be the next NDP leader. (You read it here first!)
I’m truly sad to say that the industrial/government coalition brings clearly into focus civil disobedience.
In the shorter term the environmentalists must gird up their loins, get back on their chargers and fight the bastards any way we can.
It’s too late now, the ship has sailed. Had the NDP won the election the citizends would not have seen much of a change. Perhaps people increasingly realize this, and that may account for the declining voter turnout. Why bother if the outcome remains the same. It’s not so much apathy as resignation. Party politics have destroyed democracy.
It can be restored only by making sure that independent candidates are elected, who may be responsible to the public rather than a doctrine, or a despot disguised as a leader.
How about the obvious explanation: We didn’t want a criminal for Premier.
The Forger also didn’t have a rational platform, he was flip-floppy, and couldn’t reassure voters that another NDP government wouldn’t be just as much as a disaster as all of the previous ones.
Dix was a 2, Clark was a 3 … better the devil we know.
Comparing anything bad that Adrian Dix ever did during his lifetime to what the Liberals got away with the BC Rail giveaway shows a lack of perspective. And I think that the biggest tragedy of this electoral result is, we will now never get a full investigation of the BC Rail scandal.
I agree about the BC Rail cover-up. Something stank to high heaven, and I can’t help but believing that people deserved jail time.
A rather odd situation… the Libs and BC Rail… the NDP and Fast-Cats… transportation incompetence with the public getting screwed.