Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The Post-Mortem: #Elxn40 Shake

An exuberant (unelected) Premier Christy Clark was making the rounds of the media today, with a start on the Jeff O'Neill morning show on 99.3 CFOX where she was given bad champagne to toast her victory until she was onto the next media hit. The foremost question on everyone's mind is who is going to step aside so she can try and win a "sure thing" riding.



Meanwhile, the obligatory gnashing of teeth, hand wringing and the like are carrying on as people try to figure this $hit out. In no particular order:

  • Adrian Dix is tarnished and a sitting target because of the stuff that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far away. It made great ads to bash him, but it was what Stephen Colbert would call "truthiness." He was not, at the end of the day, a criminal. He made a mistake and he resigned. That is a helluva lot more than some of the deviants, Machiavellians and their ilk that are running around the BC public sector under the last 12 years. I guess we get 4 more now. Bully for us!
  • It scared the $^*! out of people when the NDP talked about raising the debt with new spending in a time of economic insecurity and high personal debt. 
  • Dix is no match to Clark's charismatic leadership. She's a good debater, presented as confident, well spoken  on many occasions. When she can't dazzle them with her speaking points, she will baffle them with BS that means nothing. To those managed to get off their couches to vote, she seems like more of a confident, go-getter leader than Mr. Policy. It isn't that Dix isn't up to the job. He just can't compete with her carefully crafted image and the spin machine behind her. 
  • Negative campaigning and advertising blitzes work. This campaign proved this to me in spades. You couldn't turn around without seeing, hearing, being exposed to a negative ad about Dix, contrasted by warm and fuzzy ones with Clark sitting around the table in soft light. I'm surprised they didn't rig up a halo. 
  • People who did not vote strategically in swing ridings helped elect a BC Liberal majority. If voters strategically swung votes from independents, or Greens to the NDP to prevent a Liberal majority we would have had different outcomes in many ridings. In saying that, I think it is exciting that Andrew Weaver, the first Green Party member was elected. And I think it is great Vicki Huntington is back too as an Independent. 
A bit of a round up:


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BC NDP flailed instead of fighting back against vicious BC Liberal attack - and lost the election during the campaign

Bill Tieleman's 24 Hours Vancouver/The Tyee columnMay 15, 2013.

Tuesday night’s victory by Premier Christy Clark and the BC Liberals will go down in British Columbia political history as one of the biggest upset victories ever.

Unfortunately, it will also go into the books as a triumph of fear over hope, of choosing incredibly negative, personal attack ads over policy and vision, and a revolting example that using taxpayer dollars to advertise your own party cause works.

Clark’s team ran the most right-wing, Republican-style campaign Canada has ever seen.

The BC Liberals were relentlessly nasty, using wealthy allies to air slurs against BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix, while spending voters’ own money to promote the party with a collection of demonstrably false claims about B.C.’s budget, job creation and debt.

And yet, it worked.

For that, the BC NDP must bear its own share of the blame. It allowed a 20-point lead to disappear in a failed campaign that flailed instead of fighting back.

Despite the Harmonized Sales Tax betrayal, the BC Rail scandal and Clark being one of the most unpopular premiers in Canada, the NDP blew it.

And now B.C. will suffer the consequences of electing a leader who is more vicious than visionary.

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Excuses cited for not participating in Tuesday’s provincial election, as well as suggestions to making voting easier, are a load of crap

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't think it's "clear that Clark didn't win this election, Dix lost it." Dix squandered most of his lead by heading a pretty lame campaign, but it took a really brilliant Liberal campaign to put Clark all the way over the top.

BC Liberals Suck said...

It is very clear that the NDP (not just Dix) ran "a pretty lame campaign" and this may have squandered a good lead. There is more than reason this happened, not just a bad campaign strategy.

I would hope those of us with a variety of political persuasions can all agree on one thing - that polls are full of crap! We might as well have people throwing bones and soothsaying the outcome of elections from here on out.

However, it is absolute nonsense to think "it took a really brilliant Liberal campaign to put Clark all the way over the top."

Millions of dollars, both taxpayer BC Liberal supporters and others, were shoveled out of the back of a truck and Christy Clark couldn't manage to get elected in her own riding!!!

This stunning defeat came from the person who had been both the MLA for Vancouver-Point Grey, but also front and centre as Premier for 2 years!!! She lost, even though she was running against a political neophyte, David Eby, who had far less financial resources backing him, and is an unknown quantity to a lot of people.

What Eby had was an outstanding and hardworking campaign team, a brilliant mind and passion to serve the public good. He is also a person with the kind of integrity and ethics Clark could never begin to even dream of. His constituents are fortunate to have him represent them, those who voted for him and those who didn't.

What the BC Liberals had was lots of $$$ (much of it taxpayers) for attack ads, candidates who appealed to local voters, and some really safe ridings. They also have voters who like their political ideologies and decisions, no matter how bad they are and how they impact us. Its only a matter of time before all of us get this, because no-one can be shielded forever.

I was talking to a friend the other day and she told me that because there are no doctors, or transportation for people living in smaller communities in BC to go to places to see doctors and specialists(as well as waitlists to see them), by the time they are able to find ways to get to doctors, they see them and are riddled with cancer and die within very short time frames. That is Health Care brought to you by the BC Liberals.

In some ways, as the BC Liberal brand of government keeps imploding upon itself, and the election lies start to become more apparent, or fail to materialize, the NDP and their supporters might just start to think it was a blessing in disguise not to win this go around.
Watch and wait, it's all coming apart at the seams. BS and spin can only work for so long.