babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Alberta Politics- the lay of the land now
April 24, 2012 - 7:05am
V
The dynasty continues. I called this one with my chess buddies at lunch yesterday. WRA just was too scary and undisciplined for the electorate when push came to shove. Not to mention Liberals for a PC government helped to turn the tide.
Cheeky, eh- a thread on Alberta politics started by someone in Nova Scotia. To boot, I know next to nothing about Alberta politics.
I'm sure some of those ongoing threads have people already discussiong where things stand now, and thoughts on where they are going. But following past practice- I haven't read any of them. [Part of that being that I'm not often on-line in middle of the night out here, and get up very early. But thats only part of the reason.]
For starters, it would be nice to see some breakdown of changes in the provinical vote for the party, and some regional breakdowns if available.
In her speech last night, Redford said she is going to build bridges, not walls - a direct shot at Smith.
Here's my uneducated guess:
The Redford PCs consolidate being the small l liberal party [Alberta style]. As we know, even Liberals in Central canada are quite capable of pandering and poaching fiscal conservative and smaller government voters. Piece of cake in Alberta.
Primarily leave the WR to their own devices. Zero pandering by Redford to the social conservatism, because that is obvioulsy the successful stick to beat WR with and marginalize the [official] Liberals. Plenty of pandering to the fiscal conservatism, and probably the tilt back towards some Ottawa bashing and the rest of Canada can get lost.
I would expect that the one thing the PCs will do to undermine some of the WR support base is to continue backpeddling from the puny little steps that Stelmach took to get more money out of the oil industry. The reaction to that is sad and pathetic. But who knows, Redford may go in both directions on that one- that would be the liberal way.
Long game: Redford and PCs looking to the future where WR is pushed back to the margins and the Liberals stay there, so the PCs can afford to bleed off a lot of votes in every riding to the WR. And the NDP is the Opposition. Prarie 2 party system, with quirks. Sort of like BC.
But they wont make assumptions about the marginalization of WR, and the long game changes fundamentally if the WR is able to keep from self destructing and establishes itself as a long term opposition poised again to bump the PCs off. Re-made Harper Cons style by Flannagan and company.
Tom Flannagan is very well equipped for muzzling and marginalizing the social conservatives within the WR. I'd be willing to bet that Smith refused advice during the campaign on what to do about them. She's already making it clear she understands fully that mistake.
She's not even attempting to make side of mouth soothing re-assurances to the dinosaurs. Though that will probaly come soon. There is plenty of time later for making sure they are hobbled and maginalized without the grassroots being drummed out of the party en masse.
Calling Lou Arab.
Calling Lou Arab.
Enough celebrating man.
6:40 now, out of bed. The masses are waiting.
And what about Idealist Pragmatist?
If you are still in Tulipland, its the middle of the afternoon.
Jup and at it.
Okay, so the unofficial results on the Elections Alberta page say the Liberals won 5 seats and beat the NDP in the popular vote. That is probably more accurate than the CBC website. link
Lou brought the NDP close in Edmonton-Gold Bar again.
Trivia: How did the 2012 NDP results differ from 2004?
Answer: Lethbridge West
Albertans do not see it this way. Redford is, to them, a Red Tory. Ask Joe Clark. The Liberal brand is positively toxic. Decades of wealth redistribution from Alberta to Central Canada and Alberta-baiting at the federal level have dealt the Liberals a body blow. The Federal Liberals have run the equivalent of a "Southern Strategy" with Alberta playing the bogeyman. Albertans forgive but they haven't forgotten.
A pundit just said strategic voting - people changing their voting intentions from Liberal or NDP to Progressive Conservative to stop the WRA - made the difference for Allison Redford. The combined NDP/Liberal votes went down from 35% to 20%.
Too easy. Why did the WRA vote in Edmonton resemble the Liberal vote in 2004 (creating splits that allowed the NDP two pickups)? Why did the PC vote in Edmonton resemble the PC vote in 2004 (is Alison Redford = Ralph Klein)? How did the Liberals hang on to their seats in Calgary? How did Raj Sherman successfully switch his seat from the PC to the Lib column? What happened in Lethbridge? Why did Ted Morton lose in Calgary and most of the extremists WRA in conservative suburban ridings? Where did the "vote for change" go?
I'll try to catch that CBC pundit and post his analysis. Or maybe he was speculating.
Just because the label Liberal is toxic, even the small l liberal label, does not mean in itself what the positioning IS.
If you conciously go about displacing the official Liberals, and succeed at it, what else do you call that?
'"Southern Strategy" with Alberta playing the bogeyman'?
Wow. Do you have any idea how deeply moronic that sounds?
All I see whiny redneck Alberta playing is the victim - and not very well at that. Central Canada (assuming you mean Ontario and Quebec) is not historically the destination of transfers from Alberta - Ontario's outbound transfers have generally covered Quebec's inbound. And prior to the last 4 decades, Alberta too recieved transfers - from Central Canada. Funny how that doesn't make it into the Albertan mythology...
That was before God gave then Leduc. Of course some might say it was Imperial Oil but nowadays it is the same thing since the oil companies are Alberta's modern deities. The politicians pray to them to bestow their blessings on them.
With God's blessing they are meant to control the rest of the country. If God didn't want them to be in control would he have given them oil? [I often say she for god but clearly the god of oil is a male figure not mother earth]
"Oil prices are too high." "We need help for Ontario/Québec manufacturers." Cue Pierre Trudeau, arrogant man that he was, bringing in the NEP.
"We have to stop Ralph Klein and the extreme right pro-privatization of health care agenda." Thank you very much but Albertans have protested vociferously against provincial proposals to privatise health care and repeatedly won. No Alberta politician has been able to do it and none probably ever will. Few Try. Québec and Ontario have the most private health care in Canada by a country mile and yet somehow Alberta, and its voters, are the source of all evil. Oh and by the way, it is LIBERAL governments that have brought in most of Canada's private health care from province to province to province.
As for transfers from Alberta, how about trying on they have been going on since the founding of "equalisation." I guess "all pigs are created equal but some are more equal than others."
And whiny rednecks? Well, you can have Albertan equalisation money but then you don't have a right to judge Alberta politics or you can give Alberta its equalisation payments back and let it isolate itself within confederation (à la Québec). That's where things have gone in last half century of Alberta political discourse. Lucky for non-Albertans most Albertans are of the more moderate variety that just don't want the ROC's negative judgment. Whiny? Yes. Rednecks? As these latest results show, not as much as you might like to believe.
Lol. ETA: Some Albertans do think (more or less) like that.
Btw, I'm amused by how babblers enjoying pitting the working class of the West against that of the East (NEP). Or denizens of the city against those of the country. The left will get nowhere in this country so long as it stays cloistered in the elitism of Emerald City.
Good point.
And given some sense, even without yestradays results you should be able to figure some skepticism on the attribution of how many rednecks there are.
I've spent some time in rural Alberta. I dont get the sense there are more of them than around me. There do seem to be fewer people bith some basic horse sense about the world. But more rednecks? I dont think so.
Definitely more bible thumpers in rural Alberta. And Calgary for that matter. That does have its effects. But even that, only a fraction of what people think.
But then, most of you in Toronto are clueless about what bible thumpers in Scarborough are really like.
This is a diversion.
Lol. Yes, there are bible thumpers everywhere. Alberta has a nice concentration in the South, its own historic communities of Mormons too link, but in that way it is no different than the bible belts in the BC interior, Scarborough or conservative religious people of different flavours across Canada.
I'm not sure why people lump the Liberals and NDP vote together here. The LIBERAL vote crashed from 25% in 2008 to 10% this time. The NDP vote actually went up slightly from 9% to 10%.
-
And "up slightly" for the NDP is no small thing in the context that with WR newly in the picture, this is less vote share available.
If you had told me ahead of time that the PCs would have a majority, and the Liberals crashed.... and asked whet do you think happened to the NDP, I would guess that the NDP vote share fell too, even if less than the Liberals.
Regarding strategic voting, one of the commentators last night said that that was only part of the story, and that PC voters who sat out the last election but returned this time also played a significant role.
There was also a fair amount of talk about the fact that Danielle Smith was Stephen Harper's horse in this race.
The NEP - more Albertan mythology. The centrepiece.
According to myth, this federal policy resulted in the world-wide decline of oil prices, devastating the Alberta economy. And its provisions for federal subsidy for oil industry development and research goes completely uncredited.
"Oil prices are too high"
Gougingly high. But that's at the pump, not the well-head. Nothing to do with Alberta really, much to do with oligopolies and collusion.
People can't help lumping together Liberals and the NDP votes because they've been hopelessly branded with the fallacious notions of the mythical workings of 'strategic voting'.
Of course there is some 'strategic voting' going on. The fallacious myth is that what goes on corresponds with the mythical notions of black and white ideological chasm out there.
Whta we instead see is that a lot of Liberal voters freightened of the WR switched their votes. NDP voters had the same fears, but tended much more to have ideas of differentiation with the PCs they were not willing to sacrifice. And since apparently habitual Liberal voters saw less difference in the first place, they switched.
The lay of the land... now? Well being ever the optimist, I think I nice wedge has been driven between the (federal) Conservatives and the (provincial) Progressive Conservatives. Put another way, the provincial expression of the Reform Party was not as successful as its federal counterpart in seizing control, and the wounds they inflicted on their host (the body politic of Alberta) are probably going to fester. Couple this with the likely changes to take place in British Columbia come the next provincial election there, one can hope that Harper will have a less friendly reception next he has to deal with the Western premiers. On a personal level, it is extremely nice to see David (Eggen) back in the legislature.
Congratulations Alberta, though it may take a little while longer for democracy to reach you, at least I won't be able to make any jokes about living next to Afghanistan or something. We won't probably know exactly what happened for a while, but assuming some of those Talibanesque comments from the crazier WRA candidates are part of what put the nail in their campaign coffin, one can at least give Albertans a gold star for rejecting Smith's motly crew.
Was that intended as a backhanded compliment? Until our recent change in political fortunes I could just as easily have made similar derisive comments about B.C. if I were so inclined. Fact is, Alberta is no more nor less democratic than anywhere else in this country.
Yep.
Anyways, don't you think it's a little odd that in a western democracy there hasn't been a change in government since 1971?!? Besides which, Alberta is not exactly known for having frequent changes of government (Liberal 1905-1921, UFA 1921-1935, SC 1935-1971). Though I suppose Ontario's 42 years of PC government from 1943-1985 is a bit odd too (although at least those elections had more of a tendency to be competitive). Then again, if they choose to have the same government for 40+ years, that's their choice.
As for the Afghanistan comment, well I think the 'Lake of Fire' comment in 2012 justifies it. People need to not be so sensative, it isn't like I'm running for office and am required to be politically correct for the sake of it. If you can come up with a joke about BC politics, feel free. Should that even be all that hard? Should be like shooting fish in a barell. Bonus points if you can avoid the easy cliches.