The public will not punish Christy Clark for alleged misdeeds by her brother and her ex-husband, so give it up. Stick to attacking her politics instead.
MY PREDICTION: Christy Clark will be anointed in February by the provincial Liberal Party as B.C.'s Next Premier.
Clark is looking like a shoo-in, despite any baggage she may carry, unless she blunders badly during the leadership campaign. She has astutely recruited a high-profile woman as her campaign chair -- Pamela Martin, who recently moved on from a long career as a television reporter and suppertime news anchor.
This will underscore the weaknesses of the NDP, and particularly its inability to attract any female contenders in its own leadership race.
Like any party, the Libs will go with the candidate who appears most able to win the next election for them and she has a huge edge over the rest of the pack. Internal rivalries between the federal Conservatives and Liberals in the organization will not determine the outcome.
NDP commentators like Bill Tielman are trying hard to argue that her candidacy is fatally undermined by connections with the corruption scandal surrounding the privatization of B.C. Rail that contributed to Premier Gordon Campbell’s demise.
It will hardly assist the NDP, which appears to be losing support among women voters, to try to bring down a female Liberal leader by saddling her with the blame for alleged activities of male relations. It is difficult to imagine a more foolish (not so say unprincipled) strategy for the NDP than to launch an overtly sexist attack on a female Liberal candidate.
Here’s a hot tip for Tielman: the public will not punish Clark for alleged misdeeds by her brother and her ex-husband, so give it up. Stick to attacking her politics instead.
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There has been a great deal of internal furor in the provincial NDP about the gender-parity rules for leadership in the party’s constitution. The problem that another NDP commentator, former MLA David Schreck, has brought to the fore is that the rules require at least one of the three top positions (leader, president and treasurer) be occupied for a woman. The president and treasurer are both men, so unless the party somehow recruits another female leader to replace Carole James, one of the other two must go.
While this might present a useful opportunity to unload party president Moe Sihota (who is a serious liability to the NDP, displaying consistently poor political judgement) the real question New Democrats should be asking themselves is why no women want to lead them. They should look across the fence at the Liberal leadership race, where there are two female contenders -- including the front-runner -- and ask themselves where they have gone wrong.
I suspect the answer goes far beyond the recent turmoil over Carole James' leadership. I suspect it is closely related to the inability of the party to attract activist youth. Until the NDP re-learns the politics of social transformation it will continue to see its base erode. Activists will continue to look at the NDP and wonder, why bother?
I pick Clark also and Larsen is another favorite of mine as a winner in the next leadershp race for the NDP.
I like Larsen, he an activist who is for the underdog while Christie is for the super rich. Families first we will see how that all works out. What about a minority government? What do you see there?
Why bother? Why not?
I guess the alleged misdeeds are easy to put to rest, when they are properly answered.
Larsen is an extreme long-shot.
A minority government can only happen if there are more than two parties elected to the legislature. I see a couple of ways that could happen.
First, if the NDP goes with someone like Farnsworth, who is hard to distinguish from the more centrist Liberals like Abbott, I could see some social democrats in the NDP wondering whether there is a need for a left-of-centre party.
Second, there is also some chance that the Liberal party could spawn a split, or a new right wing party (perhaps a revived provincial Conservative party) could gain some traction especially in the hinterland if an urban centrist like Christy Clark is chosen by the Libs.
Both parties have internal problems that flow from the way the political turf is divided: in BC the natural division of political sentiment, like in most of Canada, falls more comfortably into three groupings than into two. The Liberals are an alliance of right wingers and right-centrists, and the NDP is an alliance of left-centrists and left wingers.
So there is friction in both parties between their centre element and their more ideological wing.
But I don't see either breaking up, and I really don't think there is much room for a third party, unless the Greens elect a couple of MLA's (which is possible, given the problems the NDP has on the environmental file - especially with its opposition to carbon taxes).
Who has a carbon tax, besides BC?
Christie is on the media payroll it dosen't get better than that when running for office it ensures you plenty of press and photo opportunities galore not to shabby indeed.
Larsen is a long shot I know it is just a feeling or wishful thinking but Christie is not, she has it down to a science you just gotta know that.