Elizabeth Meee wants a seat: Part 2

Funny, why did the Liberals put up such a big fight when Layton tried to win his first seat as leader?

Are they taking Brioney's numbers, 25, 366 and adding Andrew's numbers, 6,742, together to somehow prove it is winnable for her, as together they beat Lunn's 27,991?  Or are they combining NDP and GP votes? Either way it does not seem possible, the numbers are just not there.

The Liberal vote stays around 17,000-18, 000 on average, and it won't be going to the GP, unless of course they do not run a candidate, which is highly unlikely. So, this leaves about 8,000 swing votes that could possibly be added to the average GP totals. But the most the GP ever received was just shy of 11,000 in 2004 and have averaged out just fewer than 7,000 since then. So either of these factorings leave the GP several thousand votes shy of Lunn's 2008 total votes, even just using their highest year votes.

Then considering the combined NDP and GP historical votes, they can be averaged out at about 22,000-23,000, over 2004' and 2006 GE's.  In 2004, the combined NDP and GP votes could have beaten Lunn as they received 13,763 and 10,662, respectively, while Lunn tapped out at 22,050. But they would fall a few hundred shy in 2006 with 17, 445, and 6,533, as Lunn's vote share went up in 2006 to 24,416.

As such, to even get close to Lunn, May would need ALL of the NDP votes, and that is just not going to happen, as there appears to be a core support of about 4,000, in the riding considering 3,667 still voted for West, and the 2000 4,644 votes. Most likely these are the people who would never vote Liberal, nor Green Party no matter what and IMV, they can be excluded from any contemplations of vote swings to EMay. 

So again, basically all we are left with is the 8,000 swing votes that Brioney received in 2008 that bumped Liberal numbers up, and that Jennifer received in 2004/2008 that bumped NDP numbers up, to add to the GP numbers. This means there could be a maximum shortfall of 12,000-13,000 votes or a minimum of 5,000 to 6000, vote shortfall to beat Lunn, if we take Jennifer's best numbers in 2006 and presume they would come out for EMay and the GP. As such, unless voting numbers go up, because she is running, there is a shortfall no matter what.

Surely EMay would not think she could steal that many from Lunn, based upon her red Tory roots, and eco-capitalist ideology? Or is she hoping she draws that many more voters in, because just under 30% did not come out last election at all?

h/t Pundit's Guide for the numbers

The situations are not the least comparable. Its all about winnability: if the Liberals or NDP perceive that winning a seat is out of reach, then a top candidate will not offer for them, nor will their be a top campaign.

When Layton ran first as Leader the popular incumbent was anything but a pushover, not to mention he is alrready there and going to fight his demndest even if Layton was favoured to win.

The last post of the previous thread had a similar out of context response for whn May ran in LNC. Before the campaign neither the Liberal or NDP candidates had any reason to see themselves as out of the running. [Had May run there again in the general it would have been different: second time around with May established as the clear closest contndor, it would not have been as attractive for prospective NDP candidates.]

With May, the Liberals, and the NDP running against a Conservative candidate who will keep at least the bulk of his vote... it is for all 3 of the others a case of very unlikely to do better than second..... winning  being a long shot is good enough for May, but it doesn't get the strongest candidates or see the best campaign effort for the Liberals or NDP. Thats just a fact of life.

That said, and the Greens knowing that, even withut the strongest campaigns it is pretty unlikey the NDP and Liberals will be depressed to a combined total of even 30%, let alone the very slim chance of being reduced to 25%. They have more diehard supporters than that, and/or people who would never vote for May.

To win, May would have to have both Lunn being reduced to 35%, and the NDP/Lib combination reduced to 25%.

The first is not very likely, the second VERY unlikely... and the chances of her achieving BOTH are something not far this side of remote.

Another thing that has to go ALL right to achieve that is a top notch ground campaign by the Greens. Well for the now accumulated improvement to having a handful of ggod showings in the last few years... not a single one of them has had a top notch ground campaign. To make matters worse, May has alienated the best talent and the pople who stick around here are at best unproven. Some of that best talent will no doubt set aside their dissproval of her in the interests of the party, but some is not good enough when you need every possible thing to go right to pull off an upset.

And for her to win it also has to be on the crest of a good national campaign.

Again- there is an experience/depth problem there even before May pissing everybody off [and its harder to get them to set that aside and come to a national campaign]. Plus, her stock has been sliding. So good luck with that one.

If she goes there, she's pretty much handed the seat to Lunn on a platter.

Yes, SGI makes absolutely no sense, all the GP supporters in BC would have to move there, given the fact that the Liberal and NDP votes would not move in suffiecient enough numbers to the GP, and Lunn's vote share would not go down. As such, are we going to see an influx of new residents onto the Gulf Islands as Saanich doesn't have room for them all? :D

yep, just like she did for McKay, does anyone know who was going to run for the NDP there? Was Jennifer going to again for example?

I'd like to see Elizabeth May run in the riding of the Night Stalker Shane Jolley.

It would be fun to watch her take on a Dick Himba pro nuclear approach, draw out all the Pro Nuclear Green Party Apologists  and use her high profile to convince many Canadians of the benefits of Nuclear Power to fight Climate Change.

While some very high profile Green Party members across Canada started beating the drum for nuclear... and some of those comments on the Green Party Website were priceless, including individual blogs of former Green Party Candidates also taking a role in suggesting its time for the party to accept Nuclear Power as the way to fight Climate Change, and as environmentally friendly. 

This would make The Ontario Seat perfect for Elizabeth May who has that ability to give opposite opinions and positions within a 15 minute span. 

She could be for and against nuclear power, just like Himba. For it, where he works... but against it everywhere else....

Yes, the Green Party is no longer about closing down Nuclear Facilities.. as long as their is an economic case. 

LOL....

You're right that Elizabeth May altered the dynamics of the London North Centre by-election by finishing 2nd, but the NDP was never seriously in the running to win that seat.  It's a seat that has never gone NDP historically and where the NDP tends to finish fairly low down.  It had been a long-term Liberal seat of Joe Fontana's when he gave it up, and it was expected to go Liberal with the Conservatives being the closest rivals.

As it turned out, the star attention and media coverage for Elizabeth May, combined with the fact that voters didn't like the Conservative candidate, although once the Mayor, parachuting in from the United States where she now lives, meant that the Conservatives finished 3rd instead of the expected 2nd.  The NDP finished 4th.  The NDP may have done better had May not been in the race and taken votes away, but it was not a riding that was realistically within reach for the NDP.

Nice revisionist history on London-North Centre.  Complety untrue as are most of your pronouncements.

It is actually a very accurate summary of the riding and the by-election and is in tune with those who covered it and were there.

If you have a better way of describing it, please do so and explain what is "completely untrue" about what I wrote above.

I've figured out how to interpret what Debater really means in all these posts without getting so annoyed.  It's like how one might add the qualifier ", in bed" to the end of any sentence.  Simply insert the phrase "by Liberals" into the middle of any of Debater's assertions, and suddenly they make perfect sense.

For example:

"It had been a long-term Liberal seat of Joe Fontana's when he gave it up, and it was expected to go Liberal with the Conservatives being the closest rivals." 

... if corrected to read ...

"It had been a long-term Liberal seat of Joe Fontana's when he gave it up, and it was expected by Liberals to go Liberal with the Conservatives being the closest rivals."

... would suddenly make perfect sense, and moreover give a moderately interesting perspective on the viewpoint of that political party.

See how easy it is to take ownership of your own point of view, without needlessly annoying others by attributing it to common knowledge?

Most analysts expected the riding to remain Liberal, did they not?  Was the riding expected to be in contention for the NDP outside of those in NDP circles?

Why does it bother some NDP supporters so much to point out that certain Liberal strongholds are expected to go Liberal?  It's no different than saying certain Conservative or NDP ridings are expected to go that way.

Exception to the rule:  sometimes you have to add the phrase "who are Liberals" instead.

Viz: "Most analysts who are Liberals expected the riding to remain Liberal, did they not?"

There, that reads much better. :-)

It happens, Debater, that the NDP expected to be able to improve their standing quite a bit in that seat, and sent out fundraising letters saying so.  They were sorely disappointed with the result in that riding, although the misstep by one organizer in trying to too cleverly leak some "dirt" on the Liberal candidate, and our candidate's maladroit response to Pearson's effort to approach her quietly on it, rather sealed the deal.

Which is why when you write this "pundits expected" pallaver, which is nothing more than the usual b.s. from the Toronto Star and CBC talking heads who don't know a freaking thing about the practice of politics, it drives people here, who do follow what goes on, right around the bend.

Why not ask a few questions instead of making these foolish pronouncements?  Or at least assert them as your own point of view.

With regard to London North Centre - if you look at the results of the 2006 election, the NDP was actually a very strong third:

Given the way that the NDP has sometimes done really well in byelections - it was not unreasonable to think that the NDP COULD have had a chance in that byelection what with the popular incumbent stepping down and the NDP having the ability to concentrate resources etc... In fact, if Elizabeth Meeeee hadn't sucked all the oxygen out of the room, it might have been winnable. I don't think that the demographics of LNC are all that wildly different from London-Fanshawe which went NDP by a wide margin in the last election (London South is probably the worst London seat for the NDP)

Liberal Joe Fontana [18] 24,109 40.12

    
Conservative [19]
John Mazzilli [20]
17,968
29.90

    
New Democrat [21]
Stephen Maynard [22]
14,271
23.75

    
Green [23]
Stuart Smith
3,300
5.49

I did ask a question above - I asked whether the riding was expected to go NDP by most objective observers of the race.  Was it?

I find that what some people do here is try to find a way of distorting the basically accurate summaries I give of a riding, a candidate, a poll etc.

I'd like to point out something important about debating - it is one thing to do that online in a forum, but in a real debate on a political panel, if you constantly nitpick at someone when they have more or less proven their point, you get a bad reputation.  Same thing happens in court before a judge - if one lawyer has proven their point but the other tries to claim they made some major inaccuracy that turns out to be insignificant, the judge gets annoyed and the attacking lawyer loses credibility.

That was one of the first things I learned when I took Trial Advocacy at law school - we were given an example where one lawyer took another to task in front of a judge because earlier in the case the other lawyer had described a sweater as being 'turquoise' and later on the lawyer described the sweater as 'blue'.  The other lawyer tried to attack the lawyer's credibility on the colour of describing the sweater slightly differently the 2nd time, but ended up annoying the judge and wasting court time.  Those sort of things happen here a lot.

What I described above is a very accurate summary of the candidates and history of London North Centre and the by-election.  There is nothing "completely untrue" about what I wrote, and I will be interested to see how BA can prove his/her assertion that what I wrote is "completely untrue" when most of what I wrote are facts that he/she cannot disprove.

London North Centre was a long-term Liberal riding - fact.

NDP had never held the riding - fact.

Conservative candidate and former Mayor of London Dianne Haskett had been living in the U.S. and was no longer living in London when she ran in the by-election - fact.

Green party leader Elizabeth May got a lot of media attention in London because of her candidacy - fact.

And so on.

What I guess you are saying some people don't like is my generalization that the riding was expected to go Liberal.  I admit that statement is not a fact the way the others are, but when writing a political article, a journalist or author needs to write a couple of summary statements as to what the general prevailing consensus was among the pundits, analysts etc.

I take your point about making pronouncements, and I will try to keep it in mind.    Unlike BA, I think your post was mainly objective.  As I pointed out above though, when writing a summary of a riding or election, a writer ultimately has to insert one or two general statements about the race which while not facts, give the reader a more or less accurate view of what was basically expected to happen.

"a writer who is a Liberal ultimately has to insert one or two general statements about the race which while not facts, give the reader a more or less accurate view of what was basically expected to happen by Liberals"

"when writing a political article, a journalist or author needs to write a couple of summary statements as to what the general prevailing consensus was among the pundits, analysts who were Liberals etc."

As you may have gathered, Debater, those would be the same pundits and analysts who have written off the NDP before the last two elections and were wrong.  Which is why few people here put too much stock in what they have to say, and get rather annoyed when that view, WHICH THEY PROMULGATE WIDELY UNTIL IT IS VIEWED AS A CONSENSUS, is claimed to be a generally agreed-upon fact, whereas in fact it is only agreed upon by Liberals.

You could replace the phrase "among the pundits, analysts" with the names of the analysts you meant, or else by saying something like "the people I speak with" or "folks in my circle of friends" or "it is my interpretation that", and not engender the same kind of hostile response from the rest of us.

The thing that basically distinguishes NDPers and those to our left from mainstream Liberals, is that we recognize the role of the media pundits and analysts in creating a consensus, and are rather attracted to the idea of trying to up-end that very thing.

I take your point about inserting by Liberals into a sentence, but is that not something that can also be done about NDPers (or other parties) as well?

For example, take a couple of Stockholm's comments above:

"With regard to London North Centre - if you look at the results of the 2006 election, the NDP was actually a very strong third by NDP standards"

"Given the way that the NDP has sometimes done really well in byelections - it was not unreasonable for NDPers to think that the NDP COULD have had a chance in that byelection."

One of the things that I sometimes think the NDP exhibits is what I will call the Westmount Syndrome (eg. the NDP's feeling that it could win in Westmount last year, or in Jeanne Le Ber etc.).  It is important for a party to be optimistic and galvanize the troops, but there is a tendency in the NDP to claim that certain ridings which are fairly far out of reach, are winnable.

The Liberals and Conservatives do this in certain ridings too naturally, but when one is working as a strategist or advisor to a party, one needs to be realistic.

If I was hired to advise a political party on which ridings it could realistically win, I would not suggest ridings that I thought were far out of reach and where only the alignment of the moon and the stars could cause a win.  I would suggest targetting the low-hanging fruit first unless there is a huge amount of money to spend on long-shot ridings as well.

And then we never would have won Outremont.  Or St. John's East.  Or really anything in Nova Scotia in 1997.  Or, let me see, Edmonton-Strathcona, Sudbury, Acadie-Bathurst, Yukon...  Shall I go on ?

We don't tell you guys what to target.  Stop trying to keep us in our place.

Thank you.

And that was with a supposedly "lesser" candidate (a young student) than in 2004 (a city councillor who placed similarly well).  In fact, the NDP's had a pattern of winning more polling stations in LNC than the Tories--even in the last federal election with little more than half the Tories' raw vote.

Okay, low 20s is a bit of a "half-full/half/empty" way of gauging strength; but I'd argue it'd actually be good long-term strategy for the NDP to eye even these lesser or mid-level seats for potential, better than letting them lapse back into the teens or worse.

And when it comes to London in general and the NDP, we must remember that London's the rare place in Ontario where the Rae regime actually validated the NDP as an electoral option, due in no small part to Marion Boyd's personal popularity--in fact, LNC is the seat where Boyd ran against (and in a heartbreaker, lost to) the PCs' Dianne Cunningham in 1999.  Maybe Boyd would have had a better chance in London-Fanshawe; trouble was, Mathyssen was running there--which meant that in the darkest days of the Hampton leadership, the NDP was seriously contending for two out of three London seats.  A decade earlier, it would have been daft to suggest the NDP would ever be in contention for any London seat...

OO, I guess we are just supposed to overlook the total meltdown of the PC's, which was never expected to be a reality, as well as the Liberals slap down, by voters, in order to accept debator's  "low-hanging fruit" theory.

Moreover, I can see debator does not like challenges, as he stated would never work in a riding that was not winnable. So that  means to me, he is short on strategy, and confidence, as he will only work in ridings where the Liberals are going to win anyway. :D

Yes, and the truth of it is, the Liberals can't get over the fact that the NDP would dare to challenge them in what they view as their rightful and safe seats.  Don't think for a second they aren't targetting all those same seats they lost to us last time, to win them back again.

Of course that's their perfect right, as it is the NDP's perfect right to run vigourously in their own target seats as well.

And, to bring this back to the original point of the thread ... it's Elizabeth May's perfect right to run anywhere she wants.  Of course, I hope she now understands that other parties have no intention of sitting it out against her, and depriving voters of all the choices they're entitled to.

I have a cavet to add. As such the following line should read

I find that what some people do here is try to find a way of distorting the basically accurate summaries, for a Liberal I give of a riding, a candidate, a poll etc.

The simple fact is that London North Centre has a strong NDP presence which Debateless was willing to overlook in his flights of fancy. Had Maynard remained the candidate history might have been different. Living not all that far from the riding, and reading the London Free Press daily - after which I have to wash my mind out with soap - it was expect LNC would be a real 4 way race. The NDP was predicted to be a part of the final counting. As it was a very lacklustre performance by someone who was supposed to be a star candidate and a real poor understanding of how to team build tanked the NDP campaign. Something that happened to the Conservative campaign as well, if to a slightly lesser degree.

So Debateless - what I object to is your contanst minimizing of the NDP with your pretence you are balanced. You clearly are a long time Liberal despite your pretence. Why not celebrate your connection. Although given the leadership of the Liberals these days I might be a bit ashamed to as well.

Nooooooooooooo......I can't deal with the fact EMay might be going to play spoiler in BC too. On the other hand, I guess she does not realize that in BC politics is a blood sport from which you 'may' never recover.

Briony Penn's inability to win, should be the clear heads up to May and indeed to the GP at large, who apparently are thinking about letting her waste even more money, by bouncing around Canada, and never realy building a base anywhere.

Unless of course they realize what the actual purpose of EMay and the Green Party is, and are okay with it being nothing more than a useful tool for the corporate fascists.

May is missing the golden rule of outsider politics.  You run to build your base in sucessive elections in the same riding.  That's how you win in ridings that are not 'owned' by a party, or if you are lucky enough to be in a sweep.  It is politics 101 and the GP is pissing away any chance they have of ever building a base - not that it's necessily a bad thing mind.

I think if I lived in SGI, I'd vote strategically for the Tory if i had to just to keep that santimonious wretch out of Parliament.

Wonder how all those Green voters in CN, will feel about her abandonment of them, after all the promises she made to them? The Green Party vote dropped by 10.4% points from the LNC by-election in which May ran in, and the GE, so her running there created no long term support base, and her moving along may well have alienated those 4,000 + votes. I suspect the same will hold true for CN, though it will be a significantly less amount of actual support lost, seeing as how she would not have the 10,000 Liberal votes that she got in the last election, which would leave her at about 2,000-3,000 votes only in CN, should she have run there again.

IMV,  the 2000-4000 votes that she gains with being a party leader, will be about the same as she will get in SGI. She will fall far short of Brioney's numbers, unless of course lots of BC Greens move to SGI for the lead into the election duration, which is probably more doable than it would have been in CN. However, if they do that it will mean less vote splitting in other areas, and that not too many Green candidates would be getting back their deposits. This would be namely Vancouver Centre and Adriane Carr! ;)

And actually I am not kidding about moving people into ridings, or appearing to do so, for an election result skewing in BC. Though I am not saying the Green Party would do so and am kidding about that, I think. ;) For example, one year I was scrutineering in EJDF, and there were 21 people who came to vote that had the same address, though not all at the same time of course, and interestingly, said address was just down the road from my daughters, and it was a 2 bdrm bungalow and it had no  A, B and C suites. So it stretched plausability beyond acceptable bounds and IMV,  if it happened at 1  polling station, it happened in some of the 217 others too.

h/t Pundit's Guide for numbers and links.

This is just another of your subversive vote CPC posts, while pretending you are NDP and progressive. ;D

There is no way in hell I would give Lunn my vote and the tax payer money it would represent, say nothing of how contaminated I would feel.

Moreover, there is no way EMay could win SGI, if Brioney couldn't, even with the removal of the NDP candidate, EMay definitely can't.

Oh well, you can always pull out her quote to the Chronicle-Herald about how running in BC would be "unpalatable" to her.

As for Central Nova, I imagine the local riding association will eventually dissemble once she leaves and the party pulls the funding for the Central Nova Green Party office and staff.  And, sadly, some of the most idealistic new participants in electoral politics will feel sorely betrayed.  It's a shame.

Oh...you got a link for that article in the CH? It would go well with her other equally stupid discourse.

And you have a good point about the betrayal factor amongst  the "idealistic" new participants to voting that they suck in.

Unfortunately, the Chronicle-Herald pulls down their content after 7 days (although I'm almost positive some friendly dipper researcher has probably kept the hard copy ;-) ), but the quote and some of the BC reaction to it [40] were both documented on PublicEyeOnline.com.  For some more reaction inside her party, see here [41].

And, the full rundown on where she mused about running on various occasions can be found here.

Not only a heartbreaker, but one that was deliberately created by the Liberals. They went around the riding in 1999 telling people that they had to vote Liberal in order to stop Cunningham. One more invalidation of their strategic voting mantra (it's always meant "vote Liberal" and has never had anything to do with stopping the Conservatives).

And the funny thing is: there are those in the Liberal camp who'd claim similar nefarious tactics by the NDP (like, phone-banking on behalf of Julian West after his withdrawal; or simply some deliberate intention behind his withdrawing too late to get his name off the ballot) robbed Briony Penn of a seat...

I thought that May was born in the states and moved to Nova Scotia when she was age 17, so what kind of "misinformation" is this being put out by Carr:

"But, of course, that is just a personal preference. I was born and raised here. But she was born and raised in the east. And you probably do get that sense of attachment to place where you have spent a considerable chunk of your life."

______________________________________________________________________________________ Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!

"This is just another of your subversive vote CPC posts, while pretending you are NDP and progressive. ;D

There is no way in hell I would give Lunn my vote and the tax payer money it would represent, say nothing of how contaminated I would feel."

It was a JOKE, ok?  Ever heard of one of those???? and if you seriously think that I'm subversively posing as a New Democrat but want people to vote Conservative then you are into even more delusional conspiracy theories than I thought possible.

Adma, what a bunch of hooey and Liberal fabrications. And we can see clearly the cognative dissonance that you are using to try and conceptually reframe this away from Libera, and others, dirty tricks.

Truth is, Julian West withdrawing too late helped no one but Brioney Penn. If he would have stepped down before the the deadline to get his name off of the ballot, there simply would have been another NDP candidate, in his stead. It was also, in the main part, the Liberals who drove the whole Julian West episode, to give Brioney more of a chance.

The phone banking was never indicated to be a NDP action at all and statements of such are actually libelous.

ok, back to the future, repeat 1000. I'm going to say it - Julian West was a pretend NDP who was a former Green and he was purposely running there to mess up the NDP, thus couldn't pull out was done purposefully to ensure the NDP couldn't replace him. No surprise, it was the liberal camp who brought the "dirt to surface". And nobody has fingered the NDP for the phone bank call - in fact it was suggested "others" could have been behind it, knowing that those voters would never vote conservative but would perhaps vote liberal. Of course, that liberal candidate was just going to jump to the Green camp if elected. Personally I found it quite amazing our creepy the politics was there.

______________________________________________________________________________________ Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!

Stock, I guess you missed my wink and  big smile. :rolleyes:

~

OO, thanks for the links, I read them all and bookmarked them. The minute she announces for SGI, emails are going out to my contacts. :D

Interesting comments on the report on Greens blog link. And I see Peter Worthington has an opinion piece on May today.

And OMG, on the EMay interview in the Islandtides, there is no doubt that she will be running in SGI, and there is no doubt that her ego is beyond rational thinking. She even went on to compare herself and her chances to Sir John and Tommy Douglas and the silly reporter did not even ask her, if such thinking is the case, why did you run in CN in the first place?

"Stock, I guess you missed my wink and  big smile. :rolleyes:"

OK, let's make peace, OK?

That Islandtides interview is beyond a puff piece.  I love the hard hitting questions like this one -

"How did the Green Party get to be so imaginative?"

What an embarrassment.

And I loved this line from MEEEE

"My approach would be to have zero-tolerance for heckling."

No irony there given her performance in the televised Leaders debate. 

God how dumb does she think people are?  And the disrespect she shows the average person by outright lying is unbounded.

I could care less about MEEE, except I honestly believe she has set back the cause of the environment in very fundamental ways. 

As someone who has been working on grassroots environmental issues for more than 2 decades I find her interventions as major disappointment and a glaring example of the problems with the cult of personality she represents. 

As an environmentalist I beleive she is causing mortal damage to the cause.

All I remember of of MEEEE from the leaders debate was her contantly interrupting and heckling and saying "that's a fraud" to anything she disagreed with.

She most certainly has, and is, and  even Peter Worthington can see it and point it out. It seems  some in the Green Party  think he is worried about EMay beating Lunn. I would say they are being delusional in the extreme. The numbers just aren't there for May to win in SGI, and anyone with a clue can see it.

In the Islandtides article she does not even mention environmental issues and what the Green Party would like to do about them. It seems she is using the Green Party to shill herself and her books and nothing more.

http://reportongreens.blogspot.com/

This link leads you to the Islandtides pdf, for those interested.

I thought the Green thinking was that they're so magical they she could run anywhere and win, if the hearts of the people were pure enough.

The lunacy of MEEEE knows no bounds. In an interview, she says the following:

"Central Nova is actually quite similar to Saanich–Gulf Islands communities: dependence on fisheries, a lot of seasonal employment, very little heavy industry.What I look at in uniting an area and what appeals to me...is that the perspective of people outside major urban areas is getting lost in some of the other parties. Other party leaders are all from urban centers."

Guess what what Liz? Saanich-Gulf Islands is an URBAN riding. While there maybe a teeny number of organic farmers and counter culture types living in the Gulf Islands, about 95% of that riding can only be described as car-dependent suburban Victoria.

Actually, I'm not, not, not denying it might be, to one degree or another, "hooey and Liberal fabrications".  I'm merely stating that I've seen Liberals using that kind of alibi re SGI--presumably a bit of sour grapes along the lines of "oh, jeez, we came so close to winning and if it weren't for youse vestigial New Democrats with your candidate still on the ticket, we might have dood it".  Of course, they're conveniently ignoring how that practically amounts to getting a taste of their own medicine--not to mention the fact that there's a huge gulf btw/the 5.7% Julian West share and the 20%+ that the nominal Liberal in 1999's provincial Cunningham vs Boyd LNC race got.

Indeed, the SGI case dawns on me immediately not because of any Liberal partisanship on my part but, on the contrary, because I've lately had to refute those kinds of NDP-conspiracy-theory claims on another board.  So, in a way, I've witnessed "Liberal ways" full-frontally...

Well, 87% actually, but point taken.

As a former resident of Victoria (and Nova Scotia, for that matter), this caught my eye

Wow! She does not know the riding at all.  Has she ever even been there?  Dependant on the fisheries???  Huh????  According to Elections Canada, about 2.5% of the workforce (or 1.3% of the riding) works in "Agriculture and other resource-based industries" which includes farms and forestry, of which there are both in the riding.

Wow.  Does she ever not know the area.

For what it's worth, her comments are not much more accurate about Central Nova. 

According to Elections Canada, 8.5% of the workforce (4.2% of the riding) in Central Nova works in resource based industries.  I think Central Nova has some agriculture, but I don't believe there is much forestry, so it is concevable more people there fish for a living.  But it's still a lower percentage than manufacturing, government services, retail and other services.  So even after a campaign there, (and her 'deep, deep roots') she still doesn't really know the turf.

Well, I am gob smacked about, SGI's reliance on fisheries, who knew?

The only seasonal employment there is, IMV is at Mitchell's farms and a couple of other organics, and perhaps a bit of tourism employment on Salt Spring and in Saanich and Sydney. There might be a handful employed on farms during the spring and summer on Salt Spring, but most  in that riding are commuters to down town Vic, seniors, ferry and air port employees,  marina and green house employees, the uber wealthy and the attendant service infrastructure employment. It is nothing like CN ffs...

I just read the Island Tides piece.  Yes, the interviewer was clearly in the tank for May, but honestly E.Me uses the words I and Me as much as Me_I-gnatieff.  It's nauseating.

The NDP was not in contention to win in London North Centre.  Period.  It's time to move on.

And btw, as I predicted above, you were not able to demonstrate anything that was "completely untrue" about my discussion of the by-election.  I hope in the future you will not make wild generalizations that you can't support.

Changing the goal posts again. Which is one of your strategies of "debating". [and where it all gets called "objective" really loses me, but thats a tangent]

What you originally said was "I asked whether the riding was expected to go NDP by most objective observers of the race." [in the interests of not getting too bogged down, I'll leave the gratuitous addition of "objective" out of this]

But that was not the relevant question, nor what even the most rabid NDP partisan claimed.

You inserted your cardboard cut-out of "expected to win".

The point was that with a sufficient base of support, and it being a by-election where the NDP is known to pull off coups, the seat was enough within reach to run a winning campaign.

Good Lord you are full of crap and hubris.

The LOCAL DAILY NEWSPAPER expected LNC to be a tight 4 way race.  True it didn't happen because campaigns matter.  But the simple matter is I followed the campaign closely in the NEWSPAPER - you know where they sometimes use unbiased pundits and even party people in the creation of stories- and it was constantly reported that this was a 4 way battle.  It was a surprise to most people and by that I mean in the reportage and the public pronouncenments from the political camps, how the final vote spread worked out.

Why you persist in just making shit up and then adding arrogant idiocracy on top of it like you last comments is beyond me.  Just admit you had no idea what you were talking about. 

I would suggest a hobby - try scrapbooking then you can add all the little thought bubbles -completely at odds with the picture you want

Funny PS to this. There are some fishers in Pictou and Antigonish counties. There are a lot more people working in forestry. May actually knows the Nova Scotia forest industry in some detail, so dollars to doughnuts she knew before she plopped herself down in Central Nova about the importance of the forest industry... and certainly would know after spending any amount of time there that there are few fishers.

But she's so into making stuff up, and has the bad habit of doing it on the fly for public record, that this would be characteristic: 'there is a lot of water and wharves in both ridings, so there must be lots of people in the fishing industry'... etc.

Been a long time since I left BC, and I'm from northern(ish) waters, but I have kept touch with changes in the industry [albeit not to how many fishers live in southern waters like those in SIG]... and I'd be surprised if there are very many fishers left in the riding [and probably always were as many of them in the urban part of the riding]. But hey, there's lots of romantic paintings and pictures of fish boats in the Gulf Islands- that counts doesn't it?

Well, to be fair, quite often byelections and local races are spun to be closer than they actually turn out to be.  Though in this case, it really was justifiable to treat the NDP candidate as a "serious contender"--look, she was a municipal politician, not just some perennial Joe/Jane Blow.

And a funny question I have is: how might the LNC byelection have worked out, had eMay not been running?  At worst, I suspect that the NDP might have matched their 23/24% mean--that is, unless in eMay's absence, it turned into a strategically skewed referendum on Dianne Haskett and the Tories, instead.  At best...well, generically speaking, LNC is definitely not out of the question as a "byelection NDP pickup shocker".  Certainly more so than if it were in 905-belt suburbia where the NDP mean's been closer to 10% than 25%.

The way Debator's presenting it, though, 23/24% might as well have been 3/4%.  Look: by that logic, you might as well claim that *no* NDPer who manages low 20s, whether under Broadbent in '88 or Layton in '04/06, is a "legitimate contender", even if he/she happens to be a local mayor or councillor or bears similarly "potential electable" credentials.  You might as well claim that the AudreyAlexa era was a natural state of affairs for the NDP, rather than a freak negative blip.

And I'm not stating this out of partisanship--in fact, I'd rather picture myself as a psephological anarchist who's willing to bank on anyone being a potential "legitimate contender" of one sort or another.  Ditto if it were a Tory in the 23/24% range.  Maybe not to the point of endorsement; but at least to the point of taking strategically seriously rather than resorting to simplistic dismissal.

My favourite elections are those defined by surprising 3-way-and-beyond donnybrooks like Ontario in 1990, not those defined by simplistically "strategic" 2-ways like Ontario in 1999.  And that's not so much an endorsement of the NDP, as an anarchist's endorsement of the NDP's worthiness of being taken seriously...

Off topic, but oh well.

I'm going to agree with Debater, sadly: LNC was not going to be won by the NDP, and it won't be for some time now that Pearson has the seat.  He's much too entrenched locally to lose at this point, and the NDP certainly didn't give the riding much support last fall. 

Mathyssen's London-Fanshawe seat is far from safe.  It's being held mainly on the personal efforts of Mathyssen, who is the hardest working politician in London, by far.  She crushed the Lib in the fall, but the Con that can in second was appointed a week before the election and had almost zero support from the party.  London-Middlesex-Elgin is solidly Con, and London-West is a Con-Lib race.  The NDP had best throw massive support behind Mathyssen next election. 

I agree on the Pearson part--which, rather secretly yet significantly, might as well be disincentive for eMay, too, despite their being past byelection opponents.

While London-Fanshawe has a latently stronger Tory base than it may appear, that's not what I'd primarily fear unless Harper's pushing into majority territory, or if the Liberals reclaim enough of their left-leaning votes to allow the CPC candidate up through the middle.  (Depends on who's running, too.)

I'm happy to see some objective analysis about London North Centre.

But, moving on to London-Fanshawe, it's important to remember that the riding was Liberal until a few years ago, so it could be again at some point.  I was glad though when Irene Mathyssen won the seat in 2006 as it was a nice slap in the face to the disgraceful anti-SSM toad Pat O'Brien, who had retired from the Liberals claiming his riding was very against SSM.  The fact that a pro-SSM MP succeeded him seems to dispute that.

The 2006 race was close though, and yes, Irene did win by a much larger margin in 2008, but many Liberals were crushed in Ontario in the last election because the vote collapsed and so the vote increase may not have been as a result of Irene specifically.  The next election may see an increase in the Liberal vote and a closer 3 way-race as in 2006.

Debater wrote:

I'm happy to see some objective analysis about London North Centre.

Well, re LNC in the byelection (thanks to eMay) and LNC now (thanks to Pearson).  Indeed, by virtue of being the last remaining Liberal seat SW of Guelph/Mississauga, it's probably safer than ever, relatively speaking--Pearson's situation right now is not unlike Mathyssen's, in fact.

If it were still the Chretien/Martin/Joe Fontana-era status quo, LNC would look more potentially NDP-vulnerable, simply because it existed within a mass of Liberal seats.  Now that it's all alone, it merits a kind of LPC "special treatment"--heck, if Gina Barber ran again, London West might look more NDP-vulnerable at this point than LNC...

There is scarfman's gratuitous 'objective' again. As in: rhetorical flourish with which I adorn something I said or someone I agree with.

Never mind that what he was agreeing with was you changing the goalposts: saying that the NDP was not expected to win the LNC by-election, which was not the argument being made.

To wit:

"Potentially competitive" need not mean "expected to win", at least as an at-the-moment absolute.  Heck, that should be the Liberal strategy t/w places like Calgary--and I'm not sneering, either...

Why is it important to remember that voters at one time voted Liberal?

I think what is important to rember is that Irene won last election and the 2006 one too, with a larger vote share than O'Brian got in 2004, and indeed her 2008, was just shy of O'Brian's 2000 vote share, when the Liberals were not collapsing. So it does not seem that her votes will dropping anytime soon, as they have been building each and every election since 2000. I would say the electorate there finally knows what it means to have a MP, as opposed to someone collecting a wage and ignoring them and their needs.

More purile nonsense, if anything it seems voters there are heartily sick of the LibCons, as both vote shares went down in 2008, and Irene's went up. It would seem that many are realizing there is no difference between the corporate parties.

The NDP and Mathyssen's problem in London-Fanshawe is that there's a very large number of voters who will flock to the next credible Con candidate.  And the Cons have been pummelling London, and especially that riding, with visits.  Harper was at Fanshawe College in the spring, along with every other Con from the area, showing off.  I can see a Con parachute "name" candidate in L-F next election.  Not saying Mathyssen will lose, but the race will undoubtedly get tighter.  I don't think Mary-Lou Ambrogio, the Con candidate, even wanted to run last election and she certainly wasn't prepared.  She still came in second, despite not showing up over the last ten days of the election. 

Pearson is safe.  But it's very hard to ignore the creeping Cons in the London area.  Sue Barnes was another hard working, locally strong candidate who lost to the trend.  The Cons London organization must be strong, and more candidates like Ed Holder will cause all sorts of long term trouble for the Libs and NDP. 

Gina Barber is not in the same league as any of the pols currently holding seats in London.     

Back to EME's actions which are becoming more LibCon everyday.

http://reportongreens.blogspot.com/

I hate to say it, but overreactive rhetoric like that only fuels Debater's fire.  And I'm not exactly defending Debater; heck, one can spin my message as "don't feed the trolls", as well...

Well, London has long been known as a "conservative" town--maybe a bit of a UWO thing, or a John Robarts thing, or the fact that it's not Toronto or Hamilton or Windsor.  So, it isn't like the "creeping Cons" element is anything new; indeed, I think it's long been overrated--and the successes of Marion Boyd and Irene Mathyssen (and, yes, Glen Pearson) are a reason why.  Anything "creeping" now is more generic to Ontario than specific to London; and that's if one expects/fears the next election to be an inexorable continuation of the last one.

Also, don't put Ed Holder on too much of a "strong organization" pedestal; he didn't win by much, he didn't hit 40%, Sue Barnes had already survived a close call against Al Gretzky in '06, and London West was always the most "conservative" wholly-within-London riding, anyway, so the makings were already there...

I'm not denying that.  I'm merely stating that it'd be through a candidate like her that London West could go NDP.

Exactly- both points.

Yes that's basically been what I have pointed out to remind lately - she has an overreactive way of responding.  It is almost a scorched earth strategy and it tends to harm her arguments.  Even when I've tried to find some common ground and agree with her sometimes (such as on the thread where I agreed that Stephen Harper disenfranchised voters by canceling the Westmount by-election), she posted an aggressive response which I found puzzling.

It's one thing to use that style in an online political forum, but I'm just trying to give remind a helpful suggestion that if she did that against me in a real political panel, or against anyone else, she wouldn't come across very well.

I won't be here forever, but I hope this suggestion will be of help.

Oh guys... it is just so refreshing to to see ya 'all being so patriarchial, about how I choose to post, and coming to a consensus on it it even. Why not stick to the fucking topic, and stop discussing me, eh!

It is such typical passive aggressive male silencing  crap, that one would think ya'll would get tired of only having your males voices heard, but it seems not. Ya'all just keep on trying to silence women's voices here, or telling us how to manage our voice, but yet we never see ya'all doing it to each other.

Frankly... I am fucking sick of it. And BTW, I will continue to post however the fuck I want to,  and I also won't be going anywhere, because I am not going to let ya'all drive another woman's voice away from here, like you have done to most all the rest.

It is not a gender issue.  My criticism has nothing to do with gender.  Indeed, let me emphasize that a casual Babble visitor would have no way of telling whether the post of yours that I remarked on was by a man or a woman.

Oh yes kens, you have room to speak about me, with your post #71 (as below) considering your gratuitous overblown "scarfman's" label of debator and your own overblown rhetoric :

You guys are so wallowing in the depths of your own patriarchial privilege and belief in the notion your the only ones who have a right to speak agressively, that is it sickening. And frankly you exhibit more than a little misogyny with your hypocrisy.

hey adma, why did you not challenge Kens's overblown rhetoric and juvenille attack on debator?

You give yourself too much credit.

Nobody was agreeing with you- just the words on the page: remind helps fuel your fire.

Nonsense adma, you know full well that I am a woman, and thus you view my posts through that lense, see my point above, where I state that you never challenged kens on his juvenille name calling and rhetoric, but yet you have the nerve to suggest my use of the word  "purile" is overblown rhetioric.

"Scarfman" was not a label of/for Debator. Call it a private joke that only he would know what is being referred to.

And I'll let Babblers be the judges of whether I'm equally rhetorical in how I address Debator.

And big deal if I call what you have said here rhetorical. It was meant as a practical and case specific point. [Which at bottom is only my opinion.]

Since you seem so free to offer advice here's a bit - being a smug ass usually goes over even more poorly - yet that seems to not stop you.

And I mean heaven forbid a woman might be go into the corners with her elbows up just like the boys.  Really a bit of revealing concern if you ask me.  Why not just come right out and ask remind to bring the coffee and be quiet.

Whatever you need to do ken, to sooth yourself, but your patriarchial hypocrisy is apparent.

"Purile" is without question a strong word in the context. Strong words get predictable responses.

I don't judge people who use them just because I don't. I'm well aware that I can dig too, and just do it in different ways.

The only reason I would point it out is for the practical reason that having what are widely understood to be strong words used against him gives something to Debator that is easy for him to react to. I don't sympathise with him at all- he pisses people off in his passive aggressive way, so no wonder he attracts strong words. Just the practical point: you give him something that is easy to react to, because it is only human to react to the form of such an overt attack rather than the substance.

Ya, well you men can keep your passive aggressive responses for yourself, because as far as I am concerned they are worse than outright assertiveness and/or aggression. But I draw the line where I will accept your telling me how I should respond to anything, while ya'all carry on with impunity however you want, thinking you have every right, and that the "little woman" should just fold up and crawl away, when ya' all don't approve of "strong" female responses to passive aggressive male ass hatery..

ETA: And yes ken, you do and did judge. And you joined in the pile on even, and thereby gave debator another platform to react to, which you had the gall to criticize me for doing, which is even more hypocritical.

And also note that debater conveniently deleted my "do not feed the trolls" point.

You guys, look what you've let him do to the pleasant discussion around here.  Please pull back and think about this some more.  Ignore Debater, apologize for your own overreactions to one another, and please get on with some more respectful serious discussions.

Are you so sure?  And honestly, I'm not trying to be "smart"; but I'm viewing you in generic, genderless Babble-poster terms.  Even the name "remind" is genderless.  AFAIC you're posting as a person, not as a woman.  And re that quote

there's nothing in that quote that specifically suggests it was posted by a woman.  And my criticism would pertain if it were posted by the, uh, "un-fairer" sex.  Indeed, it might pertain more to the "heartily sick of the LibCons" and "no difference between the corporate parties" rhetoric, which is of the sort that'd more likely turn off the "Mathyssen moderate" voters out there.  And, oh irony, what makes that kind of heavy-handed non-subtlety a turnoff is a bit of a penis-waving quality, like the inverse of a FD type declaring voters to be "heartily sick of the LibDippers", et al.

And I know this is nitpicking, but you misspelled "puerile".

Please, stop it, everyone!

"heavy-handed non-subtley"

As opposed to passive aggressive pissing matches, I suppose?

And I was not speaking to Mathyssen's "moderate voters", I was speaking to debator about his arrogant ass presumptions and leaving a few of my own.

But I am done with this little diversion away from the EMe topic, and will only indicate that you keep your opinions about my posting style  and word usage to yourself, it is none of your business about how I choose to words things, unless it is a personal attack upon you yourself directly.

Which BTW, I will add you have undertaken with me, and your protestations of no gender bias, ring hollow.

My apologies OO, but I am not going to accept arrogant male pile ons and their telling me how I should or should not post.

You're free to debate in the style that you choose - I was just letting you know that sometimes your emotion or dislike towards certain people and parties tends to cloud your judgment.  As a result, you sometimes go for the jugular without having the facts in order.

I don't know if you've seen my post on this thread yet, but as I point out here, your dislike of Paul Martin led you to claim that he wasn't even in power for a year, whereas in reality he was in power for much longer than a year:

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/central-canada/bryant-resigns-st-pauls-elect...

remind, I don't know what's in the water tonight, but I hope everyone gets a good night's sleep, and comes back tomorrow resolved to be less critical of others, and a little more constructive.  And not to let a frigging troll derail things again.

Peace, sister.

I hope you are not referring to me as a 'frigging troll'.  I am no more of a troll than anyone else, and it kind of defeats your suggestion above to be 'less critical of others, and a little more constructive' to engage in name calling, does it not?

Semantics pehaps, but I do not call a collapsing scandal plagued minority government being "in power". So as far as I can see he was in power, for a little over 7 months, and amazingly did nothing with his 7 month majority even.

The only reason why Harper, is "in power" with his minority, is because the Liberals, have allowed him to be.

It's a fact that Paul Martin was in power as Prime Minister from December 2003 until the end of 2005 (and technically until Harper was sworn in during February 2006).  That is Martin's term in office - the official records, historians, legal scholars etc. certainly don't consider it only 7 months long and/or that it ended in June 2004.

Having a minority government is still considered being in power and you still legally and officially hold the office of Prime Minister, thus the official dates entered above.  Paul Martin was therefore still in power after June 2004, just as Stephen Harper is now.

I guess you have your own interpretation of what being in power is, just so long as you realize it is your interpretation and that it differs from official Canadian history. 

Thank you, OO and I would get all esoteric at this point, if it was a different venue. ;)

What do you think about EMay trying to devolve the GP's ESA?

Yes, well "official" Canadian history often differs from the reality on the ground.

And  I suppose we will just have to agree that his "official " 2 years in the PM's office,  sans 2 election periodss, and holidays, was not of a dynasty duration, as the label " the Paul Martin years" denotes.

I read about that.  I mean the Revenue Sharing Agreement is a voluntary fund, and the EDA's can agree or not to the party's request.  Suppose she were going to run in CCMV ... they probably have NO cash because they didn't even run a candidate against Casey last time, so she would need the help there.  Or Saanich-Gulf Islands: the games that were going on there last election probably didn't help build up the coffers of the local Green riding association to say the least.

But thinking of comparisons to the NDP, if someone asked our ridings for funds to support a strategic objective that many people supported, they would probably be very happy to feel part of it and make a contribution.  So, I suppose the take-up (to the extent we'll ever learn what it was as outsiders before they file anything a year from now), will probably be a decent sign of how well supported she is internally and/or how much support her new strategic approach has.

The thing is, this whole new strategic approach looks to me like it was hatched at the elite level of the party (leader's staff and new communications adviser maybe), because a lot of the insiders had never heard of the new approaches until they read them in the paper, and had not heard about the planned request for transfers until they got the email.  I wonder if their Federal Council approved any of it (or even knew about it ahead of time).

I'm beginning to think the only reason shes thinking of running here is because the NDP did so well last election. I had suspicions about that new convert Julian West too, way the whole thing went down, but as usual theres nothing anyone can say for sure.  If eMay really wants a seat she has a chance at, she would probably do better in West Van-Sunshine Coast.  But theres no NDP contender there. 

IN SGI, Andrew received enough votes to get their deposit monies back, and then they would receive their 1/3 of the 1.75, so they are probably not in as bad as shape as CCMV. Which perhaps is why she would not being going to run there, and then there is the whole NS GP financial out fall to come...

Yes, the whole Brioney Penn, Julian West, Green Party games in SGI, last election might not have done anything for them, either money wise, or support wise. The same SGI riding area in the provincial election here, only brought the GP 3200, or so votes, down from 4800 in the last provincial election. So IMV,  it speaks to the devolving Green Party stocks in SGI.  Whether or not it is the main reason is up for debate I suppose.  However, people are not as politically unaware on VIsland, as they are perhaps elsewhere, and actions have rammifications.

In respect to the local EDA's, it should have been apparent to them, one would think, that when EMay announced it would be all about getting her elected, it meant that all the GP money was hers. I mean, what else could it have meant? I know I  realized it meant that all the campaign money would be going to her run.  So really, there should be no surprise that what she was doing was actually obliquely announcing, through the the Hy's Steakhouse drama, to the GP EDA's, that she was deleating the ESA.

Only 41 GP EDA's received their rebates back, so I do not know how they plan to run a all seat campaign next election if EMay is gobbling up all the money, more paper candidates I suppose.

And I see andrew has taken down his website,  and is not blogging at the GP site anymore, so I guess that pretty means he is out of the Green Party picture for at least SGI. And perhaps the entire GP, as after all, he filled a complaint with the party over the letter telling GP members in the SGI EDA, not to elect a Green candidate. Indeed here is a snippet from an article that indicates the bad feelings in SGI.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/275268

Andrew was the GP's strongest candidate, until the advent of EMay, and the games in SGI did not help, so then they just barely made their deposit back. As such, the GP should be really thinking about the fool hardy nature of EMay's running in SGI, as I do not believe they are looking at polls. And at least a portion of Andrew's 6k worth of supporters most likely have a real bad taste in their mouth for the Green Party and EMay. Perhaps andrew will run for the NDP? ;)

And given the fact that May is not going to win anywhere,  not even SGI, after gobbling  all the money up, the GP should be pretty much toast for the election after that, so that is what is going to happen when she does not win..IMV

I don't know Erik, about there not being anything to say as I think this snippet by West says it all:

Seems West was not speaking on behalf of the NDP eh?!

Lewis, who has filed a complaint with the Green Party of Canada, said the party will lose integrity and legitimacy if members thwart democracy by failing to nominate a candidate.

Well thats the hypocracy of the whole business isn't it?  On one hand we're supposed to be so terrified of the neo-cons that all us "progressives" should vote strategically for neo-liberals instead, as some people complained about NDPers not voting from Briony after West withdrew, nut completely ignoring all those who voted for Lewis (who BTW is also a big "fiscal conservative" and believer in the "dynamism of emerging global markets" quote unquote) who insisted no, it was unfair to local Green constituents.

Jane Sterk also said that Greens would most definitely not withdraw from North Shore seat where NDP ran close second to Campbell.  Briony's camp is also the one behind leaking the news of West once exposing himself to some of his students -after his nomination.  Already known by Greens but not picked up before then, and he claims admitted by him to NDPers who vetted him but told it should be ok.  (that sounds very like them -until some elders in the party freak out at any bad press following)  All timed perfectly for right after final deadline for candidacy papers.  West was also only NDPer invited to speak directly on ProRep to the Citizens Assembly, a big STV fan from the before, the one form of PR which only gives our third party a decent chance of representation and therefore undue leverage over others.  Add in eMays infactuation with the federal Liberals and disdain for everything NDP, and her Sierra club friends new found openess to "market led solutions" to all our invironmental problems (and the income tax savings involved in being "revenue neutral") and all these small coincidences start to add up don't they?

On that unsigned Green Party of Canada request that Green ridings send back some of their revenue sharing funds to help May's campaign:

How much money the SGI EDA happens to have or not have is immaterial.

The GPC transfered lots of money into the Central Nova EDA for the long running campaign there. It was at least $50,000 directly. Plus the $80,000 that was transfered into the May campaign, despite it having a surplus in its own right, at least part of which has already been used to finance that continued campaign after the election [and none of which was transferred back to the GPC as of April 1 First Quarter filing close.]

In fact, any funds the EDAs obediently send in for May's campaign have to follow the same path: the GPC will have to transfer them on to the SGI EDA- the same as the funds that will be coming directly from the GPC itself. The EDA will be adding a pebble to the shovel load headed for the burning maw.

In my opinion the request was mostly hare brained- another reflection of how isolated and clueless is the narrow little clique that 'advises' May. They'll probably get a trickle of funds... and it will be logged by most riding activists as another insult from May.... that will be thrown back in her face repeatedly when she runs for re-election as Leader next year.

Erik, I had know idea that Andrew had gone so far down the Jane Sterk reformatory path, but then I am not surprised either, given the influence the neo-libcon right has had upon them.

IMV, the coincidences regarding West, Penn et al added up long ago and it is not beyond the comprehensions of others in the riding either.

Long thread.