NDP will have their ass handed to them on the platter next election as Harper vows to do away

[snagglepuss]

election subsidies based on the number of votes a party gets. Harper is closing public funding and opening the doors to unlimited corporate funding.

We will go back to the old days when you could buy an election and this is what Harper wants.

The per-vote subsidy is ingenious in the way it guarantees that low-income Canadians, who will never consider donating to a political party, at least some consideration by political parties. Without the dollar per vote, and pure reliance on donors for party financing - the less fortunate will have little to no one trying to represent their needs in parliament and the vicious cycle of poverty will spiral out of control.

The subsidy is designed perfectly for a well functioning democracy. The Harper Govt. will not for one moment think of the consequences, he is only interested in trying to crush his political enemies, please corporations and mimic the United States.


Way to go Layton.

[CHIMO]

1. That

Is only the first strike. Hope the NDP'ers have some deep pockets.

[snagglepuss]

3. How are they going to deal with 4 years of attack ads? In months we'll be

seeing Layton ridiculed and vilified just like Ignatiff was relentlessly ridiculed and vilified. And just like the Liberals they NDP won't have the funds to fight back.

[Ken Burch]

18. They'd have faced four years of attack ads even after a "strategic voting" election

because the "blue Liberals" would STILL have voted Tory at the last minute just to prevent any government that cooperated in any way at all with the NDP from coming to power. Those guys weren't going to tolerate any result to the left of Paul Martin...or maybe to the left of C.D. Howe.

[Ken Burch]

2. Strategic voting couldn't have worked anyway

There was no way to know what the "strategic" votes were.

Why can't you admit that the Liberals brought their losses on themselves?

IF they'd stood for what the NDP stands for, they WOULD have been a credible party.

But they stood for nothing.

[Very_Boring_Name]

4. Face it, your party gave Harper his majority just like I told you it would

You've got fucking egg all over your ugly mug

[Ken Burch]

5. Face it...Iggy could never have won.

No party can win with an unpopular leader. And Iggy couldn't ever have been popular. He had no appeal.

Layton and the NDP attacked the Tories just as much as they attacked the NDP.

Harper would still have got a majority if the Liberals had finished second.

The fact that the polls always showed the Liberals losing proves this.

Why aren't you blasting the Liberals for running on a lame platform and for NOT promising to bring in proportional representation?

[Very_Boring_Name]

7. It wasn't about winning, it was about stopping Harpers majority

The NDP made sure Harper got his majority by attacking the Liberals and splitting the vote in Liberal ridings.

[Ken Burch]

8. There was no way to know which ridings were going to be marginals

And the Liberals never promised to help the NDP in NDP/Tory marginals(there were as many of those as there were Tory/Liberal marginals)in exchange for NDP votes in the Liberal/Tory marginals.

Your party is to blame for running on a lame center-right platform and for not ever making any real effort to represent the people who vote NDP-students, workers, and the poor.

The Liberals could have won tonight if they'd still been something like Trudeau's party.

[Very_Boring_Name]

9. Every single party does internal polling. It's not difficult to pinpoint which ridings are

unwinnable. Not to mention his attack ads focused on Ignatief more than they did Harper.

[achtung_circus]

14. And was the NDP supposed to do this by losing???

What the fuck are you smoking?

Win by losing?
Ignorance is Truth

[CHIMO]

10. Hope

Your guy can do something now. You now have the mantle. So I look forward to seeing your progress on the party's principles.

But your criticism of the Liberals, pretty much leaves me out as a financial contributor to the NDP.

[iverglas]

16. Face it, everybody knows what the Liberal Party is

Useless, right-wing ... and dead.

What we -- the progressive left -- have is 100+ seats in the House of Commons. And you don't.

What we -- Canada -- has is a party that will do the job of opposition and be ready to do the job of government if the electorate wants it next time around.

We're talking about human history here. Life is sometimes hell, and we're in for four years of it. The species will survive, and Canadians will have a REAL CHOICE next time.

[snagglepuss]

6. If the NDP hadn't relentlessly attacked Ignatiff which played into Harper's

hand, I wouldn't feel this way. I don't think Liberals stand much for anything but everyone on the Left should have been focused on denying Harper a majority. Had he been denied a majority he would have been turfed as the Tory leader.

[Ken Burch]

11. If "everyone on the Left" should have been focused on that goal...

The Liberals should have been EQUALLY focused on it.

They should have been willing to treat the NDP as equals in any "strategic voting" scheme, backing off of campaigning in all NDP/Tory marginals.

They should have been willing to make sure that NO party ever got a false majority in an election again by committing to introduce, as their first act of legislation a new government the replacement of the "first past the post" electoral system with proportional representation.

Instead, they simply assumed that everyone else was obligated to defer to THEM.

Can you not see the folly of that kind of arrogance now?

There was never any reason that every OTHER anti-Tory party should have simply ceded primacy to the Liberals. They weren't automatically entitled to it.

[Freddie Stubbs]

12. It would have worked it the NDP and Liberal parties had cooperated

The could have done polling in each riding to determine which party had the best chance of defeating the Conservatives. The candidate with the least support would then withdraw and endorse the other guy.

[Ken Burch]

17. The question of cooperation was always the problem

cooperation implies a partnership of equals. The Liberals always interpreted "strategic voting" as "Everybody has to vote Liberal, no matter what". There was no reason to assume that they would vote NDP in NDP/Tory marginals in exchange for NDP voters voting Liberal in Liberal/Tory marginals. AND they refused to do the one thing that would have guaranteed cooperation...commit to introducing legislation, right after the parliament elected through "strategic voting" was sworn in, to replace the undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system with proportional representation.

The Liberals wouldn't do those things because they felt no obligation to treat non-Liberal anti-Harper people as their equals.

And, in the end, Freddie, a lot of "blue Liberals" showed their contempt for the concept of "strategic voting" by voting Tory in the last weekend-something that probably also would have happened if a "strategic voting" pact were looking likely to produce anything OTHER than a Liberal Party majority.

So it's not as simple as you think, Freddie. The problem was the Liberal Party's arrogance.

[Metric System]

13. My argument is that the NDP (well Layton) gave Iggy the final blow with the jab about his attendance

record. Heck, the NDP even made an attack ad out of it!

[iverglas]

15. the world will end tomorrow

Way to go, Layton.




Nothing like a gracious loser, pal.