5 Lessons Democrats Can Take From The Canadian Elections [View All]

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1. Find our own version of Ralph Klein- For those who don't know, Ralph Klein is the notorious Premier (Canadian version of a Governor) of Ultra-Conservative Alberta. Klein said some incredibly stupid things about the national healthcare system (Canada's political third rail). The then floundering Liberals took advantage of it and used it as a political billy club with which to whack the Conservatives.

The Democratic party should find a off the deep end Republican who'll certainly spew 'pearls of wisdom' that can be wonderfully used in attack ads to show the radicalism that people will be voting for when they vote Republican. My personal selection for this would be Ralph Klein's kindred spirit in Alberta's sister state: Texas. And we should all know who the best target for this is: Tom DeLay.

2. The Iraq War is now as sellable as a ketchup popsicle- The Liberals were able to run and win on the fear that if elected, Stephen Harper would possibly drag Canada into Iraq. This placed Harper on the defensive on his foreign policy throughout the whole campaign.

Democrats would do well to present a clear and simple strategy for both stablizing Iraq and then bringing the troops home. It's time to start bringing some sense back to the lunatic asylum that the White House and Pentagon have become.

3. The polls mean jack all- The last polls were off by 30 seats or so in Canada. The Liberals did better than almost anyone expected winning 135 seats when they were projected to only win just over 100 or so.

For us this means that we should go all out no matter what the polls say. I have a feeling that in this election, they will completely the number of new voters that will be voting for the first time because of the mess Bushco has made in the past few years.

4. Health care trumps Tax Cuts- Harper ran on a platform of tax cuts in a country with much higher taxes than the United States. Paul Martin's Liberals ran on better health care, and won despite a huge corruption scandal.

Kerry should talk about health care as a first priority everywhere. I get the feeling that he thinks he will get burned like Hillary Clinton did in the early '90s. America has seen the 'prosperity' that all of Bush's tax cuts have created and are looking for something better. We should give it to them.

5. Scandal is not enough to throw out the incumbents- Martin's Liberals had to run from the so called Sponsorship Scandal which was a corruption scheme that cost Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars. However, Harper still wasn't able to win.

Therefore, we can't just stop at: "We're not Bush/the Republicans. Vote for us." Instead we must present a reason why we are BETTER FOR AMERICA than the current incumbents, else we'll only inflict 'flesh wounds on them. Personally I think we can do better and inflict flesh wounds on them- to the magnitude found in Monty Python.

Thoughts?