Buckdog

Buckdog, we had one bad leader after another - Martin, Dion and Iggy. I think that is the problem.

To me the most worrisome part is Harper majority. It did become possible through vote splitting in Ontario. Right now Canadians must watch what is coming with Harper majority.

LeDaro, you miss the point. Your party has sttod for nothing but the pursuit of power for more than a century. The hollowed out moral core of your party was merely masked by effective leaders from King to Chretien. The fecklessness of Martin / Dion and Ignatieff did not cause your party to crumble from the top - it merely exposed the extent of the dry rot within.

Somebody ... say 'AMEN'!!

Malcolm and Leftdog, I am not that partisan. I just believe in progressive governments. I do believe that Liberal governments in the past did provided good government including public healthcare, with the help of NDP, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, repatriation of constitution etc.

My main concern now is Harper majority. His roots are in Reform and it is worrisome what will he do with social programs including healthcare. I hope NDP will provide good opposition but with sizable majority would Harper care. It is that concern that I am expressing.

It's true you guys had one bad leader after another (although actually I kind of like Dion . . . he was a bad leader but a good man), but there's reasons you ended up with those bad leaders.
PM the PM had no political vision but did he ever want to be in charge. So he systematically took over the party apparatus, piece by piece over years. But to do that he had to fairly well nuke riding-level democracy and end up with a bunch of back-room boys in more thorough and isolated control of the party than ever before. Meanwhile the remains of the Chretien guys were deeply resentful.
The result was Paul Martin as Liberal leader, something that I doubt grass roots party democracy would have naturally resulted in. Another result was a farewell present from Chretien, election finance reform. If he hadn't been deeply resentful of the efforts Martin had put in to oust him, he would never have done it.
Once Martin was out, the backroom guys tried for Ignatieff. But they didn't quite manage it the first time around and got Dion instead. So what did they do? Being isolated backroom boys, they figured that any damage they might do to the party by undermining Dion was worth it for them to get back in control with a leader whose orientation was properly right wing in the Paul Martin style. As the Natural Governing Party, they could easily clean up any messes they made. So large portions of the Liberal party basically helped Harper torpedo Dion. It worked, and so in the end they were able to bring in their boy Ignatieff.

But while Iggy is the kind of leader backroom boys love, he isn't the kind of leader anyone else likes much. And they'd already damaged the party too much. But all this flows more from the backroom-driven party apparatus than from the leadership, except I suppose for Paul Martin's original careful long-term takeover, which was apparently quite well run.

Incidentally, as time passes the Conservatives, for quite different reasons, also seem to be destroying riding-level democracy in their party. We may see them similarly lose vitality in time.

Perhaps you immediately deleted it, but I remember sending you a message - tweet or email I can't remember - at the beginning of this election saying this could be the NDP's big chance to become the opposition. I based that guess on the arrogance of the Liberals, nothing else. If Warren Kinsella is any indication of the LPC's attitude, I'd like to be the first to congratulate the NDP on completely replacing the LPC and being the official opposition in 2015. (I'm still a Conservative)

Come on guys, this is the time to band together not for infighting among the left. There are going to be a lot of disagreements between the NDP and Liberal supports - okay I get that - but let us try and put those away and work on the real issues opposed to exagerating the significance of this partisan divide.

great cartoon Leftdog!

Thanks Jan!

Trent .. it was a couple of tweets

Bazie .. I don't disagree BUT you urgently need to put the same comments HERE as well as HERE!

thanks!

I won't bad-mouth the Liberal Party in general terms because I do believe that they once stood for something. But as Broadbent said on CBC on Saturday, they may have had their day because they seem to have lost all their constituencies. Maybe, maybe not. Either way men like Kinsella are little more than partisan blowhards who care little for the real needs of the people of Canada.

Agreed Kirby. I did this post partly because I was ticked off at a couple of Liberal bloggers who are not taking #elxn41 results all that well.

But it really amazed me what Warren Kinsella mused that the results were 'unexplainable'. Not so.

But on the other hand, I read James Curran's criticism of this post and it dawned on me that Libs only want to talk to other Libs about the Libs. They don't want any input, feedback, dialogue etc.

Incestuous politics breeds bad political progeny.