No surprise at all to most.

 

The idea of Bob Rae replacing him is astonishing.

 

I thought so too, as an ontarian. But, remember, everybody outside of ontario don't have the history with rae that we do, and he's a pretty savvy politician with plenty of experience behind him.

 

Bob Rae may have been the most right wing premier Ontario ever had. You'll enjoy his dismantling of unions and tearing up their contracts.

 

I have no love for unions, but breaking one's legal agreements with them isn't kosher.

 

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OOPS!

Dion silent on future

TheStar.com - Dion silent on future

OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA–The federal Liberal Party says that leader Stéphane Dion will not make a public statement about his future today.

Devastated by the disappointing showing of his party in the election, Dion was expected to announce today he will step aside as Liberal leader. But this morning, the party said this is not the case.

“We will properly advise the media when M. Dion is prepared to speak publicly,” said party spokesman George Young in a message sent to the media.
Unlike the other party leaders, Dion did not make a public appearance yesterday, instead huddling with his family and advisers. Party insiders said he would remain as leader until the Liberals choose a successor.

Dion had been expected to announce in his remarks after the polls closed late Tuesday that he would set in motion a process to allow his party to choose a new leader. But he avoided the subject.

The 26 per cent of the popular vote that the Liberals received on Tuesday is among the worst results the party has ever had. Liberal seats in the House of Commons plummeted to 76 from 95 while the Conservatives strengthened their minority position to 143 seats from 127 at dissolution.

 

State of the Liberal Party

It is a political science cliché that the Liberal party campaigns on the left but governs on the right. But unless the party can reclaim the centre ground of Canadian politics and no longer tolerate its categorization as a party of the left, it may not again soon have the opportunity to govern at all.

Some good points there. The Libs would do well to listen if they wish to govern again. Choosing Bob Rae for leader would spell a disaster. Same with Kennedy.

 

Mr. Dion is currently devoting his attention to the difficult task of making priorites.

 

"Dion set to step down"

Thank you for playing don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Laterz

 

Interesting comments on the Star website:

"LIberals didn't choose Dion, Kennedy did

For those who are complaining that Liberals supporters should blame themselves for choosing Dion .. they didn't! It was Gerrard Kennedy who made the boneheaded move. Dion was elected almost by accident ..."

"Gerard Kennedy master plan

Gerard Kennedy has a master plan: 1) If you can not win the Liberal leadership, make sure a unpopular third place opponet gets in. That way he will fail and you will soon get a second chance at the leadership. 2) Get elected Federally so you can get one step closer to winning the Liberal party leader nomination. 3) Once Dion is removed, secure the Liberal party leadership nomination. 4) Run for Prime Minister of Canada."

"Round 2 of the Liberal Split party

The infighting in the Liberal party between Chretien and Martin helped them lose the first election in 2006. Then they elected Dion as an alternative, because the 2 front runners wouldnt concede. Now that Dion will be replaced, there are 2 top candidates again. If either Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff wins, the loser must quit politics, otherwise the party will be split and weakened. Dont think either one will continue to accept second place in the party. There will be continued in-fighting in the backrooms of power. Success in the next election will again be in doubt if both are around to fight with each as much as with the conservatives."

 

That’s a good article. I agree with pretty much everything they have said. By moving to the left, the Liberals lost a lot of swing voter support on the right which went to the Conservatives. It you add up Liberal and Conservative votes for the last 15 years, it generally falls around 70% of the electorate, with about 10% swing voters between the two (each having a strong base of 30%). The NDP, Bloc and Green have a base of support of around 10%, 10% and 5%, respectively, and fight for remaining 5% of swing voters or try to undermine the base of the Liberals or Conservatives (which happened to the Liberals this election).

It is very difficult for the Conservatives to get above 40% because they have to win their entire base plus all swing voters between them and the Liberals. They can’t win the left of centre swing vote, so the only way for a majority is to either undermine the Bloc or undermine the Liberal base. They didn’t do it this time when the Liberals moved left and with Dion so it is unlikely in the future.

The only party with a reasonable chance at a majority will be the Liberals because they have more swing votes open to them than the Conservatives do. However, it will probably require a leader like Manley or Iggy who are more right of centre. It will also require dissatisfaction with the Conservatives.

If the Liberals change leaders next spring, we will be back at the polls in Fall of 2010. There is no way a new Liberal leader will wait more than 1.5 years under minority rule. Too risky. The Liberals are better to leave Dion for a while to give the party a chance to rebuild itself.

 

Liberals need to shift more right = blue liberal?

[Adagio's previously linked editorial.]globeandmail.com: The former natural governing party

The former natural governing party

FROM THURSDAY'S GLOBE AND MAIL
OCTOBER 16, 2008 AT 1:35 AM EDT

It is a political science cliché that the Liberal party campaigns on the left but governs on the right.

But unless the party can reclaim the centre ground of Canadian politics and no longer tolerate its categorization as a party of the left, it may not again soon have the opportunity to govern at all.

Tuesday's result was more than a setback for the party, or a disappointing result. For the Liberals, it was an unmitigated disaster. They lost 19 seats. They saw their share of the popular vote drop to 26.2 per cent. That's worse that John Turner fared in 1984, and worse than the Liberals did when John Diefenbaker nearly obliterated them in 1958. In fact, that's the party's worst share of the popular vote since Confederation. Nearly 850,000 fewer ballots were cast for the Liberals than in 2006, a drop of 19 per cent. That total, 3,629,990, is down from 5,252,031 ballots cast for the Liberals in 2000. Unless this decline is arrested soon, it may prove to be terminal for the party.

It is not only the weak leadership of Stéphane Dion that accounts for this abysmal result, although certainly Mr. Dion had a major hand in it. (Dispense with the obligatory niceties about Mr. Dion as a man of principle, etc. The Liberal Party of Canada needs to change the locks on its door.) Nor is it the fact that the party machinery was rusty.

There is something more fundamental about this failure. It is that the Liberal Party of Canada is no longer seen as a big tent. Not only has it shed core supporters by region – in the Prairies, in rural areas, in francophone Quebec, in British Columbia, in fact, just about everywhere outside the city of Toronto. It has also shed voters on the basis of its move to the left.

Another striking result of Tuesday's election was an across-the-board drop in the voter turnout, down 5.6 per cent from that of the previous election. It seems likely this was in part due to traditional Liberal supporters opting to sit on their hands rather than hold their noses.

John Manley, the former Liberal deputy prime minister, finance minister and foreign affairs minister, put it well when speaking on The Globe Roundtable on globeandmail.com yesterday. “If I were to be critical of Stéphane, I think he took the party in a direction where it was fighting in a very crowded field for too few votes on the left side of the spectrum and that's not where you win elections,” said Mr. Manley. “The Liberal party is always preoccupied with bleeding votes to the NDP on the left and that's understandable. But you don't give up the centre ground and I think that's one of the problems.”

In their rebuilding process, Liberals need to revive that nearly extinct animal, the blue Liberal.

Some comments:

"Right leaning people are simply not welcome in the Liberal party anymore. The animosity and belligerence of the left leaning members of the party have slowly pushed it further and further left while making it nearly impossible of anyone with a centrist or center right view to voice an opinion without getting criticized and ridiculed. I can’t see this changing anytime soon as most moderate people have already abandoned the party and it is now dominated by socialists and special interest groups."

"I agree, and it happened across Canada not just in Toronto. The Liberals use to represent different ideologies across Canada, it's current ideology is narrow minded and mired with a Toronto Socialist's mindset. The Modern Liberal Party is nothing more than another extreme leftwing socialist communist party. The brass needs to decided shall we give the NDP and it's commie supporters a run for their money or will we go back to being a Classical Liberal Party? Considering all the candidates for Leader are from Ontario, I suspect they'll happily follow the socialist/communist path they've been on for the past two years. The Liberals are a real threat to the NDP but not the Conservative Light Party.