The Thought Salesman

Well, the American Election is tomorrow night, and I thought it would be nice to talk about contemporary trends that I (a layman) see in politics; most notably that red is a colour on the downslope.

In America, red is the Republican colour. Currently they stand to lose tomorrow’s election, and honestly it seems like they deserve it. The Republicans are a party made up of a similar alliance of ideologies as Canada’s Conservative Party. In Canada our Conservatives are a hodgepodge of Reform/Alliance/Progressive Conservatives, though in the US the distinctions are not as clear cut as former political parties, they are still as diverse. The Republican Party is made up of Christian Fundamentalists, and so called “Fiscal” Conservatives and “Social” Conservatives, the distinctions between the two latter groups are tenuous at best, but are most easily described by what they want to cut, spending and social programs respectively. Of course, America is a two party system, so the two more logical groups can’t really be blamed for being the bedmates of the Christian Fundamentalists, as, unfortunately, they make up a large amount of the political body of that country, and are powerful allies in elections.

The reason I say the Republicans probably deserve to lose this election is because the Republican Party, has stopped being true to their roots as the party of Lincoln, and have mutated into the party of Reagan and the Bushes. They are a party that believes in trickle-down, and their policies seem to show it. They have given more tax breaks, in terms of actual dollars, to the top 1% of the country than the other 99% combined. They have supported the Oil, Automotive, Banking, and War (I hesitate to call them “Defence”) industries to the pain of the general population. They believed in the free market until it blew up in their faces and they granted an $860,000,000,000 bail-out package to these same people. They have turned President Clinton’s nearly $6,000,000,000 surplus into an $11,000,000,000,000 deficit. When Clinton was in power they turned off the ‘debt clock’ because it wasn’t needed, and now under a Republican they’ve taken down the ‘clock’ because there aren’t enough digits on it. Just so you know, if you opened a business on the day that Rome was founded, and did nothing but lose $1,000,000 a day, every day, at that business until today, you would have accumulated less debt than Bush has accumulated.

For those of you that think this is fuzzy math, here’s the numbers:
Rome was founded 2761 years ago (we’ll assume George W. Bush won’t accumulate more debt by January 1st)
That’s 1008455.25 days (leap years included)
That’s 1,008,455,250,000
That’s only 1 trillion dollars, compared to 11 trillion.
That’s only 14% larger than the bail-out package.

This is just the economic foul-ups of the Republicans. They’ve politicised the Judicial Branch of the US government, an unspeakable act in itself. They’ve appointed an attorney general that called the Geneva Convention “moot.” They’ve condoned torture, under the guise of “enhanced interrogation.” For those of you that don’t consider their methods of interrogation torture, one prisoner, who was later released without charge, Jose Padilla, was driven to clinical insanity by his captors after they used “enhanced interrogation.” Oh, and they started the Iraq War (although I prefer its original name “Gulf War II”).

Anyway, before this turns into a rant, the American people have seen the policies of the Republicans, they’ve voted them out of congress, and it looks like they’ll vote them out of the presidency as well. Unfortunately for America though, the Republicans are only down by around 5% of the popular vote, meaning that nearly 45% of voting Americans are willing to endorse a party that has committed the above acts. This is probably do to the Republican’s policy of relying on purely emotional arguments as opposed to real ones.

Now, on the Canadian front, our reds are also in serious trouble. The difference is our reds are on the opposite side of the political spectrum, centre-left. The Liberal Party of Canada has just survived an election where they lost 24 seats, but they also lost a leader that helped quell the Separatist movement during the 1990’s, and holds a Doctor of Laws degree. Most distressingly, however, they’ve lost all their money. The Liberals are actually in such dire straights for cash, that during one fundraising period, the NDP was able to raise around $100,000 more than them. This is quite telling about the future of Canadian politics.

The Liberals raised $3.6 million, the NDP raised $3.7 million, and the Conservatives raised $15 million.

The problem here is that there is one party that represents the entire right wing philosophy, one party that represents more than half of Quebec, two parties for the left, and one for the environmentalists.

Quebec, for those of us born after the Separatist movement wrapped its tentacles around that province, was a place the Liberals could count on for votes. Now, it is always dominated by the selfish party, the Bloc Quebecois. Likewise, it’s funding goes to the BQ instead of the Liberals, or Conservatives, whoever the flavour of the week happened to be.

The NDP, a more radically left party, also eats up its fair share of otherwise Liberal votes and funds, as do the Greens.

And when there was more than one party on the right that was A-OK. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world anymore. We live in the world of polarising politics and one-party-takes-all politics, partly due to Stephen Harper’s successful initiative to “unite the right.” In effect, by uniting an entire wing of politics, Harper has decided to run his party as if this was a two party system. It is up to the left to now act, because they will fail as long as they don’t do what seems obvious, work together.

Elizabeth May, the leader of the now seatless Green Party knew this. She urged her supporters, to little avail, to vote Liberal in the last election, in order to prevent a majority Conservative government. What the left parties need to do is just that, focus on combining their efforts, urge Liberals to vote NDP, or conceivably Green, (and of course, the other way too, NDP for Liberals or Greens, and Greens for NDP or Liberals) in ridings where a member of one of their parties are polling higher than the others, but are either closely above, or way below the Conservative candidate.

And of course, once the votes are tallied, if the combined left parties have more seats than the right, then form a coalition government!

This of course, means power-sharing agreements, but of course, that’s been done in the past.

Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. Harper has changed Canadian politics forever, and as long as he is able to keep his army of supporters from all parts of the right wing from eating each other, he will remain Prime Minister.

The Thought Salesman