5 Lessons Democrats Can Take From The Canadian Elections

[displacedyankeedem]

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?

[leftistagitator]

1. Yeah, a few

1. Tom Delay
2. Easier said than done
3. Yeah
4. Yeah, I don't know why more people don't get this one.
5. Well, there's also the difference of Canadians are a liberal people, while American's are not by and large conservative. Most Americans have liberal politics, but they've been distracted by wedge issues or apathy. Vast majorities support welfare and social security and universal healthcare. That's why Rethugs have to spend so much money and work so hard to win an election. So getting Canadians to vote Liberal despite bad behavior is much easier than getting Americans to vote hard-Right despite bad behavior. Not that we shouldn't come up with a plan of our own, but I disagree with your comparison.

[displacedyankeedem]

5. But in 1994

#5
They tossed us out of the House and Senate because we were percieved as being unfair. If America is as liberal as you say it is that wouldn't have happened. We also lost in 2002 in part because we couldn't articulate a clear vision for America, even though the American people trusted us on most of the issues.

[leftistagitator]

6. But look at the way they win

They attack us over "character" issues, play up religion, and spread lies and rumors about us through right wing media sources. Rethugs never come at us directly on the issues, because they lose then. In 2000, for example, Bush's* strategists decided that they couldn't beat us by policy stances, so they pushed the image of Gore as a mentally ill serial liar. In 2002, they explicitly made links between the Democratic Party and Bin Laden because we had the nerve to block the Alaskan oil drilling bill. They don't do this out of sheer hatred of us, although I'm sure that's a part of it. They go into these hysterical, hateful, undemocratic disinformation campaigns because they literally have nothing to fall back on. Opposition to gay marriage is their only popular issue, and most people don't even really care about it. That's why they always try to depress voter turnout, their ideas are unpopular so the less people voting the better. So we are a liberal people, we're just a liberal people who have been lied to, mislead, and out and outright tricked into voting for people who we have little in common with and who work against our best interest or not voting at all.

Of course you're right that we need to present our plan for America, and John Kerry is trying. He makes policy speeches all the time, a few days ago for instance he called for increasing the minimum wage and said healthcare was a right, not a privilidge. The "liberal" media is for some reason refusing to cover this, I suppose because it's more fun for them to have the election be entirely about Iraq, another issue they didn't deem worthy to properly cover before it was too late. I don't know if an American political party has ever faced a media this extreme, partisan, and openly biased against them, and the fact that we are beating the thugs and their media friends together proves my point about Americans being at their hearts liberal.

[Joy Anne]

2. Re #3

Especially if we keep working hard at registering new voters and do a decent job of getting out the vote in November. The polls are almost always either "registered voters" or, more often, "likely voters" (who say they voted in the last election) and completely miss the newly and not yet registered people who didn't vote recently.

And re #1, yes, DeLay's a natural for this. Average people will recoil from him more dramatically than they did from Newt Gingrich. And we should give financial support to his opponent, so Tom senses an election threat and makes even more bizarre public statements.

[JI7]

3. kerry is talking about health care as a priority and attacking tax cuts

which benefit the wealthy. he isn't afraid of anything. he has been talking about it very much. and there are some on here who attack him for talking about it saying he should be talking about pnac.

[LimpingLib]

4. I was thinking more along the lines of

NDP getting 15.7%,and Greens getting 4.3% despite all the BS from the center-left government (which got about 36%) about them being a wasted vote. The conservatives only got 29.6% .

Unlike the worthless left in this country (myself included sadly)the Canadian left in large part stuck to their dreams and aspirations and now the center-left party in Canada (equal to our Democratic party) must now incluse the left in a coalition government and the NDP will demand proportional representation as a condition.The fact that they gained enough seats WITHOUT proportional representation is incredible (but honestly RESONABLE , better watch my words , us yellow bellys or yellowdogs here might take the word "incredible" to mean "not credible" ).

Over here we just melt away to like..... oooo.... lets just say (grabbing a number out of my arse,dont ask where it came from)2.7% in out most "bold" election years and usually do much worse than that.

We wont take the lesson. TRUST ME.