Strategic voting is an interesting animal.
When applied to the left, the idea is that you should vote for the candidate that stands the best chance of defeating a Conservative. Afterall, any Liberal would be better than a Conservative, and we must all work together to avoid a Conservative majority, right?
Bullshit!
Tomorrow is the big day.
After more than 50 years, the Federal NDP appears to be a position to move ahead of the Liberals and form the government-in-waiting.
With the polls showing the spread between the NDP and the Conservatives between 3% and 6%, Jack and company clearly have all the momentum, and though even the most optimistic among us would not project an NDP government, the expectation is that the Liberals will fall to third place.
I live in Kildonan-St. Paul. If I lived in a riding that was competitive between the Liberals and the Conservatives, and I knew before casting my vote that if I voted Liberal, Kildonan-St. Paul would elect a Liberal – I would still vote NDP. Even if, that one vote gave Harper that one extra MP that would in turn give him his majority – I would still vote NDP.
While I bleed black and orange, I’m not a “true believer”. I’m not a die-hard idealist who pick’s up his marbles and goes home everytime an NDP government, or adminstration does something that doesn’t jive with my world-view of what a social- democratic organization should do. I recognize and respect the art of the compromise, the axiom that a good government governs for all, not just their own.
But at the end of the day. When we look at the history of the Liberal Party. When we look at the current state of the Liberal Party. When we look at what they would do. It is clear that we would wind up with Player’s Light. While not a bad cigarette, it’s still a cigarette, and as we all know those things are more toxic than Plutonium 139.
Seriously though.
Let’s be clear about this.
If the CCF didn’t have their boots on the throats of the Liberals, we would not have single payer Health Care or CPP.
The Conservaties gave us the GST so that manufacturers could pocket 11%. They transferred a corporate tax onto the rest of us.
The Liberals said they would get rid of the tax, they did not.
Through Free Trade, the Conservatives exported hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs.
Though fighting against Free Trade in 1988 it was, “the fight of our lives”, when given the chance, the Liberals expanded Free Trade and exported hundreds of thousands of more jobs.
When the Conservatives racked up deficit, after deficit, after deficit, after deficit, and piled on the public sector debt, the Liberals came in and balanced the books by off-loading costs onto the Provinces and totally gutting the Federal commitment to supporting families.
A vote for the Liberals. is. not. progress.
A coalition with the Liberals. is. not. progress.
It would be the same as a vote for the Conservatives, or a coalition with the Conservatives.
When given the chance they both transfer the financial responsibilities of paying for our infrastructure from the corporations onto you and me. They refuse to make Bay Street and Wall Street pay their fair share.
While the NDP strategic roadmap to power may at some point require participating in a minority parliament, the history of the Liberals and Conservatives show that they are both puppets of industry and finance. That being the case, they will to varying degrees, undermine our broad economic interests to favour the few on a continuous, if sporadic basis.
That’s retrogressive incrementalism.
They’re moving us backwards at every opportunity, and vote for a Liberal or a Conservative is to support that downward trajectory.
Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
