The results.
The Liberals won a landslide majority victory, with less of the popular support that the previous government did, but that is okay, because We won this time. Who is this We? Less than forty percent of the voting public elected a comfortable cushion majority. People swallowed their personal convictions and voted for the guy that was not the best person in their opinion and voted for someone that was not Harper.
You see there are two Generation Parties in this country, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Both have their core supporters, people who would not change their vote if you held them under water and told them to change their vote and they can breath again. These core would rather drown than change their vote. For both of these parties, this segment represents about thirty percent of the eligible voters apiece. Before there were more than two parties, one or the other would win and then after a time the other would win and they would flip back and forth periodically. These political parties grew up beside each other and they are essentially the same, except one is more liberal than the other and the other is more conservative. No other difference. Over their history they have even championed each others causes and when this was so, the other party opposed that previously held cause. For example, the Liberals used to be the supporters of Free Trade, until the Conservatives took it as something they wanted. Effectively these two parties are the same, except they hate each other and will shout at anyone that makes that observation, just like any brother and sister I have ever known.
Fear.
The other forty percent of the voting public are more or less liberal/conservative than those parties and vote for other parties regularly, like the NDP, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party etc. When the chips are down they vote for these parties. But when the political balance swings too far in one direction they vote to restore the balance, the Right Wing parties join up with the Conservatives to end the Tyranny of the Liberals, like they did ten or so years ago when the Reform and the Progressive Conservatives dropped the progressives, who formed the Bloc Québécois many years before that anyway. The resulting alliance of conservative values resulted in a meaner, more selfish party of personal gain. And with the Left Wing parties splitting the vote, the less popular Conservative party, less popular than their combined support anyway, won the day.
So, this election, the core Liberals refused to vote anything but Liberal, but the other Left Wing parties whose supporters felt had suffered more from year of absolute rule by antithetically aligned people, switched from their normal true support to the better of two bad situations and voted Liberal. I am guilty of this. I held my nose and voted NDP, I normally vote Green. With the name Greenpsychopomp, would you really expect otherwise? Aside. They woke up in the morning and were elated to find the Conservatives out of power, but unhappy that there was an even more massive defeat of the Left Wing. True, the leader of the Liberals is more like his father, a closet New Democrat through and through, but his party is not. The core of the party is identical to the Conservatives. Back room deals, coercion of the populous, courting big business for personal gain, stacking the appointed Senate with friends and supporters making sure that when they are defeated, they can extend their reach into the next Alternate Party's life. The engine that elected them is the one they helped create. Change will only be superficial.
What we lost when the Liberals won a majority government, with less than forty percent of the vote, was a chance at true change. We lost the chance to elect a minority government where one of the parties had election reform as an important issue.
Predictions.
Marijuana will be legalized. The Liberals will uncover horrors that the Conservatives have been hiding: 1) social programs that the were being funded by the last government have not actually done anything, the moneys earmarked for them lies unspent. 2) Environmental projects and claims, like the Alberta Provincial Conservatives, were false and because of government gags on employees, no one could tell the public that they were not occurring at all. There will be a great show and dance about changes that are made, that there are so many, but they will not change them all; some of them are not politically expedient for a 'Liberal' to make, but since a 'Conservative' did it, it just won't be repealed. 3) Omnibus bills that the Conservatives used, will not go away, 'the changes to our society by the evil Conservatives, have to be righted quickly, after-all'; there will be things hidden within, parts of hated laws kept, but kept quiet. 4) There will not be enough time to enact reform in this mandate, "but you had better support us, because if you don't, the devil will return to office and wreck all the progress we have done in the past four years", four years from now. And it will work because people remember five years politically, but not more, the conservatives will look less evil and the Left will be through with the Liberal Party again.
It makes me want to throw myself off a bridge, or build a bomb and blow up the House of Commons when it is in session. —That comment will get the NSA in a tizzy and get me arrested, I hope.
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