Navel Gazing

I am having trouble getting past the election.

I can understand why the 1% vote for the Right, in most cases it is in their best interest. But that should give the Liiberals 1% of the vote. The rest of their voters can be divided into a couple of categories, those who simply do not care enough to make an informed decision and those who somehow think that supporting the business class and the rich will benefit them. I guess you could say they subscribe to Ronald Regan’s “Trickle Down” theory even after it has been soundly discredited in the USA. Some others are simply locked into the ideology with the drilled in mindset that “Right is good and Left is bad”. Others, some of them normally intelligent friends, do not seem to fall into any category.

I supported Adrian Dix in his decision to not engage in the US style mud slinging that the Liberals employed but looking back, I wonder if taking the high road was the best decision. People vote because they are mad and perhaps we did not give our supporters enough to be mad at. Polls that showed the NDP with a seemingly insurmountable lead did not help either. I know many of our supporters did not think the Party needed their vote, they were going to win regardless.

What is clear, the NDP blew a lead, how big a lead is open for discussion. Norma blames the loss on 1) the inaccurate polls and 2) the strategists and organizers the party imported from Ontario to run the campaign. She has always said "Easterners" do not understand BC voters. She has managed dozens of BC elections and has won the vast majority of them, more than her fair share. Perhaps she should come out of retirement.

We need to do something. We can start by finding a way to convince young people to get involved, they made up a huge share of the 49% who did not bother to vote.