Poli-Sci Student

Well spoken. I've had to explain this a fair number of times myself.

At least he's said them, like he's supposed to, haha. It's the first step in any politician's move.

I think he was doing exactly what the Liberal Party needed him to do: Providing a calm, non-radical front. I'll admit that Tremonti could have grilled him a little more, but I don't think radicalism is going to win an election for the Libs, moving a little to the right and being calm but confident will.

I get my water free from the tap, though.

It depends on what you want them to do. Yes, the two of them combined are not going to be able to fix the crisis that's sweeping the US and Canadian Auto Industries, on which Windsor depends. But they do work for their constituents, being present, helping with whatever they can. Did you know you can petition your MP with small-level grievances, and most of the good ones will try to help you, or at least point you in the right direction of the people who can help you? When you're not in Government, you can't do the big things, but that doesn't make the small things meaningless.

Haha, I may be a moderate NDP supporter, but I'm still nominally an NDP supporter. I guess I'd disagree that you need to be in government to do things for your constituents.

Jack Layton exists at the far left end of the NDP. I don't currently support Jack Layton as NDP leader, but I do support my local NDP Candidate, so I still vote NDP. I think Jack on the far left is as bad for the party as you think he is for the country.

It's relevant while stereotypes of NDP supporters persist. I am not a pot-smoking commie, and it annoys me to see us all painted with the same brush.

Sorry, I make my money working for a children's camp.

Do you actually remember that? It felt like in one of your posts mentioning this that you were there. I'm not making any grand points here, just curious.

I'm socialist and a communist too. I must be, because I'm not a Conservative.

I'm surprised you didn't suggest we start donating our marijuana-sales money.

With breads? The English have muffins... I don't know, maybe the Queen's a terrorist...

This is one of the major problems with Canadian Politics. It's pretty hard to "get" all of Canada. I wouldn't even begin to pretend that I do, and politicians that do are usually lying. I'd like to see a politician who admits he maybe doesn't get Quebec, or Alberta, but is willing to learn.

I don't know that this is true. I've come from a fairly middle-class family that's doing fairly well for itself. Maybe the people who don't own computers or don't currently have access to the internet would love to argue with you, but they can't. If your access to society depends on your ability to spend money on certain things, it's hard to become educated or participate in the debate.

There are at least two axes of political ideology. There's social permissiveness (or lack thereof), and there's economic permissiveness (or lack thereof). I hate seeing things bandied about between the "Right" and the "Left", as though these were the only two choices. The Conservatives tend to lean towards more economic permissiveness and less social permissiveness. This is Tory, and not unexpected. They tend to argue in favour of Business and against issues like Same Sex Marriage. The NDP tends to be more socially permissive and less economically permissive. The Liberals (ideally) would be permissive in both categories. The NDP and the Liberals are both on the "left", but they go about it in different ways. The left/right dichotomy is oversimplified, sorry.

You don't think the business community will rise to support them? The Conservatives maybe have the most to lose in absolute values, but as far as the strength of their backers, most NDP supporters like myself don't have lots of money to donate to the party.

Me too. I feel that the current economic policies espoused by the Conservatives here and the Republicans in the United States have led directly to the market issues we're having right now. The deregulation of the economy has led to people thinking they can get away with things they couldn't, in the long run. As for the Coalition lacking a plan, well, now they have a couple months to plan. I'll wait and see what they come up with before I judge them. (I do feel that they're going to fall apart in this time, but I'm hopeful somebody will come up with some other kind of option)

I vote NDP in my riding of Windsor-Tecumseh for the simple reason that Joe Comartin is a good man, a solid leader, and best suited to represent this particular riding. Outside of this riding, I'm split between Liberal (not Dion, though) and NDP... it depends on who the Liberals put forward and who the NDP put forward, really.

My lack of confidence in the Harper Government has nothing to do with the proposed Coalition. At this point, I have had a few years of Harper as Prime Minister, and I have not been in favour of what I've seen. My support for the Coalition is much like my support for Obama in the last election: They might not be better, but at least they're different. Do you bet on a sure thing that you don't like, or on something that has the possibility to be either better or worse than the option you don't like?

Maybe. Like I said, a long bomb.

I'm kind of inclined to disagree. While the Liberals do need to worry about now, they also need to worry about the future. Dion has kind of thrown the future of his party into the balance with the proposal of the Coalition. I think it'll be difficult for the Liberals to extricate themselves from that mess without a strong leader who will be palatable to the Liberals now and the public in the next 2-3 years. While Ignatieff is more popular with his party than the other leaders, he is not incredibly well-liked on the national scale, and if the Liberals make him leader now, he gets the benefit of at least one election before a leadership review, and I think that unless he manages to magic some success out of this Coalition, it will be Conservative Majorities for a decade. It's kind of a long bomb, but it might be all the Liberals have.

Well Dion is toast, Ignatieff is not particularly palatable, Rae couldn't possibly win Ontario... Who's left? Honestly? The best Liberal Leadership Candidate right now is Gerard Kennedy, or Justin Trudeau. A sad, sad state of affairs for the Liberal Party.