adespoton comments on Findlay Steers BC Conservatives Hard Right to Her Party's Peril

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Not sure how I feel… some of the other candidates actually had reasonable arguments—but they would have been leading the same party.

At least this way, the populism and hatred is front and centre, which should make people think twice about voting Conservative.

Then again, the options are BC Liberal and NDP. Liberals are still too recent to make a comeback, and NDP is nearing the end of people’s patience.

We’ll see whether a bunch of people choose hatred over patience.

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[–] trashcroissant@lemmy.ca 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

Idk, if we all looked at the third actual good option, the BC Greens especially under Emily Lowan, we could probably get some traction. I know they're not winning anytime soon but if we keep counting them out, they won't have any chance at all.

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[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 months ago*

Lowan and the greens are an 'interesting' entrant into the mix, but I don't think they're realistically able/ready to lead a government. Lowan was elected with a 60% green party voter turn out, while the previous leadership election had 85% voter turn out -- even amongst green party members, she isn't drawing out the base. She signed up a bunch of new voters as part of her leadership campaign, which is great, but it was done by appealing to a tiny niche and flooding a tiny party with votes. She's young and energetic, but she's also inexperienced, being a purely political sort who's wanting to lead 'working class' people. The green party platform/approach also has inherent contradictions, especially with how the democracy vs reconciliation/'equity' debate has shaped up. The green party's support amongst FN demographics, strongly implies where they'd fall on that one. As a small no-chance of holding power party, they can contain that sort of contradiction -- sorta like how they can make any claim they want about a 'green new deal' economic benefits as a kind of 'hopeful ideal', because they don't need to actually price it out/implement it.

The greens're also traditionally further left than the NDP, meaning their existence / rise would generally erode NDP numbers, making it more plausible that the Conservatives may win -- as they represent a 'unified' right-wing. The broader intention of the BC Liberals when they folded and merged with the cons, was likely to set up the 2 party dynamic, where "eventually" the other guys get in due to people becoming frustrated with the status quo. If you want a third party option, you'd need one of the party's to be squarely centrist. The current NDP isn't that.

Honestly, I think it's likely we see a conservative govt next time. The length of the NDP reign, the decreasing approval of how they're handling major headline items such as the budget and FN issues, and the generally 'negative' view of the current status quo, make it likely people will want to vote for a change next time around.