To people painting her as personable, I'd like to know on what basis you are forming that judgement. I interacted with all three major party candidates. And though, I didn't vote for him, I found the Liberal candidate the most polished and personable.
Adma and Jeff, did you interact with Rathika? And did you meet the other two?
Regarding Rathika, I don't think I've painted her as personable, or anything for that matter. I met Rana briefly and saw Gallyot speak. I would say Rana was slick - and that's not necessarily a negative, particularly considering his business chairperson background. Very very polished. In my instance, Gallyot was all talking points and nothing more. I saw Rathika speak at an event - she was good with the crowd but really didn't say much of substance, in my instance. But those are just my quick interactions. I'm not trying to make a case for/against any of the candidates - never have. My point in this discussion is and has always been about the "she only won because ____" argument, regardless of who won/lost.
I hope you don't think I was picking on you in all of this - that was never the intent. I've just been involved in a number of campaigns for multipel parties. In my experience the "they only won because of <<whatever>>" is always the loser's mantra. And it can be mined down so far that it gets ridiculous - three campaigns ago I was part of a losing effort and one of our supporters mentioned to me that the winner had "only won because of their party's policies." Well, yeah, ok no duh. What's bad about that?
But worse, and I'm <i>not</i> sugegsting that you are doing this, but it can be a really nasty way of making discrimination sound a-ok.
I worked a campaign many years ago where we were running a very whitebread candidate in what could be considered a very 'ethnic' riding. And our campaign (not me - and I'm wasn't proud of it thenor now) always asserted (in private) the opponent "only gets votes because he's one of them."
But really, it was more than that. He was able to pinpoint local problems due to his invovlement in the local community. He spoke an additional language so he could communciate with thousands of people who were previously unengaged. He addressed social and employment issues that were relevant to the everday lives of people like him, and his party supported policies that had an appeal to many in his ;ethnic community' (amongst others). He could better appreciate the everyday issues of those voters and therefore translated big P policy issues to the everday lives of constituents of his in a way that our candidate could not. He was getting people out to vote - people who had never before voted.
That's why and what he ended up being elected to do - with a margin that took more than just 'ethnic' voters to achieve. (And, funnily enough, two elections later the party I had worked for won the riding, defeating a candidate of that same 'ethnicity' that had won previously for our opponents. Hmmmm....)
Similarly, I worked where the whisper campaign was always "the MP only works for the Indians." For 40 years, the local MPs didn't give a fig; they never visited, they didn't address Native issues, and those people went unrepresented. And then someone gets elected who takes the same interest in them as all of the constituents in their riding.
And then it becomes "well, the MP only cares about the Indians". Sure...the 'Native' turnout is low, the political establishment in many of the Native communities was not supportive of the national party, the vote was shared amongst two parties and the (now former) MP regularly won with 50 percent plus (where the Native population was only about 15 percent the riding's population, and half of that 15 were kids under 20). And then, when the MP brought up a 'Native' issue, the response was always "see, I <i>told</i> you so..."
Assertions like those are used simply because they're easy to spread, they're unprovable, unaddressable and cover up the losing party's failings without any serious introspection necessary on their part.
