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2022 43rd Ontario general election (June 2, 2022)

Honestly, I don't give a toss about the Liberals. I'm just angry at the role they played in this fiasco of an election and the responsibility they bear for the continuing mess we find ourselves in.

It's funny: For once, I don't feel any ill will towards the average voters for a truly appalling electoral result. I can't. This wasn't an instance of the general electorate being hoodwinked when they should have bloody well known better. No, the results here are perfectly understandable, even with a piece of human garbage like Doug Ford thrown into the mix.

No doubt our local reactionaries are delighted at what just occurred, but everyone else? There are times when there just aren't any good choices to be made, and this was one of those times, as evidenced by how few people bothered to actually vote. Given what was up on offer, I simply can't blame people for choosing none of the above.
 
I didn’t find anyone inspiring to vote for, yet that doesn’t mean I wanted another four years of Doug. So my vote was an attempt to get him out and replace him with anybody. I would have voted for a rock if it had a chance of ousting him. For me, that was the better option vs just not bothering.
 
Well, one big problem was that the Libs and NDP were wasting their time competing with one another, rather than focussing upon the goal of carving away PC votes. And this *especially* goes for the Libs, perhaps out of a feeling of "electable progressive entitlement"--it felt like their goal was to recover those Toronto Centre and St Paul's-type seats simply because they were longtime "rightfully theirs" cornerstones, But judging how close-in-an-unsung-way a lot of those Mississauga-and-Milton-type races were, maybe they were barking up the wrong tree, the wrong way. Like in the future, they need to be a McGuinty-style (as opposed to a Del Duca-style) suburban-middle-of-the-road party once again.

As for the NDP, there was perhaps *more* effort to carve away that PC vote--at least insofar as it successfully stopped the leakage for the vulnerable incumbents in Niagara and Oshawa. But on the whole, the Andrea version thereof works better vs Hudak-type tin-eared leadership than Ford-type blue-collar-populist leadership; so it was a thankless task...
 
adma said:
Like in the future, they need to be a McGuinty-style (as opposed to a Del Duca-style) suburban-middle-of-the-road party once again.
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For at least the next generation, the path to victory in any Ontario election runs through the suburbs. Mostly the GTA, but other cities as well.

Which means we will never get any sort of viable housing or climate policy. Transit maybe better, but road tolls and congestion charges are clearly a no go.
 
Electoral reform is the only way to keep populitst PC thugs like Ford out of power since the 3 leftish parties are incapable of working together. It might help if the Liberal party simply vanished since that brand has become so tarnished and uninspiring. The NDP would then have to move to the left-middle of things, and they would need to have a leader who can bring in young voters who, otherwise won't vote at all. And they need to drop the socialist boilerplate altogether.
 
PinkLucy said:
I didn’t find anyone inspiring to vote for, yet that doesn’t mean I wanted another four years of Doug. So my vote was an attempt to get him out and replace him with anybody. I would have voted for a rock if it had a chance of ousting him. For me, that was the better option vs just not bothering.
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Well, I don't disagree, Lucy. After all, I did the same thing myself. I even voted for the Liberals, as much as I've been bad-mouthing them here. And apparently, the Libs are no longer the automatic "safe" vote (in the city, at least) if you simply want to boot out some brutish mouth-frother from the PCs. Times do change, don't they?

But we're not talking about candidates that were merely uninspiring; I think the current crop elicited open revulsion, if not genuine anger, from the electorate. I'm simply saying I can see why some people didn't want to vote for any of them, not even to get rid of trash like Thug Ford. That's not a sentiment I agree with, I hated Ford enough to go out and vote against him even if I didn't like the candidate or party I was forced to vote for in order to accomplish that. But I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that. More often than not, it's not enough to have something to vote against; you need something to vote for.
 
Irishmonk said:
Electoral reform is the only way to keep populitst PC thugs like Ford out of power since the 3 leftish parties are incapable of working together. It might help if the Liberal party simply vanished since that brand has become so tarnished and uninspiring. The NDP would then have to move to the left-middle of things, and they would need to have a leader who can bring in young voters who, otherwise won't vote at all. And they need to drop the socialist boilerplate altogether.
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You mean, you can't simply diminish the Tory vote?

As I've said before, just leaving that 40% share alone and piling on top of it is the chicken way out. Diminish that rightish vote, and the need for the leftish parties to "work together" becomes redundant. And *both* the Libs and the NDP (and the Greens, too) have the tools to take chips out of that rightish vote...
 
John_Dee said:
Well, I don't disagree, Lucy. After all, I did the same thing myself. I even voted for the Liberals, as much as I've been bad-mouthing them here. And apparently, the Libs are no longer the automatic "safe" vote (in the city, at least) if you simply want to boot out some brutish mouth-frother from the PCs. Times do change, don't they?

But we're not talking about candidates that were merely uninspiring; I think the current crop elicited open revulsion, if not genuine anger, from the electorate. I'm simply saying I can see why some people didn't want to vote for any of them, not even to get rid of trash like Thug Ford. That's not a sentiment I agree with, I hated Ford enough to go out and vote against him even if I didn't like the candidate or party I was forced to vote for in order to accomplish that. But I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that. More often than not, it's not enough to have something to vote against; you need something to vote for.
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I would love to have something to vote for. It has been so long.
 
adma said:
You mean, you can't simply diminish the Tory vote?

As I've said before, just leaving that 40% share alone and piling on top of it is the chicken way out. Diminish that rightish vote, and the need for the leftish parties to "work together" becomes redundant. And *both* the Libs and the NDP (and the Greens, too) have the tools to take chips out of that rightish vote...
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That's marvelous when it works, but without electoral reform and/or a rejigging of the three left of centre parties this province will always be at the mercy of the 18% who voted PC.
 
Irishmonk said:
That's marvelous when it works, but without electoral reform and/or a rejigging of the three left of centre parties this province will always be at the mercy of the 18% who voted PC.
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Then work to diminishing that 18%, rather than accepting it as a permanent, immobile condition. After all, a lot of that 18% has *already* voted otherwise in the past, or continues to do so at other levels of government--and they might still be more amenable than you give them credit for.

But also accept the fact that the PCs will likely never be wiped clean off the map. And even *it* doesn't mean that those apparent PC-for-life jurisdictions truly *are* "for life", or that they're to be scarlet-lettered for their representation. Which Jack Layton knew--which is why, when he was overseeing the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, his technique was to engage-and-listen rather than to shun those whose politics ran opposite to his own. And maybe through such engagement and listening lies the key to "winning over" and setting strategic alliances that transcend party politics...
 
PinkLucy said:
I definitely agree that both Del Duca and Horwath blew it. They have been blowing so many opportunities for the past two years. 😡 https://readpassage.com/the-opposition-blew-the-chance-of-a-lifetime
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Even if they technically *were*, relative to '18, the bigger "losers" in terms of seats and vote share, given the relative expectations t/w the end there still seems something awfully mansplainy about those who really want to drive the "Horwath was the bigger loser than Del Duca" part. Sort of like, "if you, Andrea, didn't think your stinking incumbents were so special that they *all* needed to be reelected, we, the Liberals, would have Official Party Status and a decent caucus by now. But nooo, you just *hadda* make a point for them; and now we're *both* in the same boat, losers to Doug The Drug Thug, bla bla etc etc"
 
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