Saturday, March 03, 2007

Can The Libs and Dippers Both Win?

NoNeedToUnite
SelectiveSeatingVille


In the comments to the last post on the Big Blue Slime Machine a correspondent who goes by the monicker of 'Get Used To It' suggested that the Liberals and the NDP could both pick up seats in B.C. at the expense of the Cons if they would both just get a little more selective about which ridings they put money and strong candidates into.

In my naive way, I responded thusly:

Excellent point, but.....what if the NDP had managed to pull off Van Kingsway last time out? I mean, then we wouldn't have that very fine fellow Mr. Emerson to deal with, whose act is especially tough to stomach on a retail level (I know this because I live right down the street from his riding office).

And here's what 'Get Used' fired back:

Ian Wadell has tried to win twice in what has been a safe liberal riding for the past decade and a half , there was no indication that Emerson would ever do this. This is exactly what i am talking about. NDP should stop chasing Liberal seats. Liberals need seats in the West to make them a credible alternative at the national level. NDP already has all of Burnaby, New West and East Van.

Now that's good solid stuff and, in spite of myself (and my disdain for Mr. Emerson), I found my head bobbing up and down as I read it.

And it only got better from there:


The real gains for NDP could come at the expense of the Cons and they are not putting even a minimal effort in making sure that happens e.g. they went after the Liberal seat of Victoria with a strong candidate but right next to that riding Gary Lunn, arguably the strongest Tory candidate on the Island won with just 37% percent of the vote while the combined LIB/NDP vote was 52%.



Wow.

Can you imagine? That would have shut out the Cons completely on 'The People's Republic of VanIsle'.

Not only that, but we would have been spared the embarrassment of all that babble about the inevitable liberation of diesel fuel via nuclear explosion.

And then, to cap it all off, 'Get Used' gave us a rapid fire round-up mixed in with a national perspective.


The same story in so many other ridings - Pitt Meadows-Maple ridge-mission went Con because of vote spliting between NDP and LIBS, NDP should target ridings like that not Fleetwood-port kells or Vancouver Kingsway, stop hurting the liberals and start hurting the cons, thats what really matters. There are at least 5-7 seats that Cons don't deserve in BC. They could be reduced to just 10 odd seats if the NDP develops a real strategy, this would hurt the cons badly elsewhere in Urban West(especially Winnipeg) if it becomes a trend (i.e cons getting only a third of BC seats every time)...also it brings the total seat count of the Conservatives down by at least 7 which would be a disaster for them in case they are close to a majority, since Liberals have a slight edge in ON and Conservatives are at 45, while Bloc is blocking a great deal of Quebec seats; also if the Cons gain seats in ON, it would not be more than 10 seats. So if they lose 7 in BC that wipes off their gains in ON.

Another scenario would be if Libs and Cons are both close to a minority, Liberals will need every single seat they can get in BC to stay on top in total seat count. But I guess NDP has too many Union leaders sitting in the lower mainland that want to be MP's, so they ignore seats like Kamloops, Saanich Gulf Islands, Pitt Meadows- Maple ridge-Mission, Nanaimo-Alberni and a few others where only they can beat the Conservatives, and could do so easily as Liberal voters there would be much more willing to switch over to the NDP and top brass of the Liberals recognizes that in BC, by putting their resources elsewhere. Thats how the NDP won Skeena-Bulkley Valley and Southern Interior ridings.

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Now I don't know if 'Get Used' is a working Pol (there's no Email for me to check on this one).

But, regardless, there sure is a lot worth considering there, especially if we were able to couple this kind of thing with a wave of hardnosed, retail level strategic voting.

OK?

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