ATrueQuitterNeverWins
ButSheCanStillLobbyVille
Ms. Clark's resignation as leader of her party was pretty much inevitable given the wizardry's penchant for jettisoning any and all liabilities whenever necessary. I mean, heckfire, if they could do it to the Capo nobody is ever safe.
But this business of Clark giving up her seat?
Well, that, in my opinion, is the really big deal here.
Why?
Because the NDP/Green coalition now has a two seat majority until the bye-bye (which can be up to six months down the road).
Which means that, for the fall legislative session at least, the speaker is no longer in play and the coalition can actually get some stuff done.
Now that is the really good good news.
OK?
_____
This development also reinforces how important David Eby's win in PtGrey in 2013 was...The fact that Ms. Clark and the wizardry were too chicken to take him on in 2017 could be now be seen as the real difference...Good on all those kids that didn't back down from the BCL's attempts at voter suppression and helped make it happen 4 years ago!
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NFL Open Thread: Mama mia gabagool edition
44 minutes ago
14 comments:
Maybe Christy is leaving the country for good in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the law..
Maybe Christy will not resign her MLA seat.
Having to show up for work every day, no longer able to go globe trotting on the government's dime, and no longer being the center of attention probably were the deciding factors in her decision to quit.
So where's incentive for a new BC Liberal leader from the rank and file to step forward?
Their fallback position has always Mr. Everything, Rich Coleman, and ta-daaaaa: its been announced that Big Rich will be interim leader.
Given that he has been the de facto leader anyhow, who is surprised.
Her announcement also was accurately reported by Bob Mackin not long after the elections results were completed i.e. the knives were out.
Coleman or Kinsella?
remenber CC and that sick culture in Victoria.?
I bet it took just one flight on a commercial carrier (maybe sitting beside an oil patch worker) instead of on the govt private jet was all it took, CC liked her creature comforts
Maybe Christy could ask the Donald for a Presidential pardon.....
There is no mystery to Clark's resignation as leader and her MLA position. Being the ultimate opportunist and the sudden announcement of resignation, no doubt a new job has been offered and accepted. Clark never makes a move unless there is some benefit to her.
Christy cannot defend in detail against revelations soon to come from opening up the BC Liberal record; she never was capable of anything more than chauvinistic deflection and stock partisan rhetoric because she never was abreast of the detailed operations of neo-right dysmanagement. She promised to hold the Green-Dippers' feet to the flames of accountability when responding to the most pressing question immediately upon her government's fall, and she was undoubtedly up for doing in opposition what she's always done best. But, as moving the public interest ahead requires undoing BC Liberal sabotage, so much of which we are yet fully apprised, the new circumstance is rather more of having her own party's feet held to the fire, and, as evidence of perfidy we've long suspected accumulates , it won't do to persuade voters of BC Liberal correctness and thereby prove beyond a doubt the purity of her chauvinism and indictment of her party's economic charlatanism. Christy's dance on the leadership bubble could not have been long as the party's ostensible offensive strategy transitions to defence of its sordid record. Her stump-whopper approach would risk inadvertent opening of other cans of worms; she had to go for this---and probably a host of other reasons.
It's fun to kick around scenarios in which she might have arrived at resigning her seat. Yet it seems too easy to imagine she left in a snit. Rather, I think, the move agrees well with the defensive strategy the BC Liberals will have to take to survive as a viable party until the next election. While it seems her seat resignation betters the odds that the new government will maintain confidence longer and more easily, it's very likely that the Colemanites reckon their party's existential trial will take that long---at very least. And he should know, unlike Christy.
With, as always, the help of bought-and-paid-for MSM, a by-election and a leadership campaign will surrogate for other, not-so-nice news that the BC Liberals and their backers will have to defend against as the new government judiciously rolls out damning evidence of its predecessor's many breaches of public trust. Much of this will have no persuasive defence and therefore distraction needs priority deployment. Already the post-truth era has perversely legitimized the absurd rejoinder from the beset neo-right movement---and I still consider Christy a master at it long before Trump came along---and, sure enough, we see this style advanced quickly in, for recent example, the BC Liberal reaction to Petronas' probably coordinated announcement that it will back out of it claimed LNG investment: they claim with unabashed absurdity that it was the NDP's fault. It is the reaction of a rabid, cornered skunk.
A by-election and leadership campaign, in contrast, provides an opportunity of hope. I think that's why Christy has done what she did. Through a mixture of skill (she seized the moment when Gordo fell) and luck (Dix's "positive polices" campaign), she bought the BC Liberals an extra six years to conceal their perfidy and cover their tracks---but that's all. Since bombast and chauvinism are inappropriate to the situation, and some legitimate distraction is needed, she's been given the proverbial sandwich wrapped in a roadmap.
if she resigns her seat, she has another job to go to. if not, she has not gotten the soft landing she wants and needs.
flying commercial, omg, the thought of it could make one weep.
if she resigns her seat the NPD/Greens will have time to proceed with their legislative agenda and ought to do it quickly. What maybecome a problem is if both the Greens and NDP want to run a candidate or some one suggests only one party run a candidate.
can not recall this area ever voting anything but Socred or B.C. Lieberal so it may not matter. On the other hand if some very unpleasant information were to come to the notice of all in the province, not that the msm would give voice to it, the voters in the riding may decide to send the B.C. Lieberals a message, but that is doubtful. Hope springs eternal in some ridings.
Horgan should have been the NDP candidate in the 2013 election. He would have become the premier and thus, saved BC. literally billions of dollars and wasted time and energy chasing the all in liberal fantasy of LNG riches. That is the true tragedy. Clark's reign, which she inherited with the departure of Campbell, would have been cut short considerably and she would have been assigned as a footnote to BC political history. Instead she gained status, longivity and almost mythical political genius according to the MSM. In actual fact, it was wasted years for taxpayers and the general public but not for the select few and friends of the inner circle. If only a time machine really existed and certain things could be changed from the past.
Anon above: I backed Horgan, but when Dix won the leadership, I figured he was good enough---the party had elected him. However, when he announced his "positive politics" campaign, I knew immediately we were fucked if we couldn't change his mind quickly. Not even the most venerable and respected Dippers could crack the dome erected around Dix by his odd campaign team Top and Bosenkool (the latter having just been fired as Christy's chief of staff). Even Mike Harcourt, one of the best premiers BC's ever had, tore up his membership card in frustration. Dix' s stubbornness in this regard, and his eventual, desperate Kinder Morgan flip-flop, were cited by Harcourt as proof Dix wasn't ready to govern. With one hand perennially tied behind its back, Dix should have known tying the other one behind the party's back would result in a drubbing.
Horgan was the subject of a whisper campaign at that leadership convention, one that coloured him as a loose cannon and backstreet bully---much too aggressive for the high-minded NDP. I always thought it unfair, but defeating him was, in retrospect, a total disaster for two basic reason, one of which you mention: It afforded the BC Liberals another four years in which to bilk the public purse and hide its tracks, adding billions to BC's debt and practically bankrupting and destroying a number of public enterprises, not to mention irreparable damage to young people's education and certain health-workers.
The second ramifications of Dix's lame campaign was the seminal win by the Greens, their first seat. It did not bode well for the NDP to allow this victory because it legitimized the Greens and presented the danger that they would split the vote in the BC Liberals' favour like they'd done so many times before. Sure enough, that seminal win sprouted two more seats (I told ya so, NDP). Happily, however, the Green-Dipper alliance is good for both party's and for BC. Still, without Dix, we may have never been considering a party with such littl democratic weight wielding such disproportionate power.
Horgan did meet expectation of his detractors by being aggressive----only this time, he used in in response to Christy's baseless hacking smear, and he did it promptly with teeth (the threat of a lawsuit). She never seemed to have recovered after realizing it wasn't going to be a cakewalk like the last time.
Now it looks like adults are running the show, and I couldn't be happier.
The combination of Dix's ill conceived passive campaign strategy and Clark's street fighting political style squandered any NDP advantages in terms of liberal scandals, mismanagement,and insider corruption. Clark needed to be challenged with someone of the caliber of Horgan and who was not held back by any self-righteous handcuffs. Dix was the wrong man at the wrong time. In politics, winning is what matters. Clark obviously understood and practiced that concept. Once power is attained, then the winner can set the agenda for humanitarian causes and high moral crusades. This is where Clark fell short. She understood the first concept but did not follow through on the second. Dix was the complete opposite, to the detriment of the province.
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