BC NDP...Following Obama's Unfortunate Lead.

RealProgressIsNot

AThreeLeggedStoolVille

Look.

I understand that John Horgan, Geoff Meggs and the BCNDP braintrust first had gain and then consolidate power.

After all, as our old friend Ian Reid used to say, if you're not in government you can't do a darned thing.

However, like many others on the left side of the ledger around here, I remember all the promises of hope and change that preceded the provincial Dippers' razor thin victory in 2017.

But along the line something went wrong.

And it is, in my opinion, something that has gone wrong with most, if not all, center-left governments since the days that Bill Clinton made triangulation famous and Tony Blair convinced a whole lot of folks that 'new' Labour was still actually, you know, Labour. 

Case in point, the government of Barack Obama.

Cory Doctorow explains:

.... (In 2008) Obama's grassroots was the most successful netroots in history. Talented coders and digital strategists figured out how to leverage the internet to identify, mobilize and coordinate volunteers across the country. And while netroots activists did their work across the whole internet, their home base was a server the Obama campaign controlled. Once Obama won, they switched that server off.

You see, the rabble is useful when you're out there, trying to turn voters out to the polls. But if you plan to spend your term in office playing eleven dimensional chess, you don't want the mob jostling your elbow and shouting in your ear.

If FDR's (possibly apocryphal) motto was "I want to do it, now make me do it"; Obama's was "I want to do it, now go away." Rather than surrounding himself with the great unwashed, Obama created a cabinet of technocrats, grownups from the upper ranks of industry and the consultant class...

But what about 'Obamacare' (i.e. 'The Affordable Care Act') you may be asking?

Well, as Doctorow also points out, in his effort to reach eleventh level technocratic triangulatory Valhalla instead of going all in with a version of 'Medicare For All', Obama pretty much ensured that even his signature legislative achievement would ultimately fizzle out for the great majority of folks that voted for his initial promise of  'Hope and Change':

...The Affordable Care Act was a carefully triangulated compromise, one that guaranteed a massive flow of public cash to America's wildly profitable health insurance monopoly and steered clear of any socialist whiff that Americans would get their care from the government.

The ACA was an technocrat's iron-clad dream policy. It would work! After all, it "aligned the incentives" of healthcare investors and "harnessed markets" to drive efficiency...

{snip}

That's not how it worked out. Prior to ACA's passage, 85% of Americans had health insurance. Today, it's 90%. That's not nothing! 5% of the US is more than 16m people. But what about the 85% – 282m people – who were insured before the ACA? Their insurance costs have doubled – from an average of $15,609 for a family of four in 2009 to $30,260 today. Obama promised that ACA would lower the average family's insurance bill by $2,500/year – but instead, insurance costs increased by some $15,000...

And what and who did just enough US'ian's vote for after Obama?

****

So.

Getting back to our current provincial situation...

What is a center-left government like the current BCNDP regime of David Eby and former Visionista Matt Smith to do?

Well, how about they stop with the half measures, prioritize, and enact signature pieces of legislation that really matter. 

And then get out there and explain what they are doing and why - long and hard.

Oh.

And one more thing.

Don't be afraid to lose.

After all, while Dave Barrett's government may have only lasted three years, almost half a century later we still have ICBC, the ALR, a Human Rights Code, Pharmacare, Question Period in the Ledge, Hansard, and (something my kids will be forever thankful for) French Immersion.

OK?

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Image at the top of the post?...From 2012 at Bear Flat in the Peace River Valley...Ken Boon, writing last year in the Alaska Highway News, explains...

Don't get me wrong...I understand why Mr. Horgan had to go out his way to demonstrate that he was not, as the usual suspects clamoured to tag him, 'Dr. No'...It's just that it's also important to make 'Yes' happen in ways that truly matter.

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