Animal’s Daily News, Eh

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This may be the electoral upset of the year.  Canada’s Conservative party has a working majority for the first time in 18 years.  (There is some attempt to explain how 38% is a ‘majority’ in a parliamentary system, but I’m not sure I get it.)  Excerpt:

Conservatives win their first majority in Canada since… forever?

OK, it was only 18 years.

Americans don’t have to bother with coalition governments. We have three elected sections: The presidency, the Senate and the House. If there is a tie in the Senate, the veep casts the deciding vote.

Not so in socialistland where there are greens and nationalists and sorta socialists and real socialists and conservative socialists and the various one-off groups.

In Canada, conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a rare majority after Monday’s election.

His party garnered 38% of the vote.

I know.

That’s not a majority.

Play along, Americans.

Remember our Electoral College is not explainable in less than 500 words.

From the CBC:

Canadian voters have delivered Conservative Leader Stephen Harper his first majority government after five years of governing in a minority situation, CBC News projects. Meanwhile NDP Leader Jack Layton was set to become Official Opposition leader.

More on this from the CBC here.

One of the readers comments astutely notes, “A big taxing, big spending, corrupt Liberal political party led by an ex-Harvard ‘intellectual’ with little practical experience has just been obliterated by market friendly and fiscally conservative leadership. In Canada. America are you watching?”  It’s an interesting observation; I think we’ve had enough Ivy League Presidents.  Of the five Presidents in office since I’ve reached adulthood, four had Ivy League educations.  The fifth was Ronald Reagan.  If the GOP is smart, they’ll look beyond Yale, Harvard and Oxford for the next nominee.

In other news, here is an interesting proposal to end gerrymandering, an ancient practice that pretty much guarantees safe seats for both parties and has in large part created our permanent political class.  Excerpt:

Across the nation, America’s politicos are currently engaged in the artful redrawing of congressional district boundaries for their own benefit. Thus, the voting public is once again faced with the brazen practice of political corruption by its alleged representatives.

The practice of gerrymandering is technically legal, and indeed, will soon celebrate its 200th anniversary in this country. However, it remains the case that, as it is a method of rigging elections to secure office holders against the judgment of the voters, it is a crime against democracy. It is time to end it.

But how can this be done? While it is apparent that weird district shapes are clearly contrived by conspiracies of politicians desiring to disenfranchise the electorate, what objective standard is there for assigning fair boundaries?

Down side:  This proposal expect politicians to enact a policy that reduces their own grasp on power.  I think I have somewhat better odds of spontaneously sprouting wings and flying to Neptune.

  • http://www.studiobrassy.com/brassyblog/ BrassyDel

    I read just a smidge about the Canadian elections on Twitter from some of the Canucks, and apparently they have more than two major parties, so that’s why 38% is a “majority” of the vote. I think it was Kate Beaton that was bemoaning that having too many liberal leaning parties compared to the number of conservative parties split the vote badly.
    Of course, I’m not sure what “liberal” and “conservative” really mean for our Canadian friends.

    • http://www.frombearcreek.com/wordpress Animal

      Canada has always been a smidge to the United States’ left, politically.

      Parliamentary systems do work this way. Here in the U.S. our two big parties form coalitions before the elections; the GOP has the religious right, the fiscal conservatives, libertarians and others. The Democrats have the anti-war left, the Blue Dogs, and the economic Keynesians, among others. The Canadians and most European democracies have parties for each of those groups, and more besides; they form governing coalitions after the election.

      All in all I’m inclined to favor our system, but then I’ve lived with it for fifty years.

  • http://www.studiobrassy.com/brassyblog/ BrassyDel

    I think one of the problems with our two-party system is that the fiscal conservatives and the libertarians are not SOLELY on the right, among other categorizations between the two. For example, I’m a registered democrat but I’m fiscally conservative. I’m more libertarian in many ways, but I’m extremely liberal on social issues and extremely anti-religious right.
    Of course, our age gap leads a lot to our perceptions of each party and why we find ourselves on different sides of the rift even though we agree on many political issues. I don’t vote a party ticket – sometimes I vote Republican and sometimes Democrat. In local elections, I know I’ve voted for Libertarian and Independent candidates as well. When it comes down to it, perception of each parties priorities is a huge factor in how people identify and how they vote. You’ve noted yourself that when the Republicans can leave social issues and especially religious-right propaganda OFF the table, they fair better in elections.

    • http://www.frombearcreek.com/wordpress Animal

      The parties do change over time. I think (and I hope) that you’ll see the GOP move in a more libertarian direction in the next couple of decades.

      In my lifetime the GOP has moved noticeably from the party of country-club bluebloods and religious fundies to the party of small business – what is sometimes referred to as the “Sam’s Club Republicans.” They haven’t moved all the way, but they’ve moved.

      The Democrats have moved from blue-collar union workers, farmers and “Dixiecrats” to a predominantly urban party with a hefty proportion of wealthy urban ideological liberals.

      In both parties all of those elements were already in place. It’s the proportions that shift.

      I generally vote GOP because, on balance, they represent more of what I consider sound public policy. Also, on the Federal level we have an enormous, transcendent issue right now, and that is runaway spending and debt. That, in my estimation, completely overshadows every other consideration right now.