See bottom of post for an update.
Many politically active people in BC are grieving right now and there is much angst and blame being laid. I personally have experienced this process and will be for some time to come, well, probably for the rest of my life.
I’m not sure which stage I’m in today yet, but I have passed the disbelief stage for sure.
I may still be working on assigning blame. My first, knee jerk reaction was to blame the Greens for vote splitting. I apologise to my Green friends for that, it wasn’t your fault and you have every right to vote your conscience. I can’t stress that enough.
I decided that the blame belongs first to Adrian Dix, for he threw that election in a spectacular way, with the full help of his top campaign advisors, specifically Brian Topp and NDP President Moe Sihota.
Looking back, Adrian Dix seemed to come from nowhere to take the leadership away from John Horgan, who I believe would have led the party to the proper conclusion, power. Many of us who followed that excercise were surprised and frankly dismayed that such an easy target was chosen to lead the party. With good reason. There were vague accusations of vote stuffing that seemed to be quickly supressed.
At this point I’d like to digress for a moment and point out the fact that the last federal leadership campaign for the NDP was just as shady, with the Ddos attack on the voting system and the installation of right wing Thomas Mulcair, snatching the victory from Nathan Cullen. The reason I bring this up is to make a prediction for the next Federal Election. Mulcair will lose it. He was installed to split the vote from Trudeau. Having said that, it does not matter which party wins, they are all beholden to the same elite cabal.
Now, back to BC. Brian Topp was called in to run the Dix campaign. Topp is business partners with Ken Boessenkool, ex PMO staffer and Clark campaign staffer, also of the Manning Centre for Supressing Democracy. Ian Reid wrote an excellent post on his blog here . Even more fascinating are the comments following his story. Alison at Creekside also offers some insight as to the incestuous relationships behind political campaigns.
While I started out mourning the loss of perhaps the most important election in BC history, I have transferred that grief to mourn democracy in general. In fact, I have concluded that we have never been a democracy, it is a myth drilled into our impressionable young minds at public school in order to train us to accept our enslavement.
Having come to this conclusion, I cannot escape the fact that the only way we will save what’s left of our beautiful homeland is to fight for it. Literally.
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I absolutely blame the Greens. Fuck conscience. Progressives don’t get it. We are living in a society where conservative values are outpacing our progress. We are in deep doodoo and our first priority is to oust the conservatives from power. This is not a time for selfishness. Yes, Adrian Dix is not the magnetic personality that the BC NDP needs. What the party need(ed) is messaging. None of our prog or centrist parties understand this. It’s ‘conscience’ and ‘don’t play dirty’ and ‘be the nice guy.’ Uh uh. Doesn’t work that way, baby. Look at the shit Obama is in trying to play nice with his opposition. Reality is a bitch. It used to be what liberals prided themselves in being – realistic. No more.
Kim Reply:
May 17th, 2013 at 5:28 PM
I hope you’ll get over blaming over parties for Adrian Dix throwing the election and see it for what it is, an inside job. A coup.
Kim Reply:
May 17th, 2013 at 5:31 PM
other parties, sorry.
Kim Reply:
May 19th, 2013 at 4:55 PM
The Greens I’ve spoken to swear they would not have voted NDP and I believe them. You can’t expect people to vote against thier conscience, just because you think they should. I’ve been through all of this with them and they are right.
I understand where you are coming from and I don’t expect to change your mind. We all have our own belief systems and grieving process.
I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I am sure of one thing. This will be used in the next federal election until progressives can put aside ego and vote strategically. What are the chances of that happening? Slim to none, in my view.
I can’t corroberate the Greens offer to vote strategically, it was mentioned in passing by a Green voter. I’ll post a link if I find one.
Jymn Reply:
May 19th, 2013 at 4:29 PM
So, you’re saying the Greens had nothing to do with the Liberals’ victory? Adrian Dix is not a magnetic personality and had no real platform. He was bad, the Libs have an army of Con soldiers. Yes, it might have been a coup, but let me ask again: So, you’re saying the Greens peeling votes from the NDP had nothing to do with the Liberals’ victory? There is more than enough blame to go around.
Jymn Reply:
May 19th, 2013 at 4:35 PM
I thought this was interesting:
http://bit.ly/10eDKDK
As for your statement: “I have heard that the Greens approached the NDP about co-operation prior to the campaign and the NDP weren’t interested.”
I’d like to see more information on this incident.
I have, for a very long time, seen Western Democracy as little more than an exercise in legitimation of capitalism. And this view is not necessarily a new or radical view. For example, the American anti-slavery activist Reverend Charles Edwards Lester (who was by no means a radical in the Marxist or socialist sense) wrote a book in 1841 entitled The Glory and Shame of England in which he blatantly says that the “ruling-class” only concedes democracy and reform to the degree that it won’t threaten the established order. (Read the book if you can because given the year it was written it is a remarkable document.) As activist interested in equality and justice we just have to begin at the assumption that our gains are only tentative and limited in scope and could be lost at any moment. Unfortunately, the rich and powerful know that people are easily shepherded into compliance and will very seldom vote for solutions that undermine established power.
Kim Reply:
May 17th, 2013 at 11:45 PM
Especially in the absence of a free Press and freedom of information.
Great post Kim. We feel betrayed. If people knew about the “Topp Kool” relationship to the Liberals / Conservatives / Manning Center (to suppress democracy) / Fraser Institute… why did we not hear about this Kool Topp relationship sooner? Why are we only hearing about it now? We would not have offered to scrutineer or deliver fliers or anything else, if we had known about this. We wonder now, if our hopes for a tanker free coast or anything else would have been realized had we elected Mr.Dix as Premier? If it’s not fraud – what is it? Who pays Topp and Kool? the Liberals or the NDP?
Kim Reply:
May 17th, 2013 at 11:42 PM
Great questions.
i won’t let the Greens off the hook.
voting for themselves in Pt Grey was totally stupid.
we have seen good candidates go down to the rt wing in other elections too
so much for co-operation eh,Elizabeth!
Kim Reply:
May 18th, 2013 at 1:12 AM
I have heard that the Greens approached the NDP about co-operation prior to the campaign and the NDP weren’t interested.
The arguement that the Green vote would automatically transfer to the NDP is flawed.
You can’t blame another Party for the lack of Campaign effort by Dix and his staff and the poor advice they followed that lost them a sure win. This was an inside job.
I understand your disappointment, Kim. From a distance, it sounds like Dix didn’t deal with Clark’s Nasty Campaign. It’s depressing to think that nastiness is the key to success.
Kim Reply:
May 18th, 2013 at 1:33 PM
There is so much hinging on the leadership decisions of the BC Government in the coming mandate Owen, it goes beyond disappointment. It seems to me like the NDP have been infiltrated in the same way that the BC Liberals were in 1996 by Gordon Campbell, by stealth. They installed a weak leader with baggage and delusions of grandeur, doctored some polls to make the electorate complascent and unleashed the Lieberal spin machine.
Encana, Gwyn Morgan, Harper, the mailroom boy for Chevron, could not afford an NDP win. So they bought the election. I have heard that Clark’s first phone calls upon winning were placed to Harper and Redford. As goes BC, so goes Canada in the next election. This may seem like sour grapes to you Owen, but to me it’s a warning and a prediction.
It would be useful to know who hired Topp and who decided to keep him when he launched his business partnership with Boessenkool and Guy.
I’m not so much depressed as I am growing angry.
how many rallies and blockades for decades have we chanted: “the people united will never be defeated
we were NOT united and we were defeated