Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Some thoughts on Cherniak's be Good Bloggers Post

Cherniaks comments are in red. My responses are in black. His entire post can be found here.

http://jasoncherniak.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-are-you-doing-to-help.html

>>>> Liberals in Ottawa tell us we're not ready for an election yet.

I agree. The Liberals would get killed if an election was held today.

>>>> What does that mean? Nobody except the decision makers can be sure.

Bullocks! The reasons are as clear as day. The Liberals have no platform to speak of, have dismal fund raising numbers, have nothing in the bank at the riding level, have a leader who still struggles mightily with English, they have not moved up in the polls in 2 years and they punted away the only wedge issue, viz., Afghanistan, that might have worked for them. How you managed to argue against those calling an election without pointing this out is amazing.

>>>>> However, as I argued yesterday, I don't think that should matter to a grassroots Liberal.
It sure as hell should.

>>>>> Instead of asking why we aren't ready, all grassroots Liberals - including bloggers - should ask themselves what they have done to make us ready.

Jason the bloggers are simply pointing out the obvious. The Liberal Party can not continue on like this; their credibility is being undermined daily. That means that however threadbare their platform and however many their problems if the party will not commit to change, then it might as well go now. Things are not going to get any better, indeed only worse. Alternatively the party will have to commit to, at a minimum, a policy convention this summer.

>>>> Let me give you an analogy. There are some Liberal caucus members who like to whisper to media. Many of us bloggers have questioned their judgement about complaining in public. We recognize that it does no good for caucus to question the direction of the Liberal Party. Why is it any different for bloggers?

This strikes me akin to saying the following. There are players on the Canucks who are not shy about publicly criticizing their teammates and management. It is widely recognized that this hurts the team. Why is it any different when Canucks fans criticize management and players alike? The fans criticisms do nothing to help the team win.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Might as well be teh bloggin tories....

Red Tory said...

Thanks for taking Jason to task for his patently absurd remarks.

Anonymous said...

I personally think an election might be coming in spring. I also want an election soon but am willing to wait a bit after by-election and before the budget implementation is passed. So I am backing off from calling for an election for now.

RuralSandi said...

I agree Jason should have been taken to task on his statements. I do disagree about the platform issue. They have one but are not bringing it out until an election, if an when it happens. If they did it prior to campaigning you know darn well Harper would destroy it or copy and rename it in some way. I would be suicide to bring their platform/policies out right now.

Remember - Harper didn't bring out his platform in the last election until campaign time - making an announcement each day.

Koby said...

As I said previously, Martin’s mad as hell tour was still going strong in the fall of 2005. He was for example busy firing Dingwall for no good reason. The Conservatives had every reason to let the good times role. Why announce policy when your opponent is busy blasting holes in his foot? Of course the Liberals too waited until Election time to role out new polices and how did that work out for them? The policy proposals got lost underneath a mountain of bad media coverage. Campaigns are not the time to role out bold policy for the simply fact that everyone waits until election time to make policy announcements and after awhile even big ones seem like white noise.

By the way, tell me with a straight face that Liberals were right to wait until January 2006 to propose banning head guns. The proper time to announce it was in the fall as part of throne speech in the fall.

The point is that the Liberals are in an entirely different situation the Conservatives were in the fall of 2005. The Conservatives are not a bunch of Martinite masochists and unlike the Conservatives the Liberal fund raising numbers are terrible. It is pie in sky nonsense to believe that if only the brass where able to stumble across some new and wonderful way of asking people for money that the Liberal coffers would suddenly be full. The only way the Liberal fund raising numbers are going to increase is if they introduce some bold new policy and the only way they are going to boost the moral of the troops is if they promise and deliver on change. Indeed the problem with the Dion Liberals is whatever they trotted out as being bold and beautiful has been the same old repackaged shit that we already had under Martin, their whole plan to fight poverty for example, or they tend to be the very kind of policies that Conservatives will copy, for example a “dramatic” cut in the corporate tax rate. The Liberals are delusional if they think they can out tax cut the Tories by the way. The Dion Liberals steadfastly refuse to introduce polices that are 1) new, 2) bold, 3) readily understandable 4) not likely to be copied by the Conservatives in million years, 5) a clear alternative to what the Conservatives are offering. As for the notion that they have all kinds of goodies waiting to be unveiled come election time, I say too late, they will get lost in the shuffle of a campaign and I do not believe them anyway.