With the Liberal leadership convention less than two weeks away The Tyee has re-launched its Election Cental “superblog” and I’ve been invited to contribute.
Based in Vancouver, The Tyee is a Web-based news daily designed to provide an alternative media source in a British Columbia media market dominated by corporate conglomerates like CanWest Global. In addition to journalists like Rafe Mair and Will McMartin, bloggers like J. Kelly Nestruck and Jay Currie will also be contributing to Election Central in the lead-up to Montreal, so check it out.
My first contribution is online today:
Ignore the Jelly, Vote for Policy
The last time the Liberals chose electability, they dumped Jean Chretien - and his three majority governments - for Paul Martin. Have they learned their lesson yet? Jeff Jedras isn’t so sure.
(read more)
Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers
The last time the Liberals chose electability, they dumped Jean Chretien - and his three majority governments - for Paul Martin. Have they learned their lesson yet? Jeff Jedras isn’t so sure.
(read more)
12 comments:
How about electibility and policy together - why settle for one.
My problem with this Tyee thing, is that you will be biased toward Dion.
We need UNBIASED articles.
Do you use your forecasting skills to predict sports scores as well?
But anyway, while we all have our biases, I don't think you can say I was biased in this first piece. Nor do I plan to be. I'll let people judge that based on what i actually write though, rather that your predictions.
On electibility and policy yes, we do need both. I think that lately policy and substance is being forgotten once again, and that's a mistake.
"forcasting skills for sports"? What kind of stupid remark is that?
Like sports is as important was what's happening to Canada.
Give me a break.
Oh, and congrats to B.C. Lions - with all the weather problems a little joy doesn't hurt.
I was commenting that since you seem able to predict in advance I'll be biased, I was wondering if you use that same future-telling ability to get rich betting on sports, because with that future telling ability you would know all the scores ahead of time.
Not a biased piece, but given that your tags were put as:
"Tags for this post: dion, electability"
I'd say you were allowed to at least mention Dion's name. But then you talked about POLICY so that meant DION. Nice.
As Warren Kinsella mentioned in his speech to our school on Friday, any blogger who pretends to be unbiased is lying. But honestly, that's not a big deal, since we at least know you're biased.
Now, I do agree that from what I've read you'll be able to be fairly unbiased overall, but there will always be a hint of it. Nothing against you, just the nature of writing and having an opinion.
Congrats on the gig, and good luck with it!
I didn't do the tags. But anyway, you're right petroom, that definitely could be read into it. And I'm sure Gerard supporters could read that as supportive of their guy too.
UW, indeed no one is unbiased. But there's biased, and then there's credulity-stretching bias. While blogging here too I've always aimed for the former, rather than the latter.
Besides, this is blogging. Completely unbiased blogging is just boring. It's about having an opinion.
You're resorting to Peter MacKay type sarcasm - not too impressive.
It's not secret that you are a Dion supporter is it?
Peter McKay-type sarcasm how so?
And no, if it was supposed to be a secret I'm doing a pretty poor job of keeping it, aren't I?
I thought the Tyee post was about whether electability trumped policy.. but what do I know? Did I see Dion's name mentioned anywhere?
That said - and I support Dion myself, since I haven't heard a peep out of the Scott Brison team - it seemed to me, last time I looked at Rae's website, that he did have some policies. I found them a bit too undefined - or perhaps, idealistic is a better term - for my own tastes and without any hint of how they might be paid for; maybe a bit too left for moi.
But... Rae is cerainly a pleasant man in person. So is Dion. I love Dion's ultra-professorial appearance and pinched face... because he's actually got a good sense of humour behind it. But he also has a well-thought-out platform that is very much like Scott's.
Don't these guys have to modify all the fantasy policies anuway, once they get into office? Assuming they do, of course. Or are we choosing the next Liberal dictator?
Penny Rae does have policies. I don't agree with some of them, but nonetheless he has indeed made policy proposals, and only he and Bennett responded to my request for post secondary education policy, although Dion did later address it in a blog interview.
But the fact Bob has been coming out with policy made his comments on its lack of importance in a leadership race all the more baffling.
And sure, not every proposed policy will be implemented verbatim. But it's important to get a sense of what the candidate's priorities are, where they come down on the issues, and just what the heck they propose to do with the job, before we give it to them.
Could it be that Bob Rae meant that - since all the leading candidates have positions most delegates can support - the difference comes down to electability?
I haven't lived in Ontario since the 60s, but a good friend of mine in Toronna tells me that a lot of Ontarians have managed to get over Rae Days. I know I could support Rae.
Heck, if it came down to it, I'd choose even Iggy before I'd vote for Harper or Layton. Although I'd rather not...
BTW does anyone else think that Rae is really running against Iggy more than anyone else? I don't have the impression he and Iggy hang together the way they did in college....
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