This debate format is fucking terrible. Why not just give Wall and Broten boxing gloves instead of having them repeatedly talk over each other for two minutes at a time? Beyond useless.
I’m an NDP supporter but they need to find a way to involve leaders of the Liberal, Green and PC Parties. Democracy and all that.
Brad Wall’s most common refrain: “That’s not true.” Cam Broten’s most common refrain: “You’re not listening.” Brad Wall’s most memorable zinger: It was a weird one but that line about Broten being Trump. Cam Broten’s most memorable zinger: It would’ve been the one about “The bypass is only bypassing Saskatchewan jobs” but he sort of miffed it so instead, I’ll say when he slammed Wall with: “Zif!”
They promoted #skdebate hash tag off the top. Would be interesting to see some analysis of the trends in engagement and response online.
The bad word in that first comment means I probably won’t be a candidate for at least one party anytime soon! 😉 (More thoughts on that to come in a couple weeks.)
Whether you loved him or hated him, you’ll remember him. Of course, that’s mostly because he was a wild-eyed addict who regularly made racist and offensive comments topped by his surreal admission that he used crack while in office.
It’s not a perfect parallel of course but there are echoes of Rob Ford’s “Wealthy Scion of Powerful Family” has politically incorrect appeal to those who are otherwise not political in the success of Donald Trump in the US Republican primaries.
Lots of people online say there’s no way that Hillary can lose to Donald Trump. I’ve seen Rob Ford become Mayor of Toronto – I’m not so certain…
But then I remembered this song about the fall of long-standing communist regimes (Russia, East Germany) from my high school graduation year, way back in 1991, which also seems appropriate today.
Watching the press conference with Raul Castro and Obama while I was home for lunch left me feeling mixed emotions.
Of course, I’m excited about Cuba opening up and becoming more westernized with things like democratic elections, freedom of speech, etc. not to mention that this will hopefully lead to the end of the ridiculous embargo and Cubans will be able to access all manner of consumer goods. Oh, and decent wifi! 😉
But I also worry about too much westernization changing the unique character of the nation – not just their culture and history but something as simple as being one of the few countries in the world without things like McDonalds, Wal-Mart and billboard advertising everywhere you look.
Having been a couple times, I’ll admit that I’m also selfish about how nice it was to have a vacation destination which had mostly Canadians as well as a range of people from across Europe. (Our last visit saw my parents becoming friends with the Justice Minister for a Swiss province if you can believe it. Of course, he’s part of a nationalistic right wing party but nobody’s perfect!) 😉
Results are still coming in but right now, Hillary Clinton is declared in 3 out of 5 “Super Tuesday III” states and leading in two others.
It’s not over yet but if this holds, it’s hard to say how Bernie has any path to the nomination and goes forward from here it becomes much more of a long shot for Bernie to have a shot at the nomination.
So on the assumption that the inevitable may have finally been confirmed today, a couple lists…
Five Reasons I’m Okay With Hillary As Nominee
Hillary has the most realistic chance that’s ever existed for the US to have its first female President. I wish it wasn’t Hillary with all her baggage and faults and with the asterix that this comes after her husband was already President. But coming on the heels of America’s first African-American President, it’s still pretty amazing.
Even if he doesn’t win, Bernie has helped shift the conversation in the US and really opened up many people’s eyes to concepts like universal single-payer healthcare, income inequality and so on. Plus, after eight years of Obama being falsely labeled as a “socialist”, the US has seen what a real socialist looks like and might realise it’s not that scary.
Beyond that, because of his support among young people, there is real potential for progressive, grassroots-driven politics to grow in the future. If Bernie’s numerous supporters can stay involved in more local contests, they could still end up with a great deal of power (I think one of the ways Obama failed was to not keep his supporters engaged and active as well as he could’ve.)
We’ll always have Michigan – one of the greatest upsets in political history!
What has already been easily the craziest, most topsy-turvy election campaign I’ve ever seen promises to be even wilder with a looming Hillary-Trump showdown (not withstanding what might still happen on the Republican side as they figure out how to handle Trump and head into a potentially brokered convention.)
Five Reasons I’m Disappointed
Obviously, it’s not as close to home but this loss still brings back memories of the last Sask NDP leadership race where an insurgent, outsider, leftist candidate inspired many young people and made incredibly effective use of social media while also doing incredibly well with grassroots fundraising but still came up short against an establishment candidate with deep roots in the party and much support from other establishment figures including someone closely connected to a former leader.
There are a lot of people who got seriously involved in politics for the first time ever during this race and this loss will be heartbreaking for them.
Possibly even worse, because Bernie Sanders’ had a grassroots-driven campaign which didn’t take money from corporate donors, many people gave great sums of money. Hopefully no one gave more than they could afford to give, even if they were really “feeling the Bern” and got caught up in the hype.
As Shea saw on Reddit, someone said “The rest of the world knows the US isn’t having an election, it’s having an IQ test. And with Trump and Clinton winning, the US is failing” (at least from the perspective of most countries in the developed world.)
If Bernie does drop out or ends up with no reasonable path to the nomination, this race, which has been an absolute obsession of mine, suddenly becomes a lot less all-consuming of my time (hmm, that’s probably a good thing, not a bad thing, come to think of it!)
As the latest Democratic Town Hall beings on CNN, I thought I’d review a pretty bad week for the Clinton campaign…
She had three major unforced errors in very short order this week:
In an interview after Nancy Reagan’s funeral, Hillary said Reagan led the fight against AIDS in the 1980’s which is total bullshit and has angered the LGBT community. Clinton apologizes and says she mis-spoke.
There are three competing theories – all equally bad for Hillary – about what happened:
a) Hillary actually did mis-speak by trying to be overly kind and confused Nancy Reagan’s late-in-life conversion to stem cell research advocate as a last ditch effort to cure Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s Disease with imagined or mis-remembered AIDS activism? (I mean, both diseases do start with “A” and we all mis-speak or mis-remember at times.)
b) She literally can’t help trying to be the “smartest person in the room” and tried to give a lecture/history lesson rather than just taking the safest course of action which would be to say something incredibly generic like “As another First Lady, I admire Nancy Reagan’s dedication to public service and her role in American public life.”
c) She was trying to play some Level 10 Brain Chess by giving a backhanded non-compliment to a long-time Republican counterpart as a way to contrast her own activism as First Lady with Nancy Reagan’s non-action as First Lady.
Hillary tried to slam Bernie Sanders by saying she “didn’t know where he was when she was trying to pass universal healthcare in 1993.” Sanders absolutely destroys her with his Twitter reply.
Now it’s just waiting to see if these unforced errors will hurt her in the next big primary day on Tuesday.
