My Two Cents on the By-Elections

Yadda. Yadda.

There are many theories, lots of spin and loads of partisanship out there in the MSM and blogworld about Monday's by-elections. I don't want to be long-winded about the elections, but as my title says, here's my two cents worth.

Alphabetically:

Desenthe-Missinippi-Churchill River

* Most of the entire blogworld, the Liberal Party and the MSM know how I felt about this riding before e-day. You can't tell riding membership who they are going to have as a candidate. It just doesn't make for good campaigning and it sure as hell isn't very democratic. Two more words to point to the problem -RALPH GOODALE.

* We didn't get out the vote. I suspect we had a group of people that chose to stay home.

*Solution - We need to rethink our policy for all of western Canada, and, as Bob Rae pointed out on Don Newman's show yesterday, engage more people. Engage Dippers, Greens and Progressive Conservatives. That would include David Orchard. Wouldn't it Bob?

Toronto Centre

* The team on the ground was solid. Bob didn't take too much for granted and hit the doors and the events.

* The percentage of popular vote rose from the previous election.

* All in all, proof that the LPC(O) and its members are alive and well and battle-ready.


Vancouver Quadra

* Oh boy. Talk about heart attacks! It would appear that some of us Liberals took that riding for granted.

* A loss here in Mark Marissen's backyard would have set off a very different set of conversations than the ones we are having today my friends.

* Again, we need a vision for western Canada. In BC we need to speak clearly and strongly about our environmental and aboriginal plans. Short of Kyoto and Kelowna, what is our new vision. Stephane has begun to hint at it with his carbon initiative.


Willowdale

* I was there for this one, so I guess I can say everything went to plan. Hundreds of willing and capable volunteers were out in full force to help Martha bring out the vote.

* Again, the Liberal Party is alive and well in Ontario. We were ready and we didn't take anything for granted.

* Martha increased the percentage of the popular vote over the 2006 figure.

* The Green Candidate beat the NDP candidate, signalling the fall of the NDP as a place to park a vote.


Overall:

*I can say that as Liberals in Ontario, we were quite satisfied with our brand Monday night.

*I feel Quadra is an alarm bell going off that we can't hit the snooze button on.

*Sask showed us that we can't be the party of yesterday and dictate who the best candidate is for grassroots Liberals in ridings. It's a democracy and in democracies we vote for our leaders.

*The Green party has set the tone for the NDP's next general campaign and signalled that the Dippers can't just attack Liberals anymore. It's getting them nowhere. My guess is the Dippers will lose 10 or more seats and be searching for a new leader after the next campaign.

*The Conservatives gained a seat. They can crow. They also learned about interfering with a candidate as they finished 4th in Toronto Centre. That's right. FOURTH. And in Willowdale they are still non-existent. A true signal that in the GTA CONS are nowhere near figuring it out yet. Throw that in with Flaherty ruining any other chances they may have had, and most of the 905 seats will come back Liberal in the general election.

*A big thank you to our four candidates. The Liberals ran 75% female candidates, and elected 66% of those, in this by-election. That fit in well with Stephane's plan I'd say.

The only question I guess that remains to be answered now is when is the next election?