Day One of Year Zero

Let's begin with a quote from The Tyee today:

"Stephen Harper won the election, but make no mistake -- yesterday this was a country created and defined by Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas and Pierre Trudeau; this morning Canada belongs to Preston Manning."

I have seen an estimate of the popular turnout at 61.4% of eligible voters - that's a tad higher than the 59% or so in the 2008 election, but still not an overwhelming mandate from Da Peep-hole.

Also, once again we come to the fatal mismatch between voter numbers and seats occupied (vs. the number "due" them in a simple rep-by-pop system (just for comparison, I know that is not how the game is played, nor how it will ever be played).

2008
Harperites: 38% and 143 seats (117)
Liberals: 26% and 76 seats (80)
BQ: 10% and 50 seats (31)
NDP: 18% and 37 seats (55)
Green: 7% and 0 seats (22)

2011
Harperites: 39.6% and 167 seats (122)
NDP: 30.6% and 102 seats (94)
Liberals: 18.9% and 34 seats (58)
BQ: 6% and 4 seats (18)
Green: 3.9% and 1 seat (12)

So 39.6% of the 61.4% of eligible voters who voted = 24.3% of all the people who could have voted, voted for Harper. So the one who has the support of fewer than 1 in 4 of us gets to tell everyone what to do. Well, that's politics - the world is run by those who show up, at the right time and place.

I was glad to see the BQ destroyed, and am hopeful it's dead-dead-dead forever, but I also hope the NDP, with over half its members now from Quebec, can avoid the appearance of having been absorbed by the BQ. The talent pool Jack Layton has to splash around in is also woefully shallow. I do not think they will be an effective Opposition (though it may hardly matter, Harper governed as if there were no opposition before the election, now he doesn't even have to be polite to them). And yes, the NDP will have to move even further to the right than they've moved in the last 10 years. Not a good thing.

Both Ignatieff and Duceppe have resigned, having failed to win even their own seats. I'm only mildly curious as to who might replace the Igster.

I was glad to see Gary Lunn unseated, but I do not think Elizabeth May will be a good MP for me and my riding - she will be too busy being the Green Party's national MP. And having two NDPs and a Green MP in the Victoria area probably means no Federal money coming into the region at all, except for whatever the Navy base might need.

And I am awed at what, in the end, has proven to be an amazingly effective and totally cynical piece of politicking on Harper's part. With the ethics scandals dangling out there (and I am sure he knew about them, never-a-sparrow-shall-fall) he all but goaded Iggy and Jack into this election, knowing that they had far more to lose than he did - at worst he would have come out with a reduced minority. He used the attack ads. He framed the discourse from the beginning. And, in the final weekend, he appealed to fear in Ontario and stampeded Liberals into the Harper fold, lest the Socialist boogeyman (who never really existed) get out from under the bed. It goes to show two things: that at crunch time, the Liberal party will tip centre-right rather than left; and that what happens west of the Lakehead still really doesn't matter that much - the issue was decided by the time the polls closed in Ontario and everything else was just gravy for that big chicken-fried majority.

Give the lizard-man his due, he knew what he wanted to get and now he's got it.
And from now on we're going to get it good and hard, to paraphrase Mencken.

So, until some time in October, 2015... that's all folks.