Pete's Viewpoint

Voters did not re-elect Christy Clark into another term of government. Voters did not elect the NDP into power. Voters did not vote for any 'coalition' arrangement. Voters elected a minority parliament, and by extension, told said MLA's to work together. NDP learned that lesson. Green Party learned that lesson. One (now former) BC Liberal MLA got that lesson. Christy Clark, Rich Coleman and the rest of the BC Liberal caucus did not learn. After the dust settled that produced the 43-41-3 legislature, two parties figured out that they were going to have to give a little on what they wanted in order to make government work. The BC Liberals had other plans. In one of the most cynical stunts ever, Christy Clark offered up a throne speech that mirrored much of what the NDP and Green Party had campaigned on. Oh, it wasn't because the BC Liberals had a change of heart, it was because they needed to pull at least one opposition vote away from the NDP/Green side to pas...

Say what you wish about Christy Clark's "integrity", but her desperate moves to either retain power or trigger an election were motivated by larger concerns. Hear me out. Since 2005, the BC Liberals have enjoyed a fractured vote on the left. 2001 was their only election win where their support exceeded 50% of the popular vote. Since then, both Campbell and later Clark learned the dark arts of playing one progressive party against the other. In 2017, it failed. Yes, the BC Liberals got just over 40% of the vote and 43 seats (one short of a technical 'majority'), but the combined NDP/Green vote was over 57%. Its true that not all Greens would vote NDP if pushed. But a far larger would go orange than BC Liberal. And this exposes a problem for the BC Liberals. The lesson of which takes us back to 1952 where the established right-of-centre parties were trying to keep the growing CCF from winning an election. As you see, the CCF in fact won the first round vot...

I hope Hillary Clinton wins on November 8. I hope she clobbers Donald Trump in the popular vote, and the electoral votes. I hope Democrats win a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, and retake the majority in the house. I hope Democrats win state houses up for grabs, gubernatorial contests so that gerrymandering can be rolled back. I hope Hillary wins, not because I'm particularly won over by her, but that it proves that America isn't insane. To be clear, Hillary is a flawed candidate. She's proven more adept at the game and not the results. That's why she lost to Obama in '08 but why she'll win against Trump. I would have preferred Bernie Sanders as the Democratic candidate, but that's just not the way it goes. Mostly, if Hillary Clinton wins, she will force the Republican party to burn itself to the ground in order to start again. Republicans weren't always like this. They're the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. When organized and moderate...

VOX media contributor Ezra Klein makes a case that Trump is a losing candidate for the GOP. He demonstrates this using a chart that prominently reveals the billionaire losing ground to Hillary Clinton. No chart showing what a Trump vs Sanders contest would look like. Just Hillary. The trouble is that this sort reporting is exactly the kind of problem in American politics that Bernie Sanders is running against. The fact that Sanders runs the table on Trump better than Hillary proves this in spades. Bernie Sanders attracts an independent and progressive libertarian voters that have no use for Hillary Clinton. This is exactly how Barack Obama was able to upend Hillary in 2008. He was not the Democrat establishment's first choice; they wanted Hillary then too. But Barack Obama was able to appeal to a not-so-partisan moderate and independent while Hillary could not. "Republicans for Obama" were a real thing and turned out to vote for him: winning red states like North C...

Spoiler alert: I can't vote in any US election, primary or otherwise, being a Canadian citizen. But that doesn't stop me from saying that if I were American, Bernie would be my choice. Its not that I dislike Hillary Clinton, its that she is representative of a political machine and philosophy that is broken. Don't get me wrong, I identify with many planks she represents, but the political baggage she carries is the same trash that's infected so many other otherwise well-meaning politicos over the generation. I'm not generally a high-tax kinda guy. But I don't necessarily have a problem paying them. What I oppose is how my tax dollars are spent from time to time. Bernie isn't advocating trillions of dollars in "new" free stuff. In fact, its not that at all. He is just stating that the free stuff handed out by the other folks is not the free stuff he believes as relevant priorities in today's world. Bernie calls for free college education, ca...