Clark ran the most right-wing, Republican-style campaign Canada has ever seen.
by Bill Tieleman
“Politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth.”
— Economist Paul Krugman
Last night’s victory by Premier Christy Clark and the BC Liberals will go down in British Columbia political history as one of the biggest upset victories ever. Unfortunately, it will also go into the books as a triumph of fear over hope, of choosing incredibly negative, personal attack ads over policy and vision, and a revolting example that using taxpayer dollars to advertise your own party cause works.
Bitter? You bet.
The BC NDP must bear its own share of the blame — it flailed instead of fighting back.
No, bitterness comes only when the other team plays dirty and never faces the penalty they deserve — losing! And that’s what happened in this election. Clark’s team ran the most right-wing, Republican-style campaign Canada has ever seen.
The BC Liberals were relentlessly nasty, using wealthy allies to air slurs against NDP leader Adrian Dix while spending voters' own money to promote the party with a collection of demonstrably false claims about BC’s budget, job creation and debt. And yet, it worked.
For that, the BC NDP must bear its own share of the blame. It allowed a 20 percent lead to disappear in a failed campaign that flailed instead of fighting back.
Despite the Harmonized Sales Tax betrayal, the BC Rail scandal and Christy Clark being the most hated premier in Canada, the NDP blew it.
And now BC will suffer the consequences of electing a leader who is more vicious than visionary.
About Bill Tieleman
Bill Tieleman, president of West Star Communications, is one of BC's best known political commentators and communicators. Read political commentary from Bill every Tuesday in 24 hours, Vancouver's free weekday newspaper (also online) and in The Tyee — BC's award-winning online magazine.
2 Responses to “BC Liberals’ nasty campaign leaves bitter taste”
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That the BC Liberals ran dirty surprises you? Perhaps more telling is that it surprises you that it worked. This no negative campaigning nonsense has been tried before and it has proven a loser in every case. Leave the feel-good campaigns to the charities – politics is all-out war.
The results are in. The majority of voters do not care enough about their society to learn how power works against them. They are happy to believe the slogans paid by wealthy transnational interests rather than think about how this affects the quality of life for them and their family. They want to believe in their own superiority, their natural common sense, rather than find out how the operating system has kept the masses oppressed and ignorant. They want to believe that "Jobs" and "Economy" will be good for them without understanding how power sets the terms and conditions they must work under.
The majority of voters don't want to think about their relationship to social justice, or their role in community building, and so corporate funded media campaigns keep them mesmerized and oppressed. And don't think it will be status quo. We have told the funding interests we don't care about our province, our neighbours, or our nation. We only want to be entertained. So they can do as they like with us.
We are now Bangladesh. We are now, in narrative, a third world petro state and the operating system is designed so our elected leaders are powerless. The land will be destroyed by pipelines and tankers and we will pay the corporations to do it.
Our teachers and healers will burn out and our schools become warehouses for our kids while we earn twenty cents an hour in dangerous conditions. Our hospitals will be kept for those who can afford to pay for them while we die in toxic swamps. And if the poisons don't get us we will be too overcome with rage to organize and cooperate.
Over the last thirty years the wise and intelligent have warned us. Yes a minority have marched, protested and contributed to rescuing the human experiment. But the majority have dismissed these efforts for the fleeting giggles of the Dragon's Den. Our communities will descend into soap opera dramas. Eventually we will pull out each other's hair, gouge out our neighbours' eyes and attach bombs to our own underwear.
All because we were afraid of the word socialism. All because we became afraid of our own power believing that anything we do for humanity, community and society, is bad for us.
The fangs of capitalism have bled humanity of its worth and integrity. It has made us idiots in our own living rooms and we voted for its end game.