[zamler]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

I’m not saying you’re wrong, but we are truly in a bleak place as an electorate if our response to the bizarre, unpredictable and frequently unethical behaviour of our current premier is to go “yeah, but I didn’t get a good enough sales job from the OTHER side.”

We have only one way to express our displeasure with Smith. If we don’t, the message to the UCP will be that Albertans are fine with her behaviour and want to see more. She won’t be deterred by a slightly smaller majority—she will treat it as a mandate and the next 4 years are going to look like the last 18 months, only…. Probably worse because she will assume she has the ringing endorsement of voters for her behaviour.

We will face the same choice with the Trudeau Liberals soon (in my view). It’s an existential question: do we, as voters, have the cojones to say “no, enough. We are drawing the line, and you’ve crossed it so you’re fired. Give us a better option in 4 years and we will see.”

Or do we just mark our ballots for our “teams”, not caring what they do or how they govern, and allow ourselves to be doormats for the politicians who are supposed to serve us, not the other way around?

Like I said, you may be right. But it suggests to me that we’ve lost the thread—again—as an electorate. Voting for a party should never only be about ideology or partisan affiliation. Our democracy depends on it also being the way that we express our displeasure when the people in power abuse or misuse that power, or prove themselves to be ungovernable by traditional democratic rules, systems and customs.

Who are you voting for in the next federal election?