Liberal NDP Merger Possibility?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

You know, if you substitute "Progressive Conservatives" for Liberals (and change a few details) this was exactly what people were saying before the Reform-Conservative merger a few years back.

Just saying....

In all honesty, anyone who pretends they know what the outcome of something like this would be is kidding themselves. Politics isn't a video game--there aren't "right moves" that always have good results and "wrong ones" that never work. All of these things take place against the backdrop of a dynamic and shifting set of variables that no-one can with any ease predict.

So what say we stop trying to predict the future and just wait for it to happen?

Nope, not even close. Look at the Liberal powerbase. It's downtown Toronto, parts of Vancouver and Montreal. The Reform base was firmly entrenched in the West, great foundation for a shot at a national government.

[octothorp]

Librocrats! Will never happen, but it's an interesting hypothetical argument. A lot of people predicted that the Conservative Alliance would lose many of its right centrist voters, and they did in their first few years, but they came back pretty quickly.

The rough formula I would use is to add together Liberal/NDP results from the last election move 5% (of the total voters) to the Tories. Because BC is such a volatile place demographically, I thought I'd apply that forumla to all the seats in the province, and surprisingly only two seats jumped parties: Surrey North to the Librocrats, and New Westminster to the Tories.

Right now, the country is so polarized: Major urban centers (other than Calgary) for the left, everywhere else for the right. Combining the Liberals and NDP isn't going to change that. There are not a large number of seats that Liberals or NDP lost by vote-splitting. The liberals would do better to simply develop a coherent platform rather than merge with anyone.

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by Leon Kennedy

When the Liberals lost power in January of 2006 prime was at 3.25% Now it is at .50%.

How can you possibly defend the criticism of the Conservatives for giving out free money to induce a housing bubble and stop the economy from collapsing?

Prime rate is 2.50%.

[EddyBeers]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

Prime rate is 2.50%.

The prime rate of the BoC is 0.50%. It has not been 2.5 in nearly 2 years.

[Leon Kennedy]

Originally Posted by EddyBeers

The prime rate of the BoC is 0.50%. It has not been 2.5 in nearly 2 years.

owned!

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by EddyBeers

The prime rate of the BoC is 0.50%. It has not been 2.5 in nearly 2 years.

That's the bank rate.

[EddyBeers]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

The funny thing about Chretien, is that he is actually highly regarded in many circles for his policies. I posted this in another thread but it's kind of relevant to your comment:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10254055.stm

Opinions are just opinions though.

I think the guy was getting at the fact that he disliked having a disfigured leader as his spokesperson on the international stage. Now we have a statesman who can stand in front of a fake lake and represent us with pride and dignity before the entire world.

[Leon Kennedy]

overnight lending rate was 3.25 when the Liberals left office.

today it is .50

http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/interest-look.html

[EddyBeers]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

That's the bank rate.

I am assuming that is what Leon was talking about.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by EddyBeers

I think the guy was getting at the fact that he disliked having a disfigured leader as his spokesperson on the international stage. Now we have a statesman who can stand in front of a fake lake and represent us with pride and dignity before the entire world.

Yeah, that was called for.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Flames in 07

Love the left, and the liberals and a coalition, that's cool, but if the basis for doing so is because Harper created or mismanaged a housing bubble .... yikes.

He's a liberal. What do you expect?

Someone had to say it.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

If the Conservatives made a few changes to try and broaden their appeal to people in the centre, then every election would be anyone's game. Both sides would need to lure the swing voters (which I consider myself to be). The old PC party was able to that before they became "Reformed".

Which is what they would probably do, considering its politically the smart thing to do if the Liberals/NDP get together.

[EddyBeers]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Yeah, that was called for.

You stated that you were embarrassed every time the guy opened his mouth internationally without one example of an action that caused this embarrassment, I concluded that you had a problem with his mouth.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by peter12

Nope, not even close. Look at the Liberal powerbase. It's downtown Toronto, parts of Vancouver and Montreal. The Reform base was firmly entrenched in the West, great foundation for a shot at a national government.

Come on, peter--you're a lot smarter than the Western exceptionalists from whom you've borrowed this tired claim. The historical liberal base is central and eastern Canada. Other than the Stephane Dion debacle, you have to go back pretty far in history to find an election where the Liberals didn't get most of their seats from Ontario.

And I know that Western exceptionalists love to pretend that this fact means they're somehow persecuted by the east, but as a function of simple arithmetic, central Canada is a far more powerful "foundation for a national government" than the West could ever be.

And we don't need to beat around the bush about this: it is part of the reason that Harper has been unable to form a majority. I will grant you that Harper lacks Preston Manning's vision and charisma, but it's clearly more important that he lacks the geographical base in Central Canada to push him over the top.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by EddyBeers

You stated that you were embarrassed every time the guy opened his mouth internationally without one example of an action that caused this embarrassment, I concluded that you had a problem with his mouth.

Oh neat. You like to run your mouth just like Chretien did. What a coincidence.

[EddyBeers]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Oh neat. You like to run your mouth just like Chretien did. What a coincidence.

I do not have a crooked mouth though, so you should have less of a problem with me running it.

[Flames in 07]

Originally Posted by Leon Kennedy

I'm not talking about anything to do with the USA. I'm talking about the enormous housing bubble that we here in Canada are in right now. I'm talking about historically low interest rates that the government of Canada has set in order to induce borrowing to staggering degree.

The Liberals never had to resort to this kind of thing to grow the economy. Under Chretien, Canada experienced positive economic growth in each and every year he was in power. Under Harper? The economy grew 6.1% in the first quarter of 2010. You're telling me that's a stable economy? Who needs a degree in armchair economics, me or you?

wether you know it or not, this bubble was sparked by bad US debt and bad US bets, both personally, corporately and in the gov't. That instability is showing warts all over the world now, and manifesting in different ways including reduced housing values.

And maybe a small and unimportant datapoint in what is an excuse to bash the cons, but interest rates setting is not a political party policy. It's a tool to manage inflation, the same, exact tool used in the good old days of cretien ... the same, exact tool.

what you are doing to blame the bubble on harper is like if you trip and fall over a step, when you open your eyes and the first thing you see is grey carpet. You get up and blame the grey carpet. Yes that's the first thing you saw after the stimulus (the tripping) however you sometimes have to work a little harder to get to the source.

I would say that is the one, and large problem with a democracy. Many people don't need to be bogged down with facts, extensive educations or even understand interest rate policy in canada for the past generation. Then with all the insight that harper caused a housing bubble can fix the problems of the country by voting in the left.

I find there are few things worse to society than people who learned everything they need to know by watching the 6pm news and find ways to shape it in ways to support a belief system that they don't even fully understand. Left or right.

[Leon Kennedy]

Canadians need to stop blaming the USA for their problems and start taking responsibility for their actions. There is NO EXCUSE for interest rates being kept so low over the past year, and you know it. The government are terrified of what is going to happen once people stop being able to afford to pay their zero down thirty five year mortgages. It will eventually lead to the collapse of the country's economy and any economist worth his salt will tell you the same. Instead of dealing with the problem now, when it is manageable to do so, the Conservative are going to pass it along to the next government.

I don't blame them for doing it, at least not from a purely political perspective. It is the smart play politically. The Liberals would do the same, make no mistake. That doesn't make it right.

Having extremely low interest rates leads to hyperinflation and will eventually bankrupt many people in this country once the cow comes home in two or three years when people begin to realize that Canada is not immune to the world economy's troubles.

[Flames in 07]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Come on, peter--you're a lot smarter than the Western exceptionalists from whom you've borrowed this tired claim. The historical liberal base is central and eastern Canada. Other than the Stephane Dion debacle, you have to go back pretty far in history to find an election where the Liberals didn't get most of their seats from Ontario.

And I know that Western exceptionalists love to pretend that this fact means they're somehow persecuted by the east, but as a function of simple arithmetic, central Canada is a far more powerful "foundation for a national government" than the West could ever be.

And we don't need to beat around the bush about this: it is part of the reason that Harper has been unable to form a majority. I will grant you that Harper lacks Preston Manning's vision and charisma, but it's clearly more important that he lacks the geographical base in Central Canada to push him over the top.

I think the separtist party acting like it's a federal party in quebec is what is manufacturing minority governments ... for the libs and cons.

[CaptainCrunch]

I don't think a merger would provide immediate results for a new left party.

Ignatieff is a failure as a leader, he's been god awful which is kinda sad because he came in with a lot of hype.

There would be a lot of fear of giving NDP'ers any kind of access to power.

I think we can all guess that Bob Rae is leading this charge, he's basically been getting the knives out for Ignatieff. I would welcome Bob Rae as a liberal leader because he's universally hated in Ontario.

The logical thing for a Liberal Democrat party would be to let the government go full term, wash the old guard out of the party and reinvent itself, because I doubt that a party with hardened NDP members in it would be comfortable with a left to center party platform.