Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to speak after his ruling Liberals retained power in Monday’s election. It is too soon to say whether they will form a majority government, CTV News and CBC predicted.
I don’t think at the time I’m posting he’s spoken yet.
Mark Carney has been elected as prime minister of Canada, according to the projections of the national broadcaster CBC/Radio Canada, in one of the country’s most consequential elections in decades. But it’s still not clear if his Liberal party will win the 172 seats needed for an outright majority in parliament. The full results will not be available until late Monday evening, or early Tuesday morning.
The vote was widely seen as a decision about which candidate could best handle President Trump, who helped spark a wave of nationalism across Canada by threatening to annex Canada and placing stiff tariffs on the country.
I’m only up because I watched the Avalanche get their butts kicked tonight. Ugh.
Open thread
War for Ukraine Day 1,159: From Unconditionally Conditional Ceasefire to Fake Ceasefire
Rose Judson
They did it! They kept their elbows up! Looks like Pierre Poilivere is losing his seat, too, but it hasn’t been called yet.
Tim C.
@Rose Judson: once again, I am inspired by our neighbors to the north. Mostly I hope that they and our brothers and sisters in the UK know we are not all monsters and when… Hopefully… We put ourselves to right, they forgive our nation.
Gary K
I just shake my head that the CBC election map appears to use the Mercator projection, for Canada of all places. The Nunavut riding occupies nearly as much area as the entire remainder of the country. A better choice (although still quite silly) would be a Mercator projection that treated downtown Toronto and its antipode in the eastern Indian Ocean as the poles.
TaMara
Testing BSKY embed
eclare
@TaMara:
No one should be sorry to call FFOTUS an asshole.
Splitting Image
The current results have the Liberals and the NDP winning or leading in exactly 172 seats, meaning if the results hold up, they can run the country without counting on Bloc support. They’ll have no room to spare though.
Singh is stepping down as NDP leader. Too bad, I think, but that was inevitable.
Poilievre is still down by 2000 votes in his own riding. Fingers crossed. The Conservatives as a whole did well enough that he could stay on as leader if he hangs on, but I think that if he loses his seat, he is finished.
CHETAN MURTHY
@Splitting Image: it is a character flaw that I’m sitting here in bed refreshing various websites waiting for Poilievre (rabbit-fur?) to lose his riding. I shouldn’t care so much About him getting his comeuppance, but I do.
TS
@Splitting Image:
I may be misunderstanding what you said, but if he loses his seat he is not eligible to be party leader, so is certainly done. If he wins his seat, he may stay on as opposition leader, but this does not happen very often when an election is lost.
The party room votes to decide who will be the leader – if he is popular within the elected members of his party, he could retain the position
@CHETAN MURTHY:
I will be up all night after the Australian election hoping our conservative leader loses his seat – and hoping he does – first thing he wanted to do was go visit trump to be mortified in regard to tariffs. Interestingly when he discovered this was not popular, he stopped talking about trump.
CHETAN MURTHY
I suspect a lot of people all around the world will be feverishly watching the election results. I sure will.
Splitting Image
@TS:
The party can keep him on as leader if he loses his seat. Normally what happens is that some backbencher in a safe riding resigns his seat and the leader runs in a by-election in that riding that he is sure to win.
John Tory tried to do this when he failed to win his seat in an Ontario election some years back. He bumbled around for a year or so trying to convince somebody to resign their seat to make way for him, but when he finally did, he lost what had been up to that point a safe seat.
What I’m saying is that if Poilievre holds on to his seat, the party would have to formally oust him if they want a new leader but he wants to stay on (and they probably won’t), while if he loses his seat, all they have to do is make sure that nobody steps aside for him so he can get back into Parliament (and they probably will).
Splitting Image
@CHETAN MURTHY:
I can’t exactly throw stones. I’m doing the same thing.
CHETAN MURTHY
@Splitting Image: Rabbit-hair is -this- close to losing! 250 of 266 polling places have reported-in!
montanareddog
@CHETAN MURTHY: Should it not be hare-hair? (Sounds like the title of a Bugs Bunny short where he is a barber)
CHETAN MURTHY
@montanareddog: It should indeed. Guess I’m taking license.
eclare
@montanareddog:
“Rabbit of Seville” is one of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons ever.
CHETAN MURTHY
@eclare: Right up there with “What’s Opera, Doc” and “Long-haired Rabbit”. I watched all three just now, prompted by your mention!
eclare
@CHETAN MURTHY:
I just watched “Rabbit of Seville.” On to your other two…
lollipopguild
Dear Donald: Canada says Hi!
Baud
@Tim C.:
Pretty sure we inspired them this time.
Pete Downunder
Now that Canada has shown the way, we’re up next on 3 May (our time: GMT +10). At the risk of repeating what many of you (and all Aussie Jackals) know, we have a house and a senate. Unless the party with a house majority also has a senate majority the senate acts as a restraint on the majority.
The leader of the majority party in the house is the Prime Minister. To confuse Americans further, the left-ish (or more accurately slightly less right-ish) party is Labor (spelled the US way not the UK way for historical reasons too boring to go into here.) Its colour is Red. The center to far right-ish party is misleadingly named the Liberal Party (again for boring historical reasons). Because the Liberals have an alliance with a right-leaning country based party called the National Party they are usually referred to as the Coalition or the LNP. Their colour is Blue.
They are the major parties. The main minority party is the left leaning Green party whose colour, surprise, is Green. There is also a group of independents whose backgrounds vary but tend to be center to center left but who have in common support from an environmental funder. Their colour is Teal and collectively they are called the Teals but they are not a party and each is an independent individual. Some, but not all, are defectors from the LNP. There are also a scattering of minor parties on the right but they are increasingly irrelevant.
We have mandatory preferential voting. Not only must you vote but you must number all the boxes in order of preference. In my electorate the ballot has 8 boxes, one each for Labor, LNP and Greens and 5 more for some minor parties and independents. My electorate is one of few with a Green incumbent but the LNP is desperate to get the seat back.
After all the votes are cast, if no one has 50% + 1, the election officials then go through those with the lowest votes as #1 and allocate their preferences as shown on the ballots. This is repeated until one candidate exceeds 50%. For example in my electorate Labor wants its voters to vote Labor #1 and Greens #2 and LNP #8 and the rest are more or less random. The Greens ask their voters to do basically the same but with Greens #1 and Labor # 2 and LNP last. Thus a major party candidate who can’t win on their own can get over the line with other party preferences. There will be quiz on this next week.
At the moment Labor holds a majority with Anthony Albonese (known universally as Albo) as PM. The Guardian newspaper recently ran a fun contest to chose the invertebrate of the year. I nominated Albo as he is totally spineless. Good hearted but useless. The Opposition is a former cop named Peter Dutton who is far right but not insane like Trump. He is really unlikable. Up until a few months ago, Australian polling was putting LNP in front, but the Trump madness has, like in Canada, turned things around and Labor now barely leads in the polls. As in Canada it could be a minority Labor government with the Greens and Teals holding the balance of power.
That is more than you wanted to know about Australian elections. I’ll will take questions but I don’t want to always see the same hands. I also welcome additions and corrections from other Aussies.
eclare
@Pete Downunder:
Thank you for the info!
donatellonerd
@Pete Downunder: thank you. that will help me to follow the news this week/weekend (what day do you vote?). not a same hand …(French)-American in Paris
Pete Downunder
@donatellonerd:
Bonjour.We vote Saturday 3 May our time. Polls close at 6 pm and we usually start getting results by 7 or 8. Ballots are hand counted at each polling place and a first pass preference allocation is done. This year more than half the votes will have been cast early which will delay results as those are counted after those cast on the day
@donatellonerd:
Hildebrand
@Pete Downunder: Very helpful – thank you.
I love the ranking system.
Pete Downunder
@Hildebrand: You’re most welcome. Preferential voting is far better than the US system. It does have its faults and can be gamed, but in all it’s really good.
NotMax
@Pete Downunder
While not directly analogous to the states of the U.S., generally speaking is there a tendency for each (or any) of the states in Australia to lean politically one way or the other? Or is the divide, such as it may be, more geographically north/south or east/west?
Baud
TS
@Splitting Image:
Many thanks for the explanation – I’ve only seen once in Australia (in a state) when a party leader did not have a seat in parliament – I guess it was the same as this – it is rather rare in parliamentary systems.
We did have an opposition leader way back when who lost a couple of elections, but stayed in the position (he always won his own seat) and eventually became PM. Since then, most losing party leaders resign from the leadership – and often from parliament as well.
TS
@Pete Downunder:
As another Australian – and a Queenslander, I would argue the last part of that statement. I can but hope the people in his Brisbane electorate get some sense and he loses his seat
I believe they start counting all votes available at the same time – when the polls close – voting date votes, pre-poll and any postal votes received. The latter is looking not so good as I applied 2 weeks ago for a postal vote & it has yet to arrive.
Unkown known
I was looking for the clip in Canadian Bacon where the American protagonists shove their way through a crowd outside the CN tower to a chorus of their shovees shouting “sorry!… Sorry!”, but this Anchorman clip was the best I could do instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83KKxGNPgys
Baud
Splitting Image
Ottawa – Carleton has been called for the Liberals.
Pierre Petain has officially lost his seat.
rikyrah
Yeah Canada👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Pete Downunder
@TS: if postal hasn’t arrived go to prepoll. There are quite a number around or go on Saturday and get a snag.
rikyrah
@Baud:
😠😠😠😠😠
Baud
I’m glad our sacrifice was not in vain.
Pete Downunder
@NotMax: It’s more country vs urban but some states lean a bit more one way or the other.
eclare
@Unkown known:
Funny. I didn’t remember that.
eclare
@Baud:
Pritzker is making the rounds. He will be on Colbert this week.
I don’t see that they publish the guest names in advance, but Colbert mentioned it last night.
Baud
Via reddit
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Illinois GOP says Pritzker’s speech is “inflammatory and dangerous.”
Not linking, it’s the IL GOP snowflake site, so you know….. inflammatory and dangerous.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Republicans would know about inflammatory and dangerous, seeing as they are America’s hemorrhoids.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
The host on NPR this morning pointed out that Trump could have had a kindred spirit/ally in charge of Canada if he hadn’t meddled. He didn’t say “what a maroon” but it was strongly implied.
Baud
montanareddog
@Splitting Image: @Baud:
You love to see it, like Truss (and other prominent UK Tories) last year, or the oleaginous Portillo in the ’97 election that brought Blair to power and ended almost 20 years of Tory misrule.
satby
@Baud: He’s fantastic. It’s so refreshing to see that he doesn’t hide his contempt, but claims it loudly and proudly.
His family is Ukrainian and Jewish. Strong courage genes, like Zelenskyy.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Wonder if Canadians are going to troll us with pictures of well stocked store shelves this summer while ours look like Soviet Russia? If I weren’t so terrified of our own CPB agents I’d make a special trip across the border just to snap some pics and troll myself.
Baud
satby
@MagdaInBlack: IL Republicans, like IL Nazis, can go to hell.
Baud
Baud
@satby:
I’m pretty sure those two parties have merged.
satby
@Baud: 😂 They overlapped on the Venn diagram for decades.
TS
@Pete Downunder: I’ll go Saturday but partner probably won’t – his health is why we go with postal votes – I’ve not known them to be this slow in other years. Reality is our votes probably don’t matter. Lived for 30 years in a liberal electorate & for the past 10 in a labour electorate. I would love to live in a marginal.
montanareddog
@satby:
And the Vindman brothers come to mind, too.
TS
@Baud:
Peter Dutton claims a lot of things – Much like donald trump.
Aussie renters come in all ages & most can no longer afford the rents they have to pay. They are likely to get more assistance from Labor – but neither party has done much to help with affordable housing. So many people with full time jobs have become homeless because they cannot find – or afford a rental property over the past 5 years.
satby
Ok, so the Blues Brothers clip reminds me of a family cop story. Not my dad, but my uncle. Uncle Bud was watch commander for one of the times there was a civil rights march in Marquette Park which was a few blocks away from the American NAZI headquarters. Ugly crowd and the cops were there to keep the protesters safe from it. Some of his cousins (these would be my second cousins) were there to protest the protesters, and my uncle overheard one of them say to his friends “look, the commander is my cousin, we’ll be ok, he’ll make sure we don’t get arrested”. My uncle was furious, and pointed out the group to his officers, telling them that the minute anything started that group of guys was to be arrested first.
And they were. My side of the family was always proud of that. Their side didn’t speak to us for years 😂.
satby
@montanareddog: Yes they do!
MagdaInBlack
@satby: You know what’s weird to me? My parents, 2 of the most progressive people in my life, were active Republicans. Mother was a precinct committeewoman, Dad always an election judge.
My dad’s grandfather was part of Sherman’s trip thru the south, so I suppose “Party of Lincoln” was the a factor?
Poodle Mom (fka KM in NS)
Absolutely Yay Canada!! Poilievre lost his riding and it couldn’t have happened to a weaselly-ier guy. He says he won’t step down, but it will be difficult for him to lead the party without a seat in Parliament.
And, I resent DJT trying to claim that he put Carney in.
eclare
@satby:
Good for your Uncle Bud!
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
There was a time when the parties weren’t so divided ideologically, and morally.
Ramalama
@Baud: yes. Commenter from Reddit sums that part up well:
satby
@MagdaInBlack: I think that’s the case for a lot of people. Family history, plus an inability to see that the party has changed into something very poisonous. After all, Republicans helped pass civil rights legislation in the 60s, a Republican established the EPA, and the Republican party essentially forced Nixon to resign by holding the Watergate hearings. They weren’t always despicable, even Goldwater warned against what they became. But when the Dixiecrats took control of the party away from the Rockefeller Republicans the deterioration accelerated.
satby
@eclare: 😊 rest his soul.
eclare
Is anyone having problems firing up Bluesky?
Jackie
@eclare:
First reply on that BSKY post?
”He’s worse than an asshole; assholes serve a purpose” LOL
Baud
@Jackie:
They eject waste, rather than generate it.
Baud
@eclare:
Yes.
Baud
NY Post, via Reddit
Ramalama
Also just as with Harper years ago PP employed someone or someones from the GOP. Their speeches drew from the same fetid well of words and phrasing and pov.
The difference was PP is loathsome. You don’t want to hear his voice. You can’t stand looking at him. You shake your head at his despicable past (casting a vote against gay marriage while his dad who turned out to be gay sat in the gallery and watch his son do that). Finally on election night he had a cringe worthy moment, a Michael Jackson make-out sesh with his wife on camera that was awkward and forced and barfy.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Hmm, remind me who US farmers overwhelmingly voted for?
Leopards, faces.
satby
@Baud: oh dear.
In other news, I was able to recapture my runaway cat last night. Back inside safe again! He seems happy about it too. Outside is terrifying for loose animals.
montanareddog
@O. Felix Culpa: If Pastor Creepy tries to introduce a bill for farm subsidies in the House, it will be interesting to see if there is another Freedom Caucus rebellion which will give Jeffries some bargaining power. Or maybe Orangemandias will issue another royal proclamation to send money to farmers.
Whatever happens, the tariff madness has generated (and will continue to generate) a lot of unintended negative consequences for the US until enough Congressional repubs grow a spine.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
I’m just glad kids aren’t using litter boxes anymore.
evodevo
@eclare: Yes..I can’t access any BlueSky posters…
Baud
Via Reddit
mali muso
Great news to wake up to! So relieved that Canada is standing strong. I think I will always regret that the pandemic threw a wrench in our plans to emigrate there. Perhaps it’s not too late…
The Audacity of Krope
Until they have to shelter in place…
schrodingers_cat
So the Canadian left didn’t sit out the election while whining about both sides, how patriotic of them. They joined the liberals and voted against the RWNJs.
Geminid
Don Bacon weighs in on Canada’s election, from this morning’s Politico Playbook:
I get the impression the 61 year-old Congressman plans to retire. Joe Biden carried Bacon’s Omaha-based 2nd CD by 6.5% in 2020, and Kamala Harris won it last year. Bacon beat Democrat Tomy Vargas 50.9-49.1% last year, a margin of slightly under 6,000 votes.
It wouldn’t take much of a wave to sweep Bacon away, and he may decide it’s not worth trying. He’s retired once already, as an Air Force general in 2014. Bacon can find more rewarding work on K Street, and probably more convivial work too considering his current feuds with the Freedom Caucus.
Ramalama
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t agree with any leftie in the US who sat out the election or voted for Dr Green Nobody. Forget her name now. But there’s a big difference. The Canadian left has a leader who gets equal airtime from the Canadian media. I think that’s a major factor here. Eschaton has for years conducted a headcount of who’s who on the Sunday morning news shows. The power shows. Hardly anyone from the left. Mostly middlers and Republicans. Even when a Dem was in the white house.
Hildebrand
@schrodingers_cat: Yep, who knew that folks could actually think of the bigger picture instead of pouting about not getting everything exactly the way they want it.
TS
@Poodle Mom (fka KM in NS):
Reality is he put Poilievre out – but trump has to be on the winning side – always – even when he loses.
Anyway
where does NDP stand on the L-R axis?
Baud
@Ramalama:
I don’t care for the media, but I also don’t hear a lot of people on the left asking to appear on those shows on a regular basis and being turned down. Maybe that’s a strategic decision because the power shows are not where their voters are. Don’t know.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Through the middle 20th century, the single most divisive political issue in the United States, race/segregation/civil rights, cut across party lines. The Democrats and the Republicans both had a white-supremacist wing and a civil-rights wing.
Political scientists thought the lack of party alignment was bad, because it meant that it was harder for people’s preferences to be expressed in voting. But it was also what allowed political polarization to be lower. But it was, to some degree, a deal with the devil by both parties.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the moment the Democratic Party committed on the federal level to losing the Dixiecrats, was the beginning of the end of that, but it took decades to shake out.
It occurs to me that a lot of liberal boomers think everything in America went to hell when JFK was shot, but they’re kind of deflecting attention from the actual cause. A major political party decided to commit to rights for Black people and white America went bonkers.
Barbara
@TS: It’s not that bad here but its bad enough. More housing means people have to stop pretending they live in Mayberry RFD only with better restaurants, and that housing should be viewed as a human need rather than a piggy bank to fund your retirement. Thankfully I am not alone in my views.
sab
@satby: Hurrah! What a relief.
Matt McIrvin
@Ramalama: The governmental structure probably makes a difference. Canada has first-past-the-post elections like the US does, but it’s a parliamentary system, so if you want to vote Green or NDP you only have to consider the spoiler effect within your riding, and denying the big center-left party an overall majority may be to your advantage if it means they have to deal with your party’s members.
In the US, we have something like that going on in Congressional elections which leads to phenomena like Bernie Sanders, but on the national level, the minor parties keep trying to run Presidential candidates, a contest in which they can really only be saboteurs (Bernie temporarily became a Democrat to run for President instead of going third-party like Jill Stein).
mappy!
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/canadian-prime-minister-thanks-trump
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed. What else except something as powerful as racism (and other forms of bigotry) could make people tolerant of people like Trump? Could make people sell out the US to Russia? Even a lot of people who are not MAGA are blase about what Trump is doing to this country.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: My little escape artist never seems to learn. Last time she got out at night, she got scared out of her wits by… something (coyote? stray dog? who knows, but it probably was genuinely dangerous) and seemed eager to get back inside, but the next day, she was yowling at the door and trying to sneak out as usual.
Worst (so far) is when she ends up stuck up a tree.
Ramalama
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah. A different kind of white flight.
Poodle Mom (fka KM in NS)
@TS: True!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
The other one that’s equally powerful being patriarchy in all its forms. In 1964, the Democrats weren’t particularly feminist, let alone in favor of LGBT rights, but as that alignment began to gather it contributed to the freakout. But I think that was also an outgrowth of the civil-rights commitment.
Ramalama
@Baud:
I argue that it’s one factor in the whole Dems can’t do messaging.
Dick Cheney and co was HOW MANY TIMES on the Tim Russert dealie that got America to start a war with the wrong country.
Different now, obv. Now there are podcasts. But Canadian media is still relevant where the US is not as much anymore. And people got to voice their concerns. I’m not saying voting for Trump or Green Party or Independents isn’t stupid.
You can’t compare Canada and the US in that way for now.
Edit: Actually anyone voting for Trump is not to be taken seriously. I started this by thinking about the voters who were apeshit about the lack of anyone doing anything about the Palestinian territory. Which is not a country yet still.
Ben Cisco
@Baud:
Singh, his party routed
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It seems like feminism really hit its stride in the 70s. So about 10-15 years later.
Jackie
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s a reason for “curiosity killed the cat…”
Curiosity is always stronger than fear with our feline fur babies.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: I am a liberal Boomer and I don’t know anyone who thinks that JFK’s assassination was when everything went tits up. From most of our perspective, it was the war in Viet Nam escalating and sucking more and more people into the war machine.
Harrison Wesley
@TS: As delusional as he is, he thinks Carney owes him. I’m sure he will suffer great butthurt when Carney tells him to take a flying fuck at a moving roller coaster.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Yeah, I miss Republicans like Lowell Weicker. But once Reagan won the nomination in 1980, it was clear that Republicans like him were going to be of limited influence at best within the GOP, no matter how much the media have done their best to pretend otherwise.
satby
@sab: thanks.
BritinChicago
@Matt McIrvin: “A major political party decided to commit to rights for Black people and white America went bonkers.”
I think that’s right. My biggest discovery (a gradual discovery) living here, after growing up in the UK, is how much of US politics (and economics and other stuff) has to do with race.
Matt McIrvin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Gasoline prices might go down! It won’t feel good in the moment, but five years later, Republicans will try to make us feel nostalgic about it.
BritinChicago
@Matt McIrvin: It’s also important that constituencies here are very much larger than they are in Canada, or even in the UK.
Geminid
@montanareddog: The House still hasn’t passed the Five-Year Farm Bill and could only extend the current one in last year’s Lame Duck session. It sounds like the Freedom Caucus is the stumbling block.
I’m not sure how long the extension is, just that farmers really wanted the certainty of the five-year bill. Besides its utility for planning, the five year period was intended to help insulate agriculture legislation from other political battles. That’s not how it’s worked so far in this Congress, or for that matter in the last one.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
Yay!! Glad to hear he’s safe and sound.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Absolutely.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: To be fair there was a really a perfect storm of events in the 1960s-70s that made people think the postwar liberal order (in which the Republicans participated to some degree, though they could be strikingly illiberal) was a failed god: Vietnam War + rising crime + oil crises + end of Bretton Woods and stagflation. All that gave the Reagan movement ammunition.
But from the 10,000-foot view, it was really the Democrats becoming the anti-bigotry party that drove the long-term trend.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
For a lot of folks, the 70s followed by Reagan’s morning in America was proof that civil rights was a failure. The big problem Dems had with Clinton, Obama, and Biden weren’t how imperfect they were, but how well they did.
It grates on the bigots that a diverse America under Democratic leadership doesn’t fall apart. Clinton’s tax hikes were a success. Obamacare didn’t destroy the economy. Bidenism pulled us out of the pandemic better than any other country. People who wanted us to fail became easy prey for rich people looking to create an alternative reality. And here we are.
Soprano2
@O. Felix Culpa: Yep, I can’t cry for them, they got what they voted for.
bbleh
Dunno where I saw this …
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
As a teacher of mine from middle school used to say, “have you ever seen a skeleton of a cat up in a tree?”
Jackie
@bbleh: 😂🤣😂
Well done from “whoever!”
Rotating tag worthy!
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: We’re getting back to Jim Crow, one step at a time.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
When I was married to a firefighter, he told me that official policy was not to rescue cats from trees, but unofficially they sometimes did. Gives them practice on a ladder truck in a safer environment than a fire.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I’d suggest that perhaps they were a bit further apart in 1860… and over the same thing, really, but on opposite sides.
Geminid
I read that Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig has formally commenced her campaign for U.S. Senator. I believe Minnesota’s Lieutenant Governor is already in the race.
Next year we’ll see contests for open Senate seats in Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, all currently held by Democrats. Those will be some interesting Democratic primaries. Some of the Senate contenders are currently House members, and that will mean primaries for their open seats too.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: We wrote the playbook for the rest of the world’s autocrats. Harness authoritarianism to bigotry and your people will vote it in every time.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: You see it today in rants from the right about how blue states have become post-apocalyptic hellholes that sane people are fleeing in droves. These states have genuine problems, chief among them that it’s too damn expensive to live there (and they often have high levels of economic inequality). But Republicans seem to be talking about the versions of them in some strange mirror universe.
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin:
There we’re several other big issues in the 1970s that caused the Democratic coalition to fall apart, one directly tied to race.
1. Abortion split off many Catholics. All these decades later, there are *still* a fair number of Catholics who are economic progressives, but vote GOP on that issue alone.
2. The rise of “Atari democrats” like Bill Clinton, who decided the left had gone too far regulating the economy, and so wanted to restore as much of the “free market” as possible, in order to give electoral cover for social progressivism.
3. the use of racial quotas to rectify past racial discrimination in unionized industries and professions. Since many union jobs tended be have lots of nepotism, it meant somebody’s nephew or son got passed over in favor of hiring a Black candidate. This suited the discriminating companies and professions just fine (because they didn’t have to pay for their past discrimination), and infuriated the union families.
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: Having lived in Big Cities all my life, I’m routinely amused to hear relatives and friends from not-cities — even ones who are well-traveled and certainly should know better — get all worked up about how DANGEROUS those Big Cities are, with all those … DANGEROUS types wandering around, and on and on. They really huff their own exhaust on this stuff, I think because they feel they HAVE to believe it.
I never feel safer than in a big city.
satby
@Baud: Since you brought Pritzker up, his entire speech was the subject of Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter today. Full text at the link.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: Not every time. It seems like Americans do vote them out when they cause major disasters, but the lesson never sticks. Republicans return to being “better for the economy” in surveys a few years after every economic crisis they foment.
satby
True that. When I moved to a rural area, I hadn’t counted on how isolated it was, with no one nearby enough to notice if I was alive or dead. In the city I had neighbors, but strangers often helped when I was in need too. It was comforting.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: Excellent news,
Sillicat likes to sit at the French doors and watch the goings on outside; but the one time she decided to check out the fun for herself she got to the deck, looked around, and SHOT back into the house.
(originally our vet thought she was male, and so he was to be named Silvio… then we discover she’s actually Silvia, and I just call her my “Sillicat”.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: There was a genuine urban crime crisis from about the end of the 1960s through the middle 1990s. It’s 30 years gone, though, and the perception in the rest of America is that it never ended.
Right now, there’s a crisis of visible homelessness caused by expensive real estate and persistent poverty, especially on the West Coast. And I think people see homeless and think danger, whether that makes sense or not.
Jackie
Interesting:
*My editorial change.
satby
@lowtechcyclist: thanks!
@Baud: Agree. The success undercuts the white supremacist core belief that diversity must always mean lower standards.
satby
@New Deal democrat: Abortion politics is also about race. The Right to Life organization was much more open right after the Roe decision that abortions for “white, educated women” (their words) would cause whites to be replaced (yep, they said it openly to white audiences) with minorities and hasten the change in the demographics of the country.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: They tried to have it both ways, though, also claiming to Black audiences that abortion was a plot to eliminate them, and going on about Margaret Sanger’s racist and eugenicist views to imply that that was still behind the movement for reproductive rights.
sab
@satby: Rural life is not for rhe faint of heart.
Years ago I lived in Grand Rapids MI and was active in community theater. One of our actors was a farmer on an apple orchard well outside of town. He said that whenever he had an intruder and called the sheriff, they would tell him “check it out and call us back if you have a problem.” So basically no protection whatever. Wife to call back if he gets hurt.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: thanks. He’s been walking around chirping all morning.
They’re all silly cats 😂
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: no question that White Flight and the relative impoverishment of cities during the 60s and 70s especially contributed to a spike in crime rates. I remember Philly and New York back then. But even then, a lot of it was distorted and overemphasized by the media, playing then (as they do now) to the racial divide. And fewer than 30% of Americans alive today were old enough even in 1980 to have any awareness of conditions at the time.
I think mostly what Frightened Whites see in cities is DIFFERENT people. — different races, different cultures, different sexualities, visibly different lifestyles — and it’s the DIFFERENCE that scares them. And no pointing out that, eg, per capita homicide rates are higher in nice, homogeneous exurban and rural America than in the Big Bad Cities will change their outlook.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: Maybe when they lobbied in black churches for their anti-abortion candidates.
But they never picketed the Planned Parenthood office in the black neighborhood next to my mixed race one. They were just fine with those abortions and birth control dispensing.
sab
@Matt McIrvin: It kind of was racist and eugenistic in 1970s. I knew some of the people starting the Planned Parenthood around my city and they were racist. “Too many black babies with irresponsible parents”. But that was 50 years ago. Very different people in charge now.
satby
Absolutely true, and an argument I have had for at least 15 years now with people who think just that way. South Bend has a per capita murder rate higher than Chicago, but the Republicans here are scared to death at the thought of going to Chicago. No matter how many times I pull up the crime statistics.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: In Boston people can be standoffish, but I’ve never gotten immediate help from random strangers more often than in New York City. People there seem actively, even pushily eager to help you somehow. It’s not part of the stereotype.
We travel to visit a lot of cities around the world and we almost always use the local public transit system to get everywhere; depending on the situation, we may even let our teenage kid ride it alone (and of course she does this in Boston too). There are many Americans who find this unimaginable (but for some reason feel safer taking Uber everywhere).
satby
@Matt McIrvin: I agree. People’s fears aren’t based in logic very often, so trying to use the logic of *reality* doesn’t make a dent in their outlook. And Conservative minds are fearful ones by nature, according to psychological studies.
We just have to outnumber them.
Edit: visitors to Chicago always comment about how friendly and helpful most people here are. It’s that “Midwestern nice” thing.
sab
@satby: Has he learned his lesson? We have seven cats and only one has thought of escape. Everyone else is horrified by the idea of outside.
Our escapee got out once at the old house, did whatever for most of the day, and was at our doorstep at dinner time, expecting to be let in and fed.
She got out once at the new house when I was letting the dog out. Circled the house then came back to the doorstep. We didn’t notice she was gone until I saw her on the ADT camera. So an hour after her escape we let her back in and fed her. Without ADT she would have been out all night. We have coyotes in the neighborhood but they never come near the house.
She hasn’t tried to get out since. Too much cat fun inside. Too scary outside.
New Deal democrat
@satby:
It may be in some corners, especially after Jerry Falwell embraced it to advance his causes, including racial segregation in fundamentalist Christian schools. But the image of Reagan kneeling next to Cardinal Krol at an altar rail was a powerful message that the Catholic hierarchy endorsed Reagan, and let me assure you the Message Was Received.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: It’s a kind of “the food is terrible and the portions are too small” kind of view.
Eolirin
@bbleh: Leaded gasoline was a huge problem.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Many lynching victims were murdered because they were successful.
Because they did better than some white man and that simply could not be tolerated.
White supremacy in America is fractal.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: I think I said it before- Ambassador Delenn said, “humans build communities.”
The “rugged individual who needs no one else” is basically a sociopath. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
cain
@Baud: I read that! Moronic. I hope the principal gets all the arrows pointed at them.
cain
@Splitting Image: Time to sing “Oh! Canada!”? :D
Cathie from Canada
@Pete Downunder:
I am very late to this party, but thanks, Downunder, for the advisory on how the Aussies do it — i hadn’t understood your voting system before this. Canada has been thinking about changing its FPTP system (First Past The Post) but Trudeau decided against changing it in 2017 when he became convinced it would lead to a far-right fragmentation of Canadian voting – maybe he was correct, I don’t know.
Anyway, I’m very happy that the Conservatives did not win yesterday, and also happy that Poilievre lost his seat. Carney will be an excellent prime minister I think, and the Liberals will be able to make our economy more independent from the United States.
Thanks, Juicers, for all your interest in our Canadian election!
cain
@Harrison Wesley:
That will only make him want to punish Canada even more. Certainly his rhetoric on Canada being the 51st state where even his cult can’t seem to figure out is going to escalate.
munira
@Anyway: Left of center – it’s too bad about the NDP, but there isn’t room for two parties to split the vote against the conservatives – not to mention the Bloc in Quebec.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: They crow a lot about how people are fleeing blue states and moving to red states.
There’s some truth to it. People have been genuinely streaming into Texas and Florida while the governments there become more and more openly sadistic and oppressive. Meanwhile, California’s growth has slowed, probably a combination of their perennial housing crisis, the slump in Silicon Valley and various other problems. Just look at that, and you’d think that most Americans really hate liberalism and want to live under fascism, and maybe they do. The states with the highest percentage-wise growth are red. (Is that new population Republican-voting? Probably depends.)
But people are also moving out of a lot of rural areas in the old Midwest, and the poorest red states are losing population. Blue states like Washington state and New Jersey have been growing; Massachusetts is growing but not as fast. Trump’s efforts to wipe us off the face of the earth might affect that, of course.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: This may actually end with Trump attempting to invade Canada with a hollowed-out and incomptently-run military.
He can’t conquer and hold Canada. He could, however, destroy Canada, at the cost of also largely destroying the United States. He may consider that an option since I think he kind of wants to destroy the United States anyway.
Paul in KY
@lollipopguild: Most politely a fuck off, ay!
Paul in KY
@Pete Downunder: Sounds very precise and mathematical. It would never fly here as is too complicated for average dingbat to understand.
Best of luck to Labor!
Paul in KY
@Baud: Man that makes me so mad!!
Paul in KY
@satby: Yeah, LBJ, put 3 torpedoes in his side with Vietnam (the escalation).
David Collier-Brown
Moved later