Federal Election 2019: Some Final Thoughts - Just some random meanderings?

Three days after the election and the reaction has been predictable.

First, the idea that the Liberals are weak because they are in a minority government is laughable.  They are 13 seats short of a majority.  That means that all of the Opposition Parties would need to vote against the Liberals to bring down the government.  That is not going to happen for quite some time and when it does it might be because the Liberals want it that way.

The Conservatives are the most horny for another election because they believe, wrongly, that they would win it.  However, it is going to be interesting to see what they do when the Liberals introduce the tax cut they ran on as the first order of business when the House resumes.  Then the Liberals will also introduce some measures that the Conservatives would be hard pressed to vote against.  Let us remember that when a government has a majority no one pays attention to votes in the House.  Now that we have a minority every confidence motion is going to be hyped to the max and how the parties vote will be examined and parsed every which way you can think of.  The Conservatives reflexively voting against Bills that have broad support will be noticed.  Then there is a question of whether Andrew Scheer stays on as leader of the CPC.  He obviously wants to but others in his party may decide otherwise.

The NDP is beyond broke.  They carried a debt from 2015 into the 2019 election and spent every spare dollar they had this time.  They are on a downward trajectory with regard to their vote and number of seats.  It has already been said but they do not want another election for at least two years, probably longer.  I do not think it happens often, for minority governments, but it is conceivable that the next election will take place on the next legally required day in the Fall of 2023.  

The Bloc will want time to consolidate their gains so that this election is not one-off for them.  They will not want an election any time soon either.

The Green Party is irrelevant as is JWR.  Indeed, JWR is a female version of John Nunziata.

Second, the chances of the Liberals winning the next election is a shade more than 50-50 unless the Conservatives do what needs to be done to renew their party.  The Conservatives are suffering the same delusions that the Liberals did after 2006.  The Liberals did not renew their party until they were finally crushed in 2011.  Before that they were just the Chretien/Martin party with different leaders.  Mr. Trudeau does not receive enough credit for the bottom to top renewal of the Liberal Party that he oversaw after winning the leadership of the Liberals.  Indeed, he was quite ruthless in turfing the old guard in the years leading up to the 2015 election.  That is one reason why they went from Third to First.  The Conservatives have not done this exercise yet.  They are still the Harper Party, as it has been since it was formed in the early 2000s, and to believe the voters they need to win again are unaware of this is naive at best.

Then there is the fact that when the next election takes place Ontario will have witnessed up to four years of Doug Ford government.  The Conservatives kept him in suspended animation somewhere for over two months but the next time we go to the polls that will not really help.  The voters of Ontario will not forget 3 or 4 years of Doug Ford mismanagement just because he disappears for few weeks the next time.

Finally, one of the reasons why the Liberals won is because they have created a very well oiled election machine.  That machine is intact and they will be doing what is necessary to be ready for the next campaign, whenever that may be.  For example, I stated in my last post that they identified and pulled alot of Liberals in ridings, previously held by the NDP, in Quebec.  They still have these databases.  They will use them again.  They will also be targeting the 6 ridings in Ontario held by the NDP.  The relative success of the  NDP in the election papers over the many structural problems that party has and Mr. Singh has done nothing to address those during his time at the helm of that party.  The Liberals are going to try to take advantage of that.  

Of course, something could change this dynamic, such as a serious economic downturn or some kind of Liberal scandal, manufactured or otherwise, but as long as the Conservatives do not go through the effort of renewing itself they will have difficulties.

Third, Alberta separatists are full of crap.  Nuff said.  My only critique is of people actually engaging these yahoos by stating the obvious facts about the impacts of such a separation.  Stop giving these bozos oxygen.  They are not worth it.

Fourth, it seems that after every election there is a renewed call for electoral reform.  Hell, even some Conservative are talking about it because the Conservatives did win more votes than the Liberals.  It is all crap as well.  I have argued many times why electoral reform will solve the problems of the FPTP voting system by creating other equally serious problems.  There is no method of voting that is "more democratic".  They are all ways to elect democratic governments.  They are all effective at doing so.  They all have their problems and imperfections.  In the end it is a wash.   

So the next few years are going to be interesting and infuriating.  It will be non-stop campaigning by all of the parties but in the end the most likely outcome will be the Liberals implementing the bulk of the agenda they outlined in their election platform.  It will just be more noticeable this time, which might not be such a bad thing from their point of view.