Holy sh@$ this thing is getting ugly.
Mostly thanks to the Big Red Smear Machine, which is particularly vile here in BC. The Liberal Team BC website (refuse to link to it) reads like Frank magazine lately. And it's only going to get worse as the Liberals keep tanking out west. Yuck.
But candidates are getting smoked by their skeletons across party lines and throughout the country. Just today there were four more casualties.
The internet has bitten a lot of people in the ass in the past few weeks. If it didn't directly provide the dirt, then it helped fan the flame for every fallen candidate. Yup, blogs and social networking sites, the power-tools of democratic expression, are flexing their might.
While parties spent a lot of resources this time around creating interesting web-2.0-y ways to connect to voters (the Orange Room is, hands-down, the coolest btw - notaleader.ca is just weird and Scandalpedia is severely lame), there is a general consensus that more attention could have been paid to researching one's own candidates and their online identities.
No party gets out of this one unscathed though. Except the fringe parties. Who no one cares about unless they have a candidate who is overwhelmingly unpleasant in a well-documented way. But the Conservatives, New Democrats, and the Liberals all have fallen soldiers.
I'm willing to cut them some slack however, because candidate vetting in the Age of the Internet is a whole new ballgame. It's not as simple as just googling candidates. It is nearly impossible to go through every dark corner, every blog post, every discussion board, and every facebook group looking for dirt on 308 people. Especially in a snap election situation. And nobody seemed to predict how severe a weapon the internet was going to be (except an unnamed friend of mine who thinks the internet is evil and needs to be taken down, and would be really upset with me for referring to him on the internet, even in an unnamed way).
Regardless, the internet is here to stay and politics is going to have to adapt. Total lunatics used to be able to run in ridings where they had no shot of winning because the media wouldn't care. Well, no more.
This election has proven that there is a microscope over every single one of us now. It's a shame because it will likely deter even those with a very clean history from running. And we will probably end up with a higher percentage of crazies because one has to be either super-squeaky-clean or bat-sh@$ insane to be a candidate in the Age of the Internet.
But that is something to worry about next time we all meet to practice democracy for five weeks or so. Lesson learned. So, for the remainder of this election, unless someone is a fricken' serial killer, can we have the national MSM just stick to the issues?
Except for that Liberal guy who billed the government for Liberal campaigning. The MSM should totally nail him.
4 hours ago
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This is a classic case of an election campaign in free-fall. These jokers (the Libs this time, not the Cons)had 3 years to prepare, and they still haven't figured out their message-box.
But beware... Liberals without a leash are dangerous. Watch for them to freak out... they will go nuts, trying to salvage their disasterous campaign.
They'll stop at nothing, and will smear anyone to try to take the spotlight off their obvious lack of campaign acumen.
They'll try to spaz out on the NDP, thinking they can repeat the Martin 'hail-mary pass' that salvaged his short-lived minority government. But this time it won't work.
Stephane Dion is such a weak leader that he allowed his party to drift for months in Parliament, propping up the Conservatives to avoid an election. He can no longer make the case that the Libs are the natural choice to prevent a Conservative majority.
This time, it is Jack Layton's turn. The NDP is tracking within 5 points of the Libs nationally, and the eastern media mafia can no longer scoff at the party and pretend that they are not a legitimate choice for Canadians.
Look for some surprising results in this election. Voters are making up their minds later and later in campaigns, and my magic 8-ball tells me that the NDP will receive a significant promotion on October 14.
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