predictable. the existing pq regime has been horrific. see, they're trying not to "split the vote" by swinging right to accommodate (pun intended) a rising right-wing separatist movement. this is not going to work (when will the establishment learn that the right is impossible to swing because it's tied to symbolic, hierarchical change?); rather, it's alienating both left and centrist separatists, as well as soft separatists.

a certain subset of quebeckers has been complaining about "the ethnic vote" since 1995. it can be xenophobic and astute at the same time. but, it's the modern world, where national identities are no longer correlated with geographic areas.

fuck nationalism.

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/quebec-liberal-party-races-ahead-in-the-polls-1

i'm getting the msn links from the weather network, btw.

the best thing that could happen to quebec would be for the pq to renounce sovereignty and merge with the ndp to create a local soft-left party. the quebec liberals are not left of centre. but the pq have swung to la-la land to dismantle the adq, and there needs to be a solid rejection of this by the quebec mainstream, let alone the quebec left.

it's rooted in the priority of separatism over governance. quebeckers have the right to expect local governance first, anachronistic declarations of nationalism second (wherever they stand on the spectrum). getting that backwards is a fail that ought to have serious reverberations.

as much as i may disagree with the adq on the issues, they are correct that a sovereign quebec needs to have a spectrum of sovereigntist parties. otherwise, it's on the path to a one-party dictatorship. the americans are actually perfectly reasonable in their rejection of this possibility.

so, it's pointless to keep pushing 50+1. when there are three separatist parties in quebec and they dominate the spectrum they will work together on the issue. that's what a real democratic expression of independence would look like.