so, i'm a pretty typical left-leaning liberal voter in a lot of ways. in other ways, i'm out of the spectrum. but, on budgets i think i represent that liberal-ndp split constituency.

the writer of this article sounds like a red tory. and, that's ok. but, let's be clear about a few things.

to begin with, the voters that the writer speaks of are conservatives. the liberals can hold them for a while, when the conservatives are riding low in the polls. but, unless the liberals decided to make a fundamental shift to the right, they cannot hold them in the long run. and, even if they do make a fundamental shift to the right, it is not clear that they will hold them; party allegiances are a messy truth. we know from years of polling and election results that the conservatives essentially never push under 30%. that means that for the liberals to make a strategy of holding these voters, they would limit themselves to the mid 20s in the polls. it's a formula for certain failure.

moving back from this may help harper a tad, sure. i'm not sure the dynamics of this election are such that harper can really get those votes back in the next month. next year, maybe. i think the red tories are broadly fed up right now and are swinging red. but, it's a dead-end for the liberals in the long run; once the red tories go back, they're back at ignatieff levels - or worse, because pushing balanced budgets for months is just bleeding them to death on the left.

so, by pushing balanced budgets and fiscal conservatism, the liberals will merely find themselves pushed up against a brick wall of tory support - whatever it is, in the worst case (for the tories). 27%. 25%. any further, and the party begins to fracture.

now, if there's a strategy there, it's that - to fracture the conservatives and try and walk in. but, as mentioned that is only feasible if it means becoming conservatives. progressive conservatives, perhaps. but, conservatives nonetheless. you can't command a conservative base unless you're a conservative party - it's a rational statement, but even if we accept that the world is not rational, it nonetheless holds due to the nature of conservative supporters. in fact, they'd even have to change their name. conservative supporters will never vote for the liberal party in the long term.

but what happens when they're fighting over the center-right vote, however small it is? if it's the red tory vote, it's about 8-10%. well, what happens is that the 30% of the vote on the left moves entirely to the ndp. and, gee, what did we see happen when he *was* walking around sounding like a fiscal conservative?

i don't think they're out of this. they're apparently beating the ndp pretty soundly in ontario. and, the numbers in quebec are misleading (mid to high 20s could triple their existing seat count).

but, you're right that it's not just about this election - it's about the viability of the party. there's nowhere to go on the right. because somebody like me will never vote for you if you're campaigning on balanced budgets.

and, what do i actually think about budgets?

it's a non-issue for me. i understand that it's mostly meaningless. so, i care about funding things first, and paying for it later. when somebody says "i'm going to balance the budget", what i hear is "i'm going to cut services". the budget itself is meaningless to me. it's the cutting services part that i don't like.

and, i don't think the polling on the issue is surprising. i don't think that stephen harper was elected in order to balance the budget. i think that stephen harper was elected because paul martin cut services to balance the budget, and a lot of liberal voters didn't like that. note that it's not that we didn't like the balanced budget. we didn't care about that at all. we didn't like the cut in services.

what i'm hoping is that the liberal party has had the epiphany they need. it might not win them this election. but, it seems like it has taken them off the road to collapse.

when it seemed certain that he was going to campaign on balanced budgets, i was thinking the ndp could hit 50% support with a bit of luck.

now that the situation has shifted, i think the race is really up in the air. and, we're going to watch the polls flip because of it.

and, again: it's not the budget itself. it's because "balanced budgets" is code for "cutting services". that's what we hear. and we don't like that. because we're not conservatives. we know conservatives like that, and that's fine. but we're not conservatives...

but, let's be clear: it is not *only* that trudeau walked away from the ideology (and that is what it really is) of balanced budgets.

it is *also* that mulcair drank the kool-aid.

if it's just one or the other, it's a wash. it's the difference that is going to result in some movement. because what voters (on the left, specifically) actually *hear* is that mulcair is going to cut services and trudeau isn't.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/05/trudeaus-deficit-gamble-and-the-fight-for-the-left/

(deleted post)

you know, i've been noticing this perspective quite a bit from ndp supporters, paid or not, and it's really rather amazing. i'm presenting a very informed perspective, here. you have a lot of gall to suggest that *i'm* the one that's lacking in intelligence. and, that's just a reflection of the facts in the case.

i'm not somebody that's going to go waving it around like a flag, but i'm actually somebody that's been identified as of extreme intelligence since i was in grade school. they had me at a grade 10 reading and math level when i was eight. every standardized test i've ever done is at the 99th percentile. they put me through all kinds of enriched programs as a kid. i have the equivalence of a masters degree in mathematics, a bachelor's degree in computer science and a number of minors in diverse subjects, including law - and it's rare to see somebody with degrees in both technical fields and literary fields. the competency testing i've done for employment purposes has also continuously been very high. i'm actually rather certain that the reason i couldn't get a job in the federal government is that my test scores are too high; i've been to several interviews where the interviewers can't believe the scores they're seeing, and have told me they've never seen anything like it.

and, you have the gall to question my intelligence, because i'm aware of the historical fact that ndp governments always slash spending, and that mulcair has in fact promised as much?

it's astounding.

and, it's the kind of arrogance that doesn't belong on the left.

dtgraham
Personally I've never doubted your almost unimaginable brilliance, but you might want to take a second look at the grammar, syntax, and sentence structure of the post you just left. It kind of detracts from someone who puts Pascal and Oppenheimer to shame.

deathtokoalas
this is another interesting perspective that i get a lot. it's funny that it rarely crosses people's mind that i may write the way i do entirely consciously; that i may actually reject certain rules of grammar out of principle, rather than out of ignorance.

consider capitalization, for example. you'll notice that i almost never capitalize anything - i will capitalize things sardonically from time to time, but that's about it. it's not some accident. it's not that i'm unaware of when things "should" be capitalized. it's that i reject the idea of capitalization. call me an anti-capitalist. or perhaps an alphabetical egalitarian. but, i am of the firm opinion that the way we use capitalization in every day writing is a process of enforcing hierarchical relationships in our minds. and, i would argue that changing the language is a part of changing the way we think about hierarchical relationships. when i refuse to capitalize the ceo or the prime minister or any other position of authority, there's a reason for it - and hopefully that seeps in a little, when people are reading what i write.

i'd also invite any linguist to really carefully analyze the way that i write, because there's an underlying recursive logic to it. the tendency to stop at a conjunction, for example. it's against the rules, and i know that, but it think it's a more expressive way to get across what i'm trying to get across in the way that i'm trying to get it across. i'll stop and start where i want, not where i'm ordered to.

by constructing rules of grammar into stone and forcing children to obey those rules, we're ordering their thoughts for them. we're setting the terms of how they think. if we want a really free thinking society, that's one of the first things we need to reverse.

grammar should be unique to the individual. we should all have our own idiosyncratic systems of grammar that uniquely reflect our own thoughts, and how we choose to express them.

that said, and as mentioned, you'll notice the writing is very logical in the way that it splits ideas into small pieces. you are really reacting to it's exaggerated underlying logic. but, this is forum writing, not formal writing - it is simple by nature. my essays, on the other hand, tend to be in the 30s in terms of flesch-kincaid readability scores.

but, this article is not about me. so, let's move on.

i just want to clarify what i said in the first post with concrete numbers.

base conservative support is around 30%

red tory swing support is around 8%.

so, if the conservatives are running around 30% and the liberals are running around 28%, that means you're looking at actual liberal support of the liberal party at somewhere around 20%. it's easy to understand this given current events. keep in mind that the liberals were running close to 40% in the late 90s, while the tory-reform vote combined to around 38%.

if the liberals were to run on balanced budgets (thereby further alienating it's left flank) and any kind of "event" were to happen that would swing red tory support back home, it would put them back in ignatieff territory.

further, there is almost no way they could poll much higher than 30% with that strategy, even in a worst case scenario for the conservatives.

it follows that the only way they have a chance of winning any election - this one or the next one - is to try and win back the huge number of voters they lost on the left.

it's really not even a choice.

(deleted post)

what i'm pointing out here is that they can't win by campaigning on the right because they've already hit their maximal potential of red tory swing voters, and the barrier is around 30%. please re-read what i wrote and try harder to understand it.