What Ignatieff and the Liberals are Waiting For

Quite simply, as Alison and Dawg have been pointing out, there's a Librocon Party of Canada with a red and a blue wing. Just like there's an Oligarch's Party in the USA with a Democrat and a Repugnican wing.

In the USA, the role of the Democratic Party is to make all sorts of nice noises for the voters on the better side of the bell curve, about equality, justice, peace, human rights, fairness, whatever, but to roll over for the corporate scum policies of the Repugnican Party, because the whole the whole thing is a scam. Then, when the anti-society, anti-human policies of the Repugs piss off enough voters, the Democrats are installed and are forced to have to live up to their pro-human, pro-society rhetoric, which they inevitably fail to do.

As mass democracy has matured though, it was getting increasingly difficult to pull this scam off, especially given the debasing of capitalist democracy itself since the end of the 1970s. It took a massive, sophisticated public relations effort to convince intelligent voters to bother taking part in this charade, hence the introduction of the stirring Barack Obama product. A great speaker (albeit with nothing to say), handsome, and a symbol of the progress of racial equality. Alas! Obama is still a Democratic president and therefore, beholden to all the corporate interests that govern decision making in that country.

Which brings us to this mid-term election whereby the confused, ignorant, stupid foot-soldiers of the right-wing are barfing up all their fears, delusions, prejudices, and less ignorant voters are being told basically "Sure, Obama has done very little for you and can't be bothered to promise you anything now that his party and his administration is threatened, but you must still participate in the charade or risk being subjected to some truly frightening Christo-fascist nutbars and even more heartless neoliberal government!"

It's possible that the Demorepug Party will be able to scare enough voters to eke out a "win" for their Democrat wing, but it's neither here nor there for people sick of the whole disgusting system.

Which brings me to the Liberals. Quite simply, Ignatieff and the federal Liberals are waiting for the harpercons to dip massively in the polls, so that they can then portray themselves as an "alternative" and force an election. The whole charade up in Canada is marred somewhat by the remnants of a social democratic party and a Quebec nationalist party, but in the end, Canadian voters can be expected to come around and vote for the group of MPs who seem most likely to form the next depressing government.

So, if you're waiting for Ignatieff to "grab a spine" or anything like that, there's nothing that he's going to do for himself. He's waiting for harper to screw-up on his own, so badly, that even his hardcore thirty percent of the voters will fray at the edges. That might not happen for a long time however, as Canadian apathy is exhibiting surprising resilience.