Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Its the time of the season for voting

A gem I stumbled upon thanks to CBC's embrace of iTunes: the At Issue panel final session from a few weeks ago.

Interesting idea was touched upon, and I'd like to add a bit.

Heibert, Coyne, Gregg and Murphy stumbled upon the idea in chatting about federal election timing (they all later nominated the question as the most overdiscussed of the political year) that Dion et Green Shift are best to move before the winter season, when those home heating bills start to roll in -- the idea being that even though Dion could sidestep the high gas prices (in argument, at least) by pointing out his plan does not tax gas, he would have no answer to people's stress over the thought of even higher gas bills other than to say that, uhhh, there'll be some money coming to help that . . . next year.

So, it may be the winter of dismay for the Liberals, but the Harper government may not be able to stand the heat of the summer.

Since climate change fell upon popular awareness, every major weather event has seemed to trigger a connection with a need to get to work on global warming. If Canada faces an extremely hot or busy summer storm season, the tough talk of paying a price for carbon would at least seem viscerally justified.

This all leaves (pardon the pun) the fall as go time for the Liberals. One has to think that if Dion and party cannot sell the Green Shift in the period of a summer and an election, the thing is truly an albatross.

Looking far back, but not too far

A handy consequence of posting so infrequently: the first thing you see is an old post that is of the right vintage to uncork and taste.

Interesting to look at the last paragraph of my last post before the update. Now, Silly Hillary, who clearly along with many other people does not read this blog, decided to hold out to a bitter end before quitting the race. Despite that, Obama is in the lead according to every poll that I've seen. My argument slain? Hardly.

Mainly, Obama has been chasing hard after blue collar centrist votes with several policy shifts to the middle (I generally don't penalize folk for moving to the centre, hense I'll leave flip flop in the dictionary) and a lot of face time in some rather red states (July 4 in Montana?). This is of course, entirely logical and expectable, and my previous observation was hardly a eureka discovery -- but, it's nice to confirm that I'm at least starting from a sane point of view.