UW Young Liberals

Well, I may not be the most perfectly sober person at the moment, but after a long, hard night as a scrutineer, let me say we needed a drink after it was all done.

First off, I'd like to thank everyone at the University of Waterloo who came out, and especially those who came out to vote Kennedy. We had a great showing, with 28 of the 59 ballots for us (vs. 14 for Martha, 9 for Iggy, 3 for Dion, 2 for Dryden, 2 for Rae, and 1 for Hedy Fry!), giving the UW Young Liberals 2 Kennedy delegate spots! I was very proud of our club tonight, for at least most of the evening. I will be one of the representatives for Gerard, and we have one that the campaign will have to fill (since I was the only one who made it onto the ballot for Gerard), and I am proud to be heading off to the convention with Andres Fuentes Martinez (our club president and an Iggy supporter, although a nice one who actually let me sit down with him and the membership list and let our clubs share secrets), and Abira Balendram, who I am sure will represent Martha with pride.

Our meeting was heald concurrently with the Laurier Young Liberals, and unfortunately Kennedy didn't do as well, but still picked up one of the 4 delegate spots there.

As for the overall numbers, I think it might be a little disappointing for Kennedy, but I will have to tackle my views on that at a time when I am in a slightly better state to guage. I think it's still early, and the very strong showing in Alberta that I see for Kennedy is very impressive.

Also, on a final note, our club did have probably one of the most exciting DEMs of the weekend. Sure, we have had had times when we didn't have anyone show up for either club in a half hour timeframe, but how many clubs had to call the cops in to sort out the affair? I won't elaborate publicly on details, but suffice it to say it turned into a very interesting evening on the UW campus.

Rae: "It's not a campaign about ideas"

No doubt about it, Rae has been moving up in the polls and in the eyes of many Liberal voters. I never game him a second thought, thinking he would be no higher than Volpe, even up until the middle of August.

However, around that time, I got to liking him a bit, and even seeing him as one of those candidates who, while still probably 5th or 6th on my ballot, I could live with as leader.

But this from Far and Wide I just read (quoting from a Macleans article) really disturbed me. Apparently, Rae is running a campaign not on ideas, but on the leader and personality. And not just not running on ideas, but running away from ideas. It's one thing to be like Ignatieff and admit that your ideas might be unpopular, but it's another thing entirely to admit that you don't care about the ideas and vision for the party.

This was probably one of the most overriding reasons why I like Kennedy. He not only is youthful and energetic, but he also has good ideas and visions, and he seems to really be interested in reforming the party. He was on Countdown tonight, and kept re-iterating his vision for reforming the powers of the PM. You can tell by his speeches that he doesn't just care about trying to eke out a win in this next election, but really bringing new life and new ideas into the party. I think he really seems to be the guy who will be able to not just lead the party the next couple years but will actually be able to give us a direction to follow to get us back on the winning path.

Delegate counts

DemocraticSpace, in their tradition of tracking every conceivable statistic of every election out there, has decided to try to get the list for the number of delegates for every club, riding, and commission from aroud the country. Now while it really isn't much of a guage for support for anything, it is still interesting to look at.

You have some ridings, such as York-Simcoe or Newmarket where it looks like each camp just went with probably everyone they wanted to, since the highest camps are in the 10-15 range. Then you have some ridings like Ottawa Centre where the battle will be not just which candidates get delegates but which delegates get elected. 34 for Dion and 36 for Ignatieff? 141 delegates on the ballot there. I'm glad I don't live there to vote. It's going to take people a half hour just to sort through the list and try to make sure they've got all 14 people they want.

So if you know how many people are running in your area, help out Greg and give him your riding or club's numbers!

Another one bites the dust...but doesn't go to Volpe

Well, Hedy drops out, not overly surprisingly given the continual predictions of about .5% support and without any real fundraising. And, just like everyone else, she goes to Rae. I bet nobody would have predicted back in April that Rae would be one of the top few candidates for leadership.

And in the same story, Volpe decides not to drop out, for some odd reason. So assuming nobody else drops out before Friday, it's gearing up to be an interesting race. Many of us will be up late trying to find results this weekend, I think.

Leaks and dropouts

First off, there is the "scandal" that a few leadership camps have leaked membership lists to the Globe and Mail to use in polling. Some bloggers find it unacceptable and will not be voting for any of those that did. Others think there may be some privacy concerns about it. Me? I think as long as they made the G+M and any polling firm sign a non-disclosure agreement about the info then there shouldn't be any real trouble. Maybe fine the camps, but I honestly don't see a big deal about this issue.

However, signing up dead people and paying for memberships is a different story. Especially after the scandals earlier in the campaign. I think we all hope that Volpe does the right move and withdraws himself from the race. He has to realize he has no chance to win, and that he really won't have that much support. At least bowing out tomorrow would allow us (and the media) to concentrate on all these other wonderful candidates in the race next weekend.

Debate last weekend

I haven't had very reliable internet access and time this week, so I haven't had a chance to post my recap of last week's debate, but basically:

Dion has dropped a bit in my mind. He did very well the opening round, but didn't look good after that.

Bob stole the highlights from Dion in the opening round, and made me think the debate would be interesting overall. After the first get-go, nothing good until the closing statements.

Iggy looked weak, and I think a few people may be questioning their unconditional support for him. He won't lose a lot of supoprt, but it may hamper people coming to him a bit.

Fry made a good closing statement, but it won't do any good.

Kennedy had an awesome closing statement, and I though really enforced his vision. We don't just need someone to lead us, we need someone with a real vision and ideaology to lead us. He may not be the best debater out there, but he really has great ideas and great passion, something we need as a party.

Kennedy @ Waterloo

Today our campus club was treated to a special visitor: Gerard Kennedy came to talk to our club! In an event titled "Kisses From Kennedy", Kennedy came and gave a speech to our club. It was very well received, with about 25-30 people showing up from the University of Waterloo and from WLU. It was a death by Chocolate theme, so there were a bunch of chocolates for people to eat during the event as well. Everyone seemed quite impressed with Kennedy's content and speaking style, almost universally agreed that he really is a great candidate in these sort of settings. From his emphatic stance on wanted dedicated transfers to universities to answering some tough questions about Aboriginal rights, he did very well in the event and made it a great success. He even brought along Andrew Telegdi, which is very tough to be able to get him out to events for our club.

So we were very proud to host this event. This follows from our club having Martha Hall-Findlay come to talk to us last April back when she was quite lonely atop the leadership race as the only declared candidate, and our wine and cheese social event where Kennedy, Dryden, Fry, and Bennett all showed up to talk to us in a fundraiser for our club.

Coming out to events like this is just another reason why I support and hope that Gerard becomes leader of the party. Crowds big or small, he will come out and speak his vision. It should be very interesting to see how it all plays out next weekend!

GK websites

After a long time, the Gerard Kennedy website is finally improved and up and running. Much nicer website than before.

Also, the Generation Kennedy website is up and running as well, and is another good ressource for all news Kennedy.

Finally, on the Generation Kennedy website, there is also a discussion forum for all to use. I would highly encourage everyone to go post on it and ask questions, whether you agree with GK's policies or not. If you have an idea that you think should policy of the party, post there and ask about it.

Leadership poll results

Watching Politics with Don Newman now, they present a new poll by The Gandalf Group. Now, it provided some really interesting results.

Among Liberals, which leader would you vote for:
Dryden 19
Rae 19
Iggy 12
Dion 8
GK 7
Bennett 5
Broson 4
MHF 1
Volpe 1
Fry 1

Among the general public, it breaks down as:
Dryden 19
Rae 17
Iggy 10
Dion 8
Bennett 6
GK 4
Brison 3
MHF 2
Volpe 1
Fry 1

Really interesting, since hardly any other polls have Dryden in the lead. My guess is we may be seeing one of these outlier polls, but it certainly is still interesting to see. My main notes from reading through the details by region for each of the candidates are as follows:

Rae is much more disliked than the others (especially in Ontario, where 43% say they wouldn't vote Lib with him in the lead, compared to 33 Dryden and 35 Kennedy and the rest at 36-40). However, he is a bigger name, so people tend to have larger opinions of him (as evident by the only 8% no responce number, as opposed to 12 Dryden and 17-21 for the others). So electing him may garner us a few votes, but will also turn off many people.

Otherwise, we see Martha, Ignatieff, and Kennedy's numbers seem a bit lower than expected. Most people would think Martha would be ahead of Bennett for the women, but this poll had Bennett consistantly higher. She was even rivalling Brison, Kennedy, and some of the others. And Iggy and Kennedy, even if they are probably the #1-2 if you ask people in the party, don't register as high in this poll. Kennedy does gain a lot in the party vs outside the party, as to be expected.

But the overreaching part of the poll, the non-responces. For leader, even Liberal voters have 23% undecided or no responce. That means that there's still a lot of room for candidates in the next few weeks until super weekend and the next few months until the convention.

Dawson shooting

Terrible news today. Hopefully all those in critical condition will recover. Just awful to have these sort of shootings in schools. Thoughts and prayers go out to all those injured in this tragic event.

Debate

Well, I'm in the midst of moving in for the term, so blogging has been and will be sporadic for a short time more.

Unfortunately I missed the debate yesterday, but seems like I didn't miss much. From what I hear, the french for Brison and Kennedy have improved a bit, and overall it was a big bore. They really won't have a great chance for debate unless if there were only like 4-5 people left, but no way we see that few until a couple ballots in in December.

Otherwise, if anyone knows where I can find the debate online (either in video or podcast), I'd love to get a copy to see or hear for myself.

Bloc will support softwood

Well, the bloc have decided to support the Cons over softwood. This is good news for the Liberals: We now maintain our dissatisfaction over the deal, but going to war on it would be stupid.

This is one thing that I asked Dryden about when I was hanging around him at Summerfling this summer: should the Liberals go into an election over softwood. His responce, which was exactly what I thought was the right thing, was that we shouldn't bother doing it now, but we should definitely remind people how much they copped out when we face an election in 6 months time.

Nobody cares enough about softwood to be able to justify an election over it now, and at least now we don't have to say, "we don't like this deal, but we'll let it pass because we're not ready for an election yet."

Stealing the environment

Lots of news about Stephane Dion's Clean Air Plan. I like Dion, and I respect him, so I seriously doubt that he went ahead and tried to pass off the Suzuki Foundation report as his own. I believe that it was a mistake, and that someone forgot what they took from the report and what they wrote themselves. Dion should come out and apologize for the mistake, and should probably even look into getting rid of whoever copied that section or allowed it into the final draft.

And unlike some bloggers, I don't think this one will pose a problem for Dion as such, but it's not good for him. While he may have more people actually read the report than would have before, few people will really still be able to think of Dion as the great environmental candidate. Whatever he says relating to the environment will have that "was this actually his idea or did he steal it from someone else" tag on it. And that really doesn't bode well for someone who prides himself on his environmental policy.

Iggy keeps making news

As I said previously, I don't think Ignatieff is the right guy to lead the Liberal party. And this week he's shown it again.

First off, his "not running" fiasco. Yes, he did correct himself, but a leader shouldn't have to do that. Second, his "civil war" fiasco.

Now, I haven't followed as closely the last few days, and there probably isn't much actually wrong with hypothesizing nor what he said about Quebec, since it is probably true.

The real problem is that they were the wrong thing to say. As Brison stated, he is an amateur in this. Like when he was speaking to the youth at LPC(O), he started one of his responces with "there are a few words I don't like: Youth, Multicultural, Senior." I cringed when I heard that. He did go on for the next 5 minutes to explain it away (something about labelling). And I think within the party, he can explain away his views like that.

But when you're in an election campaign, they steal your few soundbites and you don't get the chance to reply. You can't keep issuing "clarifications" or "retractions" to everything you say.

Honestly, if he'd had a few more years in government, or a term in a cabinet post, he would probably be one of if not my favourite candidate. He would be a real threat to anyone running against him due to his great intelligence and charisma. But he's just missing that political experience to not be able to avoid those gaffes. He may be able to learn enough in the leadership race to not screw up in an election campaign, but it's hard to say.