Wir wussten, dass er ein blauer Liberaler war. Aber Mark Carney entfremdet progressive Wähler
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/we-knew-he-was-a-blue-liberal-but-mark-carney-is-alienating-progressive-voters/article_a7bbe0c3-1458-4b9b-b801-94d2cecbb4de.html
12 Kommentare
….. is he though?
Most polls show the LPC in majority territory and the NDP in the gutter. If anything, the last election showed that self-styled „progressive“ voters are really not that big of a political bloc in this country.
The fact of the matter is Carney was not subtle about the fact that he would greenlight infrastructure and tack the LPC to the right. He was rewarded for it and came within inches of a majority government.
Canadians by and large want a government to govern responsibly, not be activists.
? He stated he is keeping Childcare, Pharmacare, Dentalcare, and a few other new programs.
He may be alienating Environmental only Progressives. But that is not all progressives.
It’s been 4 months. It’s ridiculous how aggrieved the journalistic class is right now. The election was a referendum on the government’s focus: the economy and trade. Relent and allow some time for the work to be done.
It is shocking to me that so many in the media are unable to dismount their own personal hobby horse for a brief moment – they should direct their attention towards what the majority of Canadians are looking for: more economic certainty, more investment.
Try giving it 6 months before proselytizing the importance of your specific interest group issue to the unwashed masses 🙄 Sometimes the Overton Window shifts – accept it. As an environmentalist myself, I sure have.
This does not align with my experience. I’m also a progressive, in most ways, and I’m fairly satisfied. Everyone in my circle is satisfied, and these span from fiscally conservative centrists to socially liberal activists.
The poll numbers seem to completely support this observation. There are one or two outliers that show significant shift from liberal to conservative, but those are amongst the less reliable pollsters. The remainder have shifts that are within the margin of error, and so don’t point to any concrete drop at all.
Who’s angry? Environmental activists who are unhappy with Carney’s fast tracking of nation building projects? Well, they should have done more research before voting for him, then. He made his platform crystal clear, and I don’t see him deviating from it as of yet. Who else? Social progressives? I don’t see him rolling anything back on that front, just shifting the message with less of a vocal focus. I appreciate that, since Trudeau was overly performative. Who’s next? Native activists who see less of a focus on their requests and demands? Frankly, I can’t imagine a scenario wherein they would ever be happy without the total dissolution of Canada as a nation and restoration of the majority of the lands therewithin to the descendants of those natives who were disenfranchised. I don’t believe that’s a reasonable outcome.
Right now, we need a consensus builder who focuses on those elements of our polity that unify us, versus one that parts and parses us into ever smaller demographics based on inalienable characteristics. We’re tired of identity politics, coming from the right and the left. They’re detrimental to social cohesion and they are a breeding tribalism where we might otherwise be united by our collective interest.
Given that the majority of Carney’s priorities are also supported by many economically oriented conservative voters, I’m happy for that trade-off. Let us build something, let us boost our economy through a means other than the commodification of education and housing. Let’s turn around our stalling GDP, while opening the door to an increase of qol. Goodness knows we need it, especially our youth who’ve been deprived of opportunities we’ve long taken for granted.
Add in the further reductions to abusive immigration pathways and the proposed bail and sentencing reform, and I think the liberals under Carney will achieve relative stability despite the inevitable and predictable lapsing of the honeymoon phase.
Carney is definitely alienating some progressives, as in, those that typically vote NDP or flip between NDP and Liberal, and probably even some partisan Liberals from the progressive wing. How he handled the Air Canada strike with the back to work order was too aggressive. Or how he is reversing a lot of Trudeau era environmental policies so quickly. Broadly, progressives are fine with the LPC under Carney.
The trade off in all this, is that Carney has won back more centrist Liberals who thought Trudeau took the LPC too far left for their liking. Carney also is appealing to right-leaning Canadians who may like CPC policies, but don’t like Poilievre as leader.
I think the mood of the country was to have a leader who was fiscally/economically to the right of Trudeau, and socially to the left of Poilievre. Carney is doing that.
The NDP being in political limbo will give the LPC some comfort when it comes to the progressive vote. But they shouldn’t become complacent in the event that the NDP manages to recover.
The LPC simply needs to throw progressives a bone on policy now and then to keep them happy. That way they can continue to broadly appeal to progressive voters, even if sometimes, they have to hold their nose on Election Day.
I mean I’m not sure what progressives were expecting? Carney was alway pretty clearly a centre-right Blue Liberal someone who could have run for the conservative haf he been interested. So I don’t get why progressives are surprised when he supports things like austerity and developing major infrastructure, natural resources and industrial projects..
This may prove to be true in 3-6 months time.
All of these critiques of Carney seem premature – like taking a half baked cake out of the oven because you can’t wait to serve it up.
[Even national progressive leaders were telling progressive voters not to burn their votes on the NDP](https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/former-ndp-leader-tom-mulcair-tells-canadians-not-to-vote-ndp/ar-AA1BEeMT). That’s never happened in our lifetimes.
If you’re an environmentalist lefty, these are not going to be years in which your priorities are front and centre, and as Mr. Mulcair said, your choice now is pretty much Liberals who’ll make SOME faint effort in those areas, or Conservatives who actively consider you the enemy and WANT to completely undo everything you care about.
These are not good choices, but they are THE choices.
…and sadly, even after the NDP have picked their new leader, we are a bare minimum of another election cycle away from an NDP vote being anything other than a functional vote-split in favour of the Conservatives. The same „Liberals have to focus on our single-issue priorities or we’ll teach them a lesson by making them lose“ approach we saw down south in 2024, serves literally and exclusively to aid the party furthest from the left.
I’m sorry that’s all true, but it is.
At some point people that are shocked or upset by this need to sit down and look at the world around them.
Almost everywhere voting populations are moving more conservative and shunning major progressive ideas, immigration and joining right wing culture war issues.
There are enough of them that they are on the verge or winning elections everywhere and the ones that aren’t the non-conservative party is moving right to get the win.
So Carney was the best progressives were going to get in this last election. Period.
An with the likes of Trump still going strong and social media and much of the media capitulating to the right and normalizing their extreme behaviour, things are not getting any better for progressives in the near future.
We better hope Gen Z and younger generations don’t give up like Xer’s and Millennials have been after Covid. Xer’s and Millennials are moving right in an attempt to go to world and life their parents had.
Working class, like any class, act in their best interests. And what is the working class? Is it farmers? Manufacturing? Services? The first need TFW because no Canadian wants to work in the fields. The latter two don’t want TFW because of the perceived wage suppression of TFWs.
What about office workers who aren’t using their hands and backs but nonetheless living pay cheque to pay cheque?
How would free Palestine or banning books or whatever fan favourite cause of the left or right is these days improve Canadians’ lot and those around them?
In times of economic stress it makes sense that Canadians and Canada turn introspective and more focused on literal bread and butter issues directly affecting Canadians.
I’m an environmentalist, been working in the environmental/sustainability/climate change field for decades, I consider myself a progressive voters, and I am NOT alienated by the PM.
I don’t think it’s the „progressives“ who are alienated but more those who are more on the left of the political spectrum, those who voted for Trudeau BECAUSE he was shifting more on the left than on the center, and those who are more idealistic than pragmatic.
Let’s face reality:
– We have a country bullying us and declaring economic war with us (if not straight up „war“ by insinuating our sovereignty is worthless). Do people really think that we can put our head in the sand as if this wasn’t happening?
Some people believe that Canada should not spend money on military power…well, maybe they should name me 1 single democracy around the planet who doesn’t have armed forces. There’s a reason why suddenly Finland and Sweden are not entering NATO.
I suspect we are learning how few progressives there really are in Canada as he seems to still have quite a bit of support. Its pretty disheartening.