Centuries, Volume II

OK, here's my second-round election guesstimate.

Liberals: 121
Conservative: 112
NDP: 24
Bloc: 50
Independent 1

My first prediction was a little higher for the Liberals and a little lower for the Conservatives. So where does the credit lie for the stronger Conservative showing?
Harper has spent half the campaign on the defensive due to stupid comments by Conservative candidates. It was a much better campaign than the last one in 2000, much more professional, aside from the Conservative candidates' comments I just mentioned.

I'm reminded of Naomi Klein's book entitled "No Logo", in which she says:
"Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations"

When we think of the traditional political parties in this country, the Conservatives, the Liberals, the NDP, we think of them like brand names. Like Coke, Pepsi, and Tab, the majority of us have our favourite that we remain loyal to. Is Coke better than Pepsi? The taste difference is so negligible that if you gave a Coke drinker a glass of Pepsi without telling him, he wouldn't know the difference.

Traditionally Tories and Liberals have had more in common than they have had differences. Both parties have always governed by putting the best interests of the country ahead of any personal opinions that the members of either party might have. There has always been a fable that the Conservatives govern from further to the right than the Liberals, and the fable has fed upon itself by having the effect of encouraging conservative-minded people to join the Conservative party.
This in turn has had the effect of creating a party membership that is more conservative than the Liberal party, and has an effect on party policy and campaign policy, but as I said, it doesn't affect the way the party governs. "Liberal Tory, same old story" was one of the Reform Party slogans back in 1993, and it may have been the only insightful thing ever to come out of the Reform "braintrust".

Anyway, I started discussing Coke, Pepsi and Tab. The reason I included Tab cola is because for a long time it was the third option, a cola that always had it's fans but never really had a chance of winning the cola wars. That's where the NDP and the Reform/Alliance enter into the equation. Both of those parties had their supporters, but never enough to give them a chance at governing. They were perennial "third-parties".

This is where you are going to have to use your imagination a bit. Imagine if Tab Cola one day bought out Coca-Cola and repackaged it's own product in the familiar red and white bottles and cans under the Coke name. So long as it was done quietly, Coca Cola sales would likely continue without a glitch.

That's exactly what the Reform/Alliance did, took over the Conservative Party and repackaged itself as the new Conservative party, and this election has shown that Reform is reaping all the benefits of the "Conservative" brand-name recognition in this country.

Next they'll be telling us they are the "Party of MacDonald".