As this federal election campaign moves on, I’m seeing an increasing number of people complaining that none of the parties are a good option.\u00a0 In particular, I’m seeing a lot of people complaining about the NDP, but that’s not surprising given that I move in generally progressive social circles.\u00a0 And this gets at something about how a lot of voters approach politics that really annoys me.<\/p>\n
It often seems like what people want is a party with a platform that just says everything they want it to say and nothing that they don’t.\u00a0 On one level, that obviously makes sense; we want the things we want.\u00a0 But it also ignores how representative democracy works.<\/p>\n
We live in a country with tens of millions of potential voters.\u00a0 Those voters have different circumstances and priorities.\u00a0 Any party that has realistic aims of governing has to find ways of convincing huge swathes of people who have fairly major disagreements to work together anyway.\u00a0 Politics is, at its core, the art of negotiation.\u00a0 We talk a lot about “coalition” governments, but in reality all<\/em> governments are coalitions.\u00a0 People who differ on some issues but agree on others come together to find a way for each group to get some of what it wants.<\/p>\n This isn’t a flaw of representative democracy, it’s the point<\/em>.<\/p>\n Let’s have a look at the party that I’ve long been a supporter of – the NDP.\u00a0 Do I agree with everything Thomas Mulcair says on the campaign trail?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Do I agree with every policy announcement he makes?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 So why am I still strongly supporting the NDP?<\/p>\n Because an NDP government will do things that are important to me.\u00a0 An NDP government will repeal C-51, the Conservatives’ awful terrorism legislation.\u00a0 An NDP government will institute a national daycare program.\u00a0 An NDP government will probably bring in electoral reform, and an NDP government will likely end Canada’s military involvement in Iraq.\u00a0 Those are all things that are important to me, and they’re things the other parties won’t do (with the possible exception of the Liberals wanting some form of electoral reform).<\/p>\n An NDP government will also likely do things I don’t agree with, like extending the home renovation tax credit.\u00a0 But that’s OK.\u00a0 I recognise that in order to get the things I want,\u00a0 I need to be willing to work with other people on the things they want.\u00a0 That’s how democratic governments are formed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As this federal election campaign moves on, I’m seeing an increasing number of people complaining that none of the parties are a good option.\u00a0 In particular, I’m seeing a lot of people complaining about the NDP, but that’s not surprising given that I move in generally progressive social circles.\u00a0 And this gets at something about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greatapes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}