- cross-posted to:
- canadapolitics
- cross-posted to:
- canadapolitics
The federal Liberals are seeing a dive in popularity among younger voters, once the core of their base, falling 23 points behind the Conservatives by the end of August, according to new polling from Nanos Research.
Perhaps for the same reason why the press focuses on Trudeau and Squinty McProudBoy for Prime Minister despite them not being electable. The Prime Minister position is appointed. It means nothing to us.
I am sure the answer is, despite meaning nothing, because that is what the audience is interested in. People like to hear about famous people. The guy who lives next door that you can actually elect, and who will actually be important in your life, isn’t famous enough for us to want to pay attention.
Doesn’t that imply someone else is going to be elected? And while the post is technically appointed, they’re very much the figureheads of their parties in a given election.
The rest I totally agree with, though.
Yes, what I figuratively referred to as the guy who lives next door. Maybe not literally the guy next door, but someone who lives in your general area of the country, who is familiar with the people who live in your area of the country. This is who matters. They are who you are going to have to talk to every week for the following four years as you exercise your democratic obligation. You’d better like him!
That might be pertinent if we had a party-based electoral system. There are party-based electoral systems. Many think Canada should adopt one of them. But, for better or worse, we haven’t. We chose, and continue to use, the electoral system that encourages people to vote for individuals rather than parties. As such, this doesn’t mean much either.
I mean, seating in parliament is by party, and the government approved by the crown is all Liberal ministers. My local MP does absolutely nothing of note except occasionally campaigning and following the marching orders from his own party.
You’re right, the powdered wig guys in Britian centuries ago probably were envisioning it that way when they wrote the rules, but that’s absolutely not how the system works in practice.
We certainly stand by the right to freedom of association. But that is, again, only of concern to those in the union. It’s not of concern to the population at large. Our concern is only with picking someone local who we want to talk to on the regular. That is why we go through this hiring process, to select the person we want to talk to for the four years that follow, so that we will talk to them and not run away and hide from our democratic obligations. People have a tendency to do just that – that is, undemocratically never speak to their representative again – if they don’t like the person, which entirely defeats the purpose of hiring a representative in the first place. Choose wisely.
The way it is in practice is the only way, and it’s not going to change unless the system itself does. The rest is legal fiction.
Yes, we already discussed at length how the media focuses on the celebrities because people only care about celebrities. That is as true in politics as it is Hollywood or anywhere else. Such is human nature.
But they don’t matter. It’s just entertainment.