Like layers on an onion, the robocall issue continues to be peeled away. I expect it will for several more days, if not weeks. The reporters who broke this story and others who are following it up will undoubtedly uncover more factual information which will either add another layer to the onion or strip another layer away. This type of issue can be quite complex, one of the reasons it is always best not to jump to conclusions in the opening rounds.
Vote suppression — outside of being illegal — is an affront to our democratic values. At the time this incident occurred it would have been equally offensive to Harper, Ignatieff or Jack Layton. Putting partisan rhetoric aside, I don’t believe there is a present day political leader or one from the recent past who would have suggested or approved of such a tactic.
Whether carried out by a rogue operator or systematically, voters should be disgusted by the use of this tactic as in the end it was one of our most important democratic rights that someone tried to take away. For the good of the country we need to get to the bottom of this issue as quickly as possible.
Trotting out Conservative MPs with claims that their supporters also received harassing calls might make PMO feel better, but it won’t lower the temperature nor will it distract the public to any large extent. The Conservative brand has taken a severe hit, their problem will be how to avoid a Gomery type inquiry yet cooperate with Elections Canada so that this story is put to rest as quickly as possible. There doesn’t appear to be any easy solution for them at this point.
In the hyper-partisan state of our politics today, we readily assign blame often based on few facts and over the top rhetoric is the new normal. Social media with all of its benefits plays a role in this. Issues explode in literally minutes as opposed to days. Everyone from those knowledgeable about an issue to those simply following it has an opportunity to engage in the conversation especially as social media is based much more on emotion and lends itself to heated discussions, often with little factual content.
As we will see with this issue, for partisans social media is a gift that keeps on giving. You get to stoke the outrage 24 hours a day rather than wait for the next day’s news cycle. Today, you can turn on Twitter at any time of the day and find people engaging in verbal combat over a political issue, often parroting the views of a political party they support. Speed of delivery is now the key factor, the leisurely pace of decades ago long forgotten. How many of you remember when the Reading Room on the Hill was used for that purpose — i.e., to scour newspapers from across the country for information of political use?
It is also much easier now to demonize your political opponent. While Canadian politicians and partisans have been doing that since Confederation, the internet provides political operatives with many more tools to use and, when combined together, it is much more effective. As our political parties become more proficient in how they use these tools, Canadian voters will be constantly barraged by partisan outrage.
The hyper-partisans of today live in their own political bubble. They are often oblivious to the real world that voters inhabit. To Liberal and NDP partisans, Harper is the great Satan, to Conservatives it will be Rae today or Trudeau or Chretien in the past. The truth is that none of them are or were. They were people serving the country and history will judge whether or not they did a good job.
In “The Information Diet”, Clay Johnson, one of the founders of Blue State Digital and a key player in the Howard Dean and Obama campaigns looked at the role social media and the internet plays in shaping both the partisan rhetoric that we see playing out in the United States as well as voters’ perceptions. Are we going down a similar path to the United States?
While the Conservatives are often accused of Americanizing Canadian politics, others do it as well. We can’t escape picking up some of the good, as well as the bad, habits of our American neighbours.
Back around 2000 I recall reading a book by James Carville, one of Bill Clinton’s top campaign advisors, and making notes in the margin that it was the same game plan followed by the Liberals when they took on Stockwell Day, the leader of the Canadian Alliance. The Liberals also brought Carville in to help with their election preparations. At the recent Liberal Biennial convention they had some of the people who worked on Obama’s successful social media campaign explain how it was done — an excellent presentation, incidentally — and I will wager we will see the Liberals adopt some of those strategies as they go forward to the next campaign.
Similar to our American neighbours, our citizens are constantly bombarded with over the top political rhetoric and negative political attacks whether in a 140 character tweet or an attack ad or comments on TV or in the press. No longer is this confined to an election cycle, it now happens 365 days a year. It is relentless and all of our political parties do it.
The robocall issue will be but one of many that voters will be exposed to prior to the next federal election and Canadian voters will be the ones to decide who forms the next government. Unfortunately they will have to dig through a lot of rhetoric to get to the facts as we follow in the footsteps of our American neighbours.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Keith Beardsley
Vote suppression — outside of being illegal — is an affront to our democratic values. At the time this incident occurred it would have been equally offensive to Harper, Ignatieff or Jack Layton. Putting partisan rhetoric aside, I don’t believe there is a present day political leader or one from the recent past who would have suggested or approved of such a tactic.
Whether carried out by a rogue operator or systematically, voters should be disgusted by the use of this tactic as in the end it was one of our most important democratic rights that someone tried to take away. For the good of the country we need to get to the bottom of this issue as quickly as possible.
Trotting out Conservative MPs with claims that their supporters also received harassing calls might make PMO feel better, but it won’t lower the temperature nor will it distract the public to any large extent. The Conservative brand has taken a severe hit, their problem will be how to avoid a Gomery type inquiry yet cooperate with Elections Canada so that this story is put to rest as quickly as possible. There doesn’t appear to be any easy solution for them at this point.
In the hyper-partisan state of our politics today, we readily assign blame often based on few facts and over the top rhetoric is the new normal. Social media with all of its benefits plays a role in this. Issues explode in literally minutes as opposed to days. Everyone from those knowledgeable about an issue to those simply following it has an opportunity to engage in the conversation especially as social media is based much more on emotion and lends itself to heated discussions, often with little factual content.
As we will see with this issue, for partisans social media is a gift that keeps on giving. You get to stoke the outrage 24 hours a day rather than wait for the next day’s news cycle. Today, you can turn on Twitter at any time of the day and find people engaging in verbal combat over a political issue, often parroting the views of a political party they support. Speed of delivery is now the key factor, the leisurely pace of decades ago long forgotten. How many of you remember when the Reading Room on the Hill was used for that purpose — i.e., to scour newspapers from across the country for information of political use?
It is also much easier now to demonize your political opponent. While Canadian politicians and partisans have been doing that since Confederation, the internet provides political operatives with many more tools to use and, when combined together, it is much more effective. As our political parties become more proficient in how they use these tools, Canadian voters will be constantly barraged by partisan outrage.
The hyper-partisans of today live in their own political bubble. They are often oblivious to the real world that voters inhabit. To Liberal and NDP partisans, Harper is the great Satan, to Conservatives it will be Rae today or Trudeau or Chretien in the past. The truth is that none of them are or were. They were people serving the country and history will judge whether or not they did a good job.
In “The Information Diet”, Clay Johnson, one of the founders of Blue State Digital and a key player in the Howard Dean and Obama campaigns looked at the role social media and the internet plays in shaping both the partisan rhetoric that we see playing out in the United States as well as voters’ perceptions. Are we going down a similar path to the United States?
While the Conservatives are often accused of Americanizing Canadian politics, others do it as well. We can’t escape picking up some of the good, as well as the bad, habits of our American neighbours.
Back around 2000 I recall reading a book by James Carville, one of Bill Clinton’s top campaign advisors, and making notes in the margin that it was the same game plan followed by the Liberals when they took on Stockwell Day, the leader of the Canadian Alliance. The Liberals also brought Carville in to help with their election preparations. At the recent Liberal Biennial convention they had some of the people who worked on Obama’s successful social media campaign explain how it was done — an excellent presentation, incidentally — and I will wager we will see the Liberals adopt some of those strategies as they go forward to the next campaign.
Similar to our American neighbours, our citizens are constantly bombarded with over the top political rhetoric and negative political attacks whether in a 140 character tweet or an attack ad or comments on TV or in the press. No longer is this confined to an election cycle, it now happens 365 days a year. It is relentless and all of our political parties do it.
The robocall issue will be but one of many that voters will be exposed to prior to the next federal election and Canadian voters will be the ones to decide who forms the next government. Unfortunately they will have to dig through a lot of rhetoric to get to the facts as we follow in the footsteps of our American neighbours.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Keith Beardsley
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