Some great comments, they rise above the necessary partisanship of the election.
I hate to say this but if the Liberals want to win the next election, they'll have to have a male leader.
Wynne was held to a much higher standard than men and in fact ended up paying for her male predecessor's mistakes.
False, False, True.
Ernie Eves was also punished for Mike Harris. Paul Martin was punished for corruption under Chretien. That's the way it works.
It's strange that somehow nobody knew she was a woman in 2014 when she was elected, but then it became an issue this time.
A few journos commented on her sexuality working against her. If that was the case, I think it wasn't overt. I was impressed as to how it *wasn't* an issue, but something people grasped at to try and define why she became the lightning rod of derision.
Will they tack left or right?
This is something of incredible importance, and affecting politics in general in this and other nations, not just Ontario.
Ontario historically has been a bastion of Centrism, and the bellwether, rudder and ballast of this nation politically and motivationally. That's why Ontario, and Toronto especially is resented by the rest of the nation, as New York, London, Paris etc are to their nations. The influence is so great some regard it as a yoke.
But Ontario has gone off the rails in terms of the established parties positions on the 'left to right' scale. The Libs tacked hard left out of desperation. They should have known better. It was a case of "OK, do you like me now?" Obviously it didn't work. In fact, when Wynne played her "I won't win" ploy, that worked against them. If they had held centre, they would have won at least Official Status.
But realizing that is also to realize that the Dippers would also have won more seats if they had been pragmatic centrists instead of 'Solidarity Forever' organ grinders. It truly ticked me off, and it must have others too. Not to mention Horwath's 're-enlightenment' after her 'dirty dalliance with Centrism' in the election prior. Yikes, that woman could never have been anything but a shop steward union reactionary, and more than a few noted how she got truly nasty to Wynne in defiance of better political judgement towards the end.
For anyone who 'did well' this election, and as is the case in many elections, they overlook that many votes weren't for them, they were against their competition.
Andrew Coyne has opined on Howarth's ideological straight jacket, and how it may have snatched victory from her. It remains a very important point many are overlooking.
Back to the Libs: To try and regrow from the same roots will be a mistake. They've got to regrow from seedlings, and cross-pollinate for new blood and stronger more adaptive genes to happen. In the past, in this nation and many others, that meant merging with other nascent parties. It's early to tell, but I see the Greens greening the field for the Libs. It's time to consider a rebirth from the ground up for the Libs. Parachuting in Fed Libs won't work. The FedLibs themselves may also need a new genesis. That may require infusion of outside blood, and it would be a fatal mistake to not consider a merger with the Greens.
The real question would be 'Would the Greens be willing?' And that answer to that would be 'How much can the Libs shed their old ways and start again?'
