Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- PLG rightly questions the sudden rush of stories proclaiming that since the NDP achieved unprecedented electoral success, it must have moved to the centre to do so (even while promoting many of the same policies it's backed for decades):

Just recently, I've seen a lot in the media about how Jack Layton has taken the NDP to the centre. But this is a narrative that accompanies his success. He made massive electoral gains, they conceive the votes as being at the centre, therefore if he's been successful he must have moved to the centre. They're certainly not going to say "Jack Layton successfully persuaded a large percentage of Canadian voters of the truth of more left wing ideas," or, "Many Canadian voters, disillusioned with the failure of the business approach to governance in the wake of major economic crises caused by that approach, looked to the left and Jack Layton for solutions". So, "Jack Layton moved to the centre" is the narrative they are left with. This is not all bad--if the meme is "Jack moved to the centre," then presumably the policies he led with are now officially respectable, centrist policies (even if a few months ago they definitely were not).

- Anthony eviscerates Denis Coderre's attempt to attack Ruth Ellen Brosseau's by pointing out that applying the same standard, Coderre himself would have been equally ineligible to have his name on the ballot. And if a court challenge goes ahead against Brosseau (particularly at the Libs' behest), hopefully the same will happen to Coderre.

But the ridiculous spin from other parties who collected their nomination signatures in exactly the same way also serves as a prime example of another phenomenon that matches the recent stories about paper candidates and discussions of monetary policy. Simply put, the regular practices of every political party in Canada are now being pointed to daily as reasons to criticize the NDP alone - which signals both that opponents have absolutely nothing reasonable basis to attack the party, but also that we can expect to be subjected to a far higher standard than mere historical governing parties.

- One would think that for all the talk about how the ability of businesses to operate globally as a major factor in economic policy, that same reality would be recognized in monitoring their activities. But when it comes to regulating what's routinely pointed to as Canada's most important industry, one would be wrong.

- Finally, Alice nicely sums up how the strategic voting sites set up for the past few Canadian elections have relied on obviously flawed assumptions.