But it is about individuals. You did not restrict your comments to broad organization issues and reporting structures. Your words, not mine: "mercenaries", "professional cadre", "everyone wants to be a big fish", "power base for a few skilled operators", "people ultimately care about is themselves and their own space".

These are people -- the ones who run the commissions that you said should be "toast". These are the ones who will resist -- tooth and nail -- any effort by the likes of you to tear down their "fiefdoms" and "power bases". But you think lobbing a vague airy reference to nameless operatives will somehow frighten them into submission? Really? And just what Liberal member is going to be inspired by your vapid piece? After all those words, nothing that approaches a concrete plan, no targets identified, no goals or timelines. Just a suggestion that these powerful Liberals be taken down a notch or two for the good of the party.

Which Liberals need to go? You won't say. Who's going to take them down? You don't seem to be volunteering. And that's what makes this a gutless piece and a waste of space. And I have worked in organizations -- smoothly functioning ones and others not so much. Changes happen when people identified, in detail, the things that need to be changed, by whom, and by when. Anyone who offered the platitude "We need to refocus on the bottom line" and nothing else would get frogmarched out of a meeting for wasting everyone's time.

So redeem yourself. Name the commissions, specifically. Name the structures, and the people who occupy positions in those structures, as being a drag on the party. Identify how these organizations, led as they were by the people who are in charge, hindered the Liberals in the last election. Speculate how things would have been different if those organizations that you would "toast" had already been dismembered. What resources would have been available to make a difference in the campaign? How could the people who ran those organizations contributed in a constructive way during the last election? Or maybe you can't imagine any way in which this "professional cadre" could fit in the Liberal Party you envisage -- they just need to go.

That would be interesting. And potentially helpful for the Liberals.

LOL

Someone had to.

I think he wouldn't mind seeing the Liberal Party disappear as a formal party by way of merger knowing he'll be remembered as the last great Liberal prime minister. Liberals need to be wary of his not-so-hidden agenda.

I have a cold, so I'm in a nasty mood. But I think the effect of bloggers is waning. Two elections ago, bloggers were the hot thing. Last election, sort of. This election? Frankly, blogging seemed to missing in action. Twitter and Facebook seem to have eclipsed blogging. It makes sense. Blogging was always something that was done by talented amateurs, despite such generally available services like Blogspot. Movable Type? Wordpress? Even more complicated. But anyone and everyone tweets, and everyone seems to have a Facebook account (except me). So yes, blogging is slipping in influence and importance (though social media as a whole is increasing).

Actually, that is exactly what the democratic process is about. If you want to merely reflect the electorate, you would just hold referenda all the time. Think about Switzerland as an example. Everyone votes on everything.

If that's what you want, then you should just ask for it.

PR is a form of filter, but a weak one. Allocating 300+ seats based on the distribution of 10 million votes cast clearly results in a less than perfect reflection. Also, most PR proposals include a minimum vote to filter out the smallest parties. See? Filtering. Of course, that level is set to just below whatever was the support earned by that PR advocate's favorite party.

So if we accept that filtering and amplification is acceptable, and you have to accept that if you are advocating for anything short of direct democracy, then it becomes a matter of degree. PR does a poor job of filtering, in my view. FPTP does a signal spread, which is very useful. Imagine that the vote in an imaginary country turned out to be 39%, 33%, 20%, and the rest. Plot those points on a line from 0 to 100. In FPTP, imagine grabbing that line at say the 60% mark and stretching it so the 60% point is now the 100% point. The points for the parties you marked stay where they were, but they get separated by a larger and clearer margin. If that #1 party was far enough ahead, it's new spot on the line is over the 50% mark and you get a majority. If not, you don't. To me, that seems to be a very useful part of the process to convert the results into a functioning government.

Jack Layton will support PR until such time as FPTP awards him a majority government. I can say with near complete confidence that this is the case, though in all likelihood Layton will not be leader of the NDP at that future point when this is put to the test. His support now is nearly meaningless in a majority situation since he can say anything he wants. At least I've supported FPTP consistently, win or lose, because I think functionally it does a great job of processing electoral signals.

Heck no. Tried to delete by email, but it looks like I had to turf this one in person.

To have the opportunity to make a good choice means having the opportunity to make a bad choice. And an election results in an NDP government one day, then that's what the voters want to try. I'm convinced that the NDP would crash and burn, but I'm not the only voter.

That's going to be one the most fascinating stories over the next four years.

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