Saturday 16 August 2014

Toronto the Good

Well, this is some shitty mayoral campaign we've got going here in Toronto.

Rob Fucking Ford is all lies all the time. David Sockacki has ideas and position papers but is dull as dishwater. And the other supposedly front-runners are depressingly namby-pamby.

For a great and recent example, read Matt Elliott on what the candidates have to say about finances and inflation.

Even worse, all (except Soknacki and Ari Goldkind) are running on the current understanding and practice of populism.

The biggest disappointment is Olivia Chow. I endorsed her back on March 13.

I still like her and think she'd be a good mayor, but her campaign is driving me -- and all the progressives I know -- nuts.

Yesterday, a tweeter named Karen Geier grabbed my attention and that of a bunch of others with her criticisms of Chow's campaign.

Here's the first tweet that arrested me.




She continued to point out the many deficiencies in the campaign, including this one.



She, like many of us, really doesn't want to vote for another middle-/upper-classs white male, but Olivia is not making it easy for us.

Geier put her tweets together in a Storify titled Dear Olivia Chow. It's had more than 6500 views since yesterday, and going by Geier's (do follow her by the way) tweets today, she's taking some crap for it.

Toronto under the Fucking Fords has lost a ton of ground. Toronto used to be a leader in things like transit, inclusiveness, and the environment.

So many of us are longing not just to get rid of the bloated, lying, criminal fool we have as mayor but to return to Toronto the Good.

Toronto the Good
• on transit and transportation in general
• on affordable and innovative housing
• on parks and public spaces
• on libraries and community centres and programmes
• on the environment
• on the arts and creativity.

And on prudence and planning and the acceptance of the really rather simple idea that THINGS COST MONEY.

Olivia could be a leader if she'd set her own narrative, be her own person, and boot all the delusional advisors who are telling her to play the Populist Game.

Olivia would have my vote if she could pull it off.

There's still time for her to do it.

But not much.

My vote, like Geier's, is up for grabs.

UPDATE (August 20/14): Today's Kinsella idiocy. Note non-apology and Chow camp's attempt to distance themselves. Kinsella is "just" a volunteer. Yeah, right. A volunteer whose company has been hired to do media work.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was terrific, she's awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Correction: Kinsella was surprised that Hudak lost, not Horwath. He appeared to have been predicting that Hudak would sweep the entire province (based on his mistaken faith in the accuracy of the Ipsos Reid non random polling which he was talking up). Even after the fact, he did not appear to acknowledge that EKOS and Forum polls,which were real random polls and which he had apparently dissed, were right on the money whereas Ipsos was the most inaccurate.

I had always thought that Olivia made a big mistake in appointing Kinsella to her campaign. Won't be surprised if one of the reasons that Tory is appearing leading in the polls is that the aggressiveness of Kinsella's attacks on Tory have backfired.

fern hill said...

Thanks for the correction.

And yes to your point about his attacks. I'll come back with a link to today's doozy and non-apology.

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