The big sad

Many of my friends are sad these days.  The provincial election did not go as we had hoped and our new government will be a Conservative one.  The people of Ontario decided to elect a party that never published a complete platform, made promises that are completely impossible, and is led by a buffoon, Doug Ford.  I wouldn't vote Conservative in any case, but there was a whole list of other contenders for leader I would have been vastly less harsh on.

I am sure people have lots of reasons for voting Conservative.  Mostly they seem to be terror at what a left wing party would do; these are usually pitched as fiscal concerns.  Many people claim that their Conservative vote was to protect Ontario's finances from the NDP.

I don't buy that crap.

The NDP published a properly costed platform.  The Conservatives published a list of promises that didn't even come close to adding up.  Economists on all political sides agreed that the Conservative promises were ridiculous and would lead to enormous deficits, higher than the other parties'.  If the Conservatives had actually published their numbers then perhaps they could have refuted these criticisms, but since they did not, we can only go with our best guesses.

You could also look at the party's history and see that they have no track record of financial responsibility.  Across North America deficits and foolish spending are not attached to any particular political party or even a leaning, left or right.  I would love to say that left wing governments are better this way, but we all know that every party wastes money and has financial scandals, and the data supports this.

You *can* choose how parties throw your money around though.  Right wingers will tend to throw it at rich people and shareholders, while left wingers will throw it at poor people.

I know which way I would prefer it, and I don't stand to benefit from helping the poor, quite the opposite.

So why vote Conservative?  Well, there are three reasons, I think.  Bigotry first among them.  Ford in particular is terrible for promoting bigotry and I am sure the fact that the three party leaders were two women and one man did some extra heavy lifting to get the misogyny vote out.  Lots of people want to vote for bigotry but few will actually admit it; these people of course often defend their position with "But what about fiscal responsibility?" and ignore the fact that there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that the Conservatives are better that way in general, and in this particular election they are far worse.

Some people really do vote for fiscal responsibility, and it isn't just a shield for bigotry.  These people are just misinformed or ignorant of the facts of the case here; I am sure there are times when you would actually be voting in a more fiscally responsible government by voting for the right, but this certainly wasn't one of those times.

And then there are those that vote for the right simply because they always have.  It is a tribal thing, and has nothing to do with policy of any sort.  There are simply people that always vote one way, and these folks are found in all parties.  I think their way of deciding who to vote for is terrible, but I am not the sort of person who is particularly into tribalism as moral compass.

Hard to say how much of what elected the Conservatives is evil, how much is clueless, and how much is random tribalism.  No matter the case, it makes me sad.  It won't affect me much directly, except insofar as they wreck the finances of the province, but it makes me so mad that they clearly intend to go after those who are vulnerable to placate the part of the electorate who did vote for them on the basis of bigotry.

We will get through this - there have been plenty of Conservative governments before, with similar goals.  But still I wish that the people of my province were better than this.