Layton is further left for sure but in a context where that might be electable. Both candidates based on their contexts were as leftward as they could be and still be relevant. In the US system of course there is no functional opposition at the presidential level so the option of having a minority of seats in a more pure policy base is an option Layton may have but Obama does not have.

Let's watch Obama not only in the context he is but measure him by how far he can bring the US not by positions taken out of context. The same is true when regarding historical figures-- we do not apply the standards of today to those who lived 100 years ago-- what was radical then woudl be redneck today.

the big issue, one we will get to see, is how much of Obama was rhetoric and how much will be real change. As nice as it is to make pronouncements I think we need to wait awhile.

In the grand scheme of things, I think history will show that Harper was not the Bush sycophant everyone makes him out to be (albeit mostly because Harper was smart enough not to lash himself to a sinking ship).

Chretien's people called GW a "moron" and GW's folks called Chretien a dinosaur. Not much love lost there.

I don't think Trudeau ever really got along like a house on fire with any of his American counterparts, although he had high praise for Gerald Ford in his memoirs for insisting Canada be included in the G7. And of course we've all heard this famous story:
Nixon: "That asshole Trudeau"
Trudeau: "I've been called worse things by better people"

Whether leaders of different countries get along or not often has more to do with personal chemistry than it does with ideology. Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl were both rightwing - and yet supposedly hated each other. But then Kohl got a long like a house on fire with John Major.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Actually, I think Trudeau got along very well with Jimmy Carter (not surprising since they were both very intellectual and religious in a progressive way).

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Originally posted by Sean in Ottawa:
The same is true when regarding historical figures-- we do not apply the standards of today to those who lived 100 years ago-- what was radical then woudl be redneck today.

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"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Abraham Lincon

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“It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.”

Theodore Roosevelt

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OK but do you believe the nonsense that Harper was quaking in fear about an Obama victory?

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I think it would be a gross over-statement to say that Harper was "quaking in fear of an Obama victory". I suspect that he is mildly disappointed by the results because being a rightwing politician himself - Harper likes it when people he agrees with win elections.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
There is no question that between having Labour take power in Australia and having Obama in power in the US, Harper is more ideologically isolated in the English-speaking world (though he may gain an ally in New Zealand next week) - and it is probably a tad more difficult to move Canada in an opposite direction to where the US is now heading.

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I think it's a near-certainty that John Key will be Prime Minister of New Zealand before November is out. It is also extremely likely that David Cameron will be the next Prime Minister of Great Britain, although Gordon Brown could conceivably delay that until the spring of 2010.

Elsewhere in the industrialized world, France, Germany, Italy and Japan all tilted to the right in their most recent national elections.

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But on the other hand, Harper no longer has to bear the burden of being accused all the time of being "Bush's poodle" etc... What are people going to denounce him for now? Being too close to Obama? It just doesn't have the same ring to it.

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I don't think you can say that Japan has moved to the right. They have had the same party in power for the last 55 years - and they are basically a Christian Democrat style centrist big government party. I don't think Harper will suddenly bond with the leaders of Japan for any ideological reason.

Germany has a grand coalition and Merkel's CDU are like reddest of red Tories from the Clark/Stanfield era in Canada.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Merkel's CDU are like reddest of red Tories from the Clark/Stanfield era in Canada.

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So Prime Minister Stephen Harper is going to make common cause with his new friend Barack Obama on a continental approach to climate change. A stunning reversal by a long-time climate skeptic, a cynical dodge, or good news for planet Earth? At the moment, all three are possibilities -- although a green victory party may be premature.

First, for all the excitement generated by Obama's victory -- including among U.S. environmentalists -- the President-elect's ambitions are relatively modest, at least compared to leading edge opinion in Canada and elsewhere. In fact, Tories are right when they claim even Harper's targets for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change are slightly stronger.

The Harper plan would (theoretically) produce a three per cent reduction in emissions by 2020. By contrast, Obama has suggested he wants only to stabilize 2020 emissions at 1990 levels. While Obama's plan is an important advance in the United States, says Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation, "the level of ambition is less than what is being talked about in Canada, except for the Conservative cabinet."

More delay may be just what the Harper government is counting on, say some environmentalists. While it is true, as various Tory ministers have been claiming, that Obama and Harper both embrace a cap-and-trade approach to restraining emissions, Harper's plan is much weaker. It is based on "intensity" targets -- reducing emissions per barrel, not overall -- while Obama has endorsed hard caps. Now begins the complicated and time-consuming process of negotiating those caps with various industries on both sides of the border. (In a cap-and-trade system, government establishes a slowly escalating price for carbon emissions and allows companies to trade pollution permits as they move, at different rates, towards cleaner technologies.)

This could delay by another seven years (at least) a process that is already woefully behind schedule -- a leisurely pace that discounts the urgent warnings of science and mounting public concern. Indeed, there are those who believe this has been the Harper plan all along: wait for the Americans to move and fall into line. In 2006, for instance, the Harper government promised regulations establishing its caps by 2010. Those regulations have been twice delayed. They may be abandoned altogether if the new focus becomes Obama's plan, which isn't expected to kick in until 2015 -- giving Canada's oil patch, if not the polar bears, more breathing room.

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It will be very interesting to watch this unfold, and esp to see the reaction of Layton (who openly championed Obama's endorsement of cap and trade as a rationale to oppose the carbon tax), BC NDP leader Carole James and other die-hard Dipper partisans who champion cap-and-trade and hate the carbon tax.

As many of us with more nuanced positions feared, cap-and-trade with Harper and Obama risks becoming a "talk and pollute" shell game which lets the big emitters off the hook for nearly another decade, while GHG emissions soar. That is precisely why we need a carbon tax now, to start pricing carbon in the interim period while cap and trade gets up and running.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
The US is the elephant in the room. Having a very liberal Democrat as President of the US definitely creates a zeitgeist that makes Harper's style of neo-conservatism look totally out of place and anachronist.

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On the issue of same sex marriage - I suspect that personally both Harper and Obama support it - but harper has to keep his base happy and Obama probably knows that in the US you can't put the horse before the cart - but Obama is also regarded as having just about the most gay-positive record of anyone in the US senate and his speeches regularly make reference to gay and straight Americans. harper never says a word and just wishes that social issues would go away. Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. harper wants to cut them.

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Originally posted by West Coast Lefty:
It will be very interesting to watch this unfold, and esp to see the reaction of Layton (who openly championed Obama's endorsement of cap and trade as a rationale to oppose the carbon tax), BC NDP leader Carole James and other die-hard Dipper partisans who champion cap-and-trade and hate the carbon tax.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
The US has been under extreme rightwing rule for the past eight years (and the period before that wasn't anything special either). Trying to make really big changes in the US will be like turning an oil tanker around.

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One thing that concerns me is given Obama's massivep popularity in Canada - could that lead to a surge in public support for the Afghanistan war, or at the least, undermine the anti-war movement?

[ 08 November 2008: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

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actually Stock the chief of staff makes 99 percent of the decisions of the white house before the presdident ever knows about them.

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Now with Obama as President that all stops dead. Suddenly people will have to make substantive arguments and not just rely on "If Bush supports it - it must be bad" etc...

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
I don't think so. What it likely means is that the Liberals will likely be looking to Ignatieff to lead them -- and the country. In fact, I will predict Ignatieff will be the next PM of Canada.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
I think that Obama being President is going to create a crisis for a lot of people on the left in Canada.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
[QB]I think that Obama being President is going to create a crisis for a lot of people on the left in Canada. For so many years, Bush was there like a security blanket - everytime you wanted to criticize anyone or anything - all you had to do was bring Bush into the discussion and nothing more had to be said. He was the ultimate "man you love to hate". The years were a bonanza for Canadian nationalism and for being able to mobilize Canadian public opinion against all kinds of stuff. If Bush said "black" we could all happily say "white". We were able to be so smug in the knowledge that the US president was a virtual parody of every negative American stereotype known to man.

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I wouldn't worry about it Stockholm. The Obama=Bush, Obama is No Better then Bush narrative is being diligently set all over the place including right here on Babble. Any out right contraian or more generalized nuanced views are firmly being challenged and anything potentially positive stamped out. First on sheer policy arguments and assured speculation about future actions and now with questions being brought up about peoples morality for daring to 'go there'...in a generalized way of course. Must tow the line. Prevention is key.
Obama=Bush, learn the mantra, live it, breath it, or forever forgo your leftie cred, it's easier that way.

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Originally posted by ElizaQ:
The Obama=Bush, Obama is No Better then Bush narrative is being diligently set all over the place including right here on Babble. Any out right contraian or more generalized nuanced views are firmly being challenged and anything potentially positive stamped out. First on sheer policy arguments and assured speculation about future actions and now with questions being brought up about peoples morality for daring to 'go there'...in a generalized way of course. Must tow the line. Prevention is key.
Obama=Bush, learn the mantra, live it, breath it, or forever forgo your leftie cred, it's easier that way.

Good observation though.

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I agree and am personally still sorting through all the potential reasons why this happening.

Was speaking with my "republican" friend from Long Island yesterday morning, for several hours in fact, about the election, Obama/McCain and what does he perceive.

Found out, some interesting and boggling to me, stuff. Some are

1. The perception is that Obama is "far left" even by Canadian standards. :bigeyes:

2. Believes Obama will govern more to the right that what he has stated he will.

3. He and his family voted for Obama and democrat for the first time because of Palin and "Christian" fundamentalists.

4. Has hopes that Obama's first move is to get closer to Canada diplomatically, so that the Canadian social justice infrastructure can be looked at, for adaptation to the US system. As well as enhanced for cooperation on environmental initiatives.

5. Hopes for a more open border, as opposed to the more closed one under Bush.

6. Believes that there will be a more internalization of US activities, and less focus on external imperialist activities, out of necessity.

7. Is more worried about Pelosi and Reid, than Obama. Is happy that the Democrats fell short of 60 seats.

8. Is not sure about the future of the Republican party with the apparent splintering of the factions within it.

9. Thought that the federal bailout of the banks was wonderful and necessary.

10. Does not believe that the US will continue in either Iraq, nor Afghanistan, and that it will drop most of its ME activities and will focus more on issues in Africa. :bigeyes: (for a variey of reasons)

11. Does not believe Rahm Emanuel's presence signifies anything to do with actioning more pro-Israelis policies, and more to do with developing more economic trade ties and "foreign" cooperation.

12. Is incredibly happy that there is a regime change and Bush is gone, even if little changes as first, as he feels like a weight has been lifted off of himself and other Americans.

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Originally posted by Mc'lovin:
fm

Do you believe another attack similar to 9/11 is likely or possible and what if anything can Obama do to protect against it. (excluding anything that would be against what you believe should be allowable in terms of a countries national security) or do you think such attacks against civilians are justified in any way?

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Originally posted by remind:

1. The perception is that Obama is "far left" even by Canadian standards. :bigeyes:

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The McCain campaign, with some reinforcement by the media, spent months trying to convince Americans that Obama is the The Most Liberal Senator Ever (based on a single magazine article about his voting record in 2007 that only included 2/3 of the votes held in that year). When that didn't scare the voters enough, in the final weeks of the campaign they began calling him a socialist. Of course now that Americans have elected this man of the "far left", the same people are trying to claim that it means the U.S. is actually a "centre-right" country. Such is the logic of American politics.

If you look at his policy proposals I think they suggest a fiscal conservative roughly comparable to our own Conservatives, and a social moderate roughly comparable to the right side of our Liberals. I say "roughly" in both cases because direct comparisons are a little complicated. Different countries with different systems of government and different cultures.

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Originally posted by pogge:
On foreign policy he appears to have a serious case of American Exceptionalism but it remains to be seen how much of that is rhetoric designed to win an election and how much will show up in his actual policy. I don't expect him to do things as stupidly as Bush did but I expect him to do things we really don't like in an effort to project and protect American power. I'm trying to leave room to be at least a little pleasantly surprised now and then. (By way of comparison, towards the end of the campaign I began to wonder if any of us would survive a full term of a John McCain presidency.

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Thats pretty much how I see it a feel.