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mygif

you only want to disengage your opponents base, though

The bigger reason to not go negative in business is slander and libel suits. I imagine politicians could sue also, but they may worry about their opponents attacks being found truthful enough not to count.

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mygif

you only want to disengage your opponents base, though

When you are a party that cannot get a majority of the vote, you want the electorate to be smaller.

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mygif
Energy-Puking Boy said on April 18th, 2013 at 7:50 pm

Yeah, the hamburger metaphor fails rather spectacularly. If I conclude that all fast-food burgers are full of disease, I can go eat something else.

But if I conclude all politicians are crooks, I can’t decide to vote for my favourite barista for MP. I either vote for the “least crooked” or don’t vote.

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mygif

The really long term consequence of sowing the “all politicians are crooks” seed is rioting mobs and firing squads. But that is far enough down the line that politicians don’t think about it or assume it won’t be them against the wall.

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mygif

When you are a party that cannot get a majority of the vote, you want the electorate to be smaller.

My understanding is that no political party in Canada can get a majority of the vote as things stand now, and in fact that it has only ever rarely been the case in the past that one could. Would it not then follow that all Canadian political parties would want to be relentlessly negative, not just the tories?

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mygif
Adam Ruining said on April 18th, 2013 at 10:32 pm

Plus, stating that Burger King has botulism leads to long, expensive lawsuits.

Mischaracterizing your political opponent, at least under American laws, is a lot easier to get away with.

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mygif

So, the Conservatives are releasing attack ads about Trudeau, and the Liberals are avoiding responding with negative ads thus far, right? If that’s the case, I think I found the Conservatives’ overall plan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4yX2rkpBc

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mygif

This is beside the point, but I can’t stop being amused at the mental images I get every time someone misspells the word “sowing” in the context of sowing seeds.

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mygif

The court system also isn’t empowered to award votes, just money. So as long as you can get away with lying until the election, you’re golden.

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mygif
The Unstoppable Gravy Express said on April 19th, 2013 at 2:07 pm

My understanding is that no political party in Canada can get a majority of the vote as things stand now, and in fact that it has only ever rarely been the case in the past that one could.

We have a majority government now, and we had them all the time when I was growing up. But before our current government we had a whole string of minority ones.

Some people have been complaining that it will be very hard to create a left-of-centre majority government though, so long as we have two major leftist parties (Liberals/NDP). (I am one of those people)

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mygif
Enlight_bystand said on April 19th, 2013 at 6:58 pm

I think Murc was talking about plurality of votes, not plurality of seats.

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mygif

I don’t think it’s staggeringly obvious, inasmuch as I thought on reading this that you had made a good and surprising point.

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mygif

I think the hamburger / politics analogy falls down because hamburgers are simple and material while policy / political ideology is complex and ethereal.

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