Heartbroken and defeated

So it's the day after the election and my world has crashed, the sky has fallen and any other apocalyptic metaphor you can quote. The Harper Conservatives not only didn't get decimated as I fervently hoped (and prayed!), they won a titanium-strong majority!

Imagine my shock when I decide "to just check the polls" before I head down to the Liberal party in downtown Vancouver to celebrate and what do I see but the Liberals are already trailing badly, and the NDP and Conservatives surging ahead! Slumping down into the chair, I open a Twitter tab and recognize I'm not going anywhere. Fervent praying commences as I hope for a turn-around. It doesn't come and at the end of the night when a woman credits her "prayers for a Conservative majority," it seems too much.

I know I didn't get out and do the hard work, door knocking or phone canvassing for my party. And I know I should have. My country needed me. But I have to ask, would it really have made any difference? With the majority of people too absorbed in garbage media and irrelevant pop culture, most of those I spoke to said they "didn't have time" to learn about the candidates and wouldn't know who to vote for. Of course I gave them my advice (#vote strategic! but I know none of them did.

That sure makes one question their persuasive abilities. I understand that people are fond of using their vote for their favoured candidate or party. I myself struggled with the concept the first few elections I heard about it. But the very result of us not voting strategic, as in the same result we just achieved in election 41, is a Harper Conservative majority with only 40% of the participating voters choosing CPC. Is that democracy?

I don't think so. But, as my husband points out, if the Liberals had won a majority the same way I'd be ok with it. And he's right. So I'm a hypocrite? Well, I'll say this. The Liberals, being a centerist party, governs more for all of Canada than a far right one. Or a far left one.

I am feeling discouraged and wonder if there is even a party to resurrect. But I know there is. And despite the "drubbing", (media's favourite word for what happened to the Liberals last night) we took, we will rebuild. And, after four years of Harperland with an inexperienced NDP opposition, the electorate has got to have come to their senses. Don't they?