Angry in the Great White North

Recall the movie Armageddon.  Even as the team is stopping the asteroid, chunks of the asteroid blast Shanghai and Paris.  The movie Deep Impact had a similar plot structure.  The heroes destroy the incoming comet, but a smaller piece of the comet impacts in the Atlantic, wrecking much of the east coast of North America.

Why?  There is no justification plot-wise.  The real reason is that people will feel cheated if they don't get to see a disaster, even if they want a movie with a happy-ending.

People like to watch disasters, from a safe distance of course.  Entire shows on cable are devoted to videos taken of accidents and fires -- World's Most Amazing Videos on Spike is good for that sort of thing.

And yeah, I've watched an episode or two...well, maybe a few more than that.

The point is, people gather to watch fires, car accidents, whatever.  It's voyeuristic and part of our nature.

So with just over two weeks left in this election, I wonder if the Liberals are caught up in a disaster-voyeur undertow. 

Politically speaking, seeing the Liberals fall to third place and be replaced by the NDP as the official opposition is the same as watching that meteor fragment plow into the Earth in Armageddon.  Taking a tally on election night of which Liberals survive and which are swept away in a massive reconfiguration of the political landscape is like watching the tsunami scour the real landscape in Deep Impact.

But unlike the movies, where we are offered a chance to passively indulge in our urge to watch a disaster unfold, in an election, we have the power to make it happen.

How many potential Liberal voters who are also are comfortable voting for the Conservatives or the NDP are going to cast their votes for the Conservatives or the NDP just to see what might happen?  These are voters casually interested in politics, but not committed to a party, and who follow the news.  They read in the news how the NDP stands on the verge of replacing the Liberals in opposition, and how this would be a historic event, and how Liberals are turning on each other.  These voters think to themselves that this would be a very interesting thing to watch.

It's a form of positive feedback.  The Liberals run a lousy campaign based on a crappy platform led by the unpopular Stephane Dion.  As the polling numbers dip below a certain point, the potential for a massive failure increases, and that draws even more votes away from the Liberals, some of them being the disaster-watchers.  The pulls the polls down lower, and even more people decide it would be interesting to see the chaos as the Liberals and the NDP swap places, and polls go even lower.

So even more people won't vote Liberal.  Just to see what happens.  Because watching things blow up is kinda cool!