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Manitoba Liberal MLA Jon Gerrard is considering running for the party's leadership.

Gerrard, the MLA for River Heights, confirmed to CBC Saturday night he has eyes on the party's leadership race, but wouldn't say if it's a done deal.

"It's under consideration and I'm looking at it very seriously," Gerrard said on the phone from the Liberals' annual general meeting in Brandon, Man.

Gerrard said he wants to make sure he considers all the pros and cons.

"I'm in the process and I'm talking with a lot of people here just to get their feedback, should I run should I not? Feedback has been generally positive, but I haven't made a final decision," he said.

Gerrardserved as the party's leader from 1998 to 2013.

Burrows MLA Cindy Lamoureux is the only candidate to announce a bid for the party's leadership publicly so far.

Rana Bokhari took over the party reins for Gerrard but stepped down after losing the 2011 Manitoba election. Judy Klassen is the party's current interim leader.

Klassen, the MLA for Kewatinook, is the Manitoba Liberals' first female First Nation leader.

The Liberals hold justthree of the 57 seats available in the legislature.

Party memberswill vote for their next leader on Oct. 21.

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Jon Gerrard eyes Manitoba Liberals' leadership - CBC.ca

If you've lived in British Columbia for your entire life, this article probably isn't for you.

But if you're new to the province, or live elsewhere in Canada, it's a political question you'll inevitably ask: why do people argue over whether the B.C. Liberals are liberals or conservatives?

According toGooglesearch data, the third most common question people ask about the B.C. Liberals is: "Why are conservatives called B.C. Liberals?"and anumber ofcolumns andarticleshave been published on the topic in the last month.

But the reason the B.C. Liberals are an amalgam of people who support the Liberals and Conservatives federally without a fixed ideology in B.C. beyond "free enterprise" has less to do with themand more to do with the NDP.

Because while the names of the parties have changed, B.C. politics have been defined the same way for over 75 years.

"The primary dynamic in B.C. politics goes back to the second World War era," saidDavid Mitchell, a historian who has written multiple books about the province's political history.

The first era of political parties in British Columbia saw the Liberal and Conservative parties trade places in government, much like at the federal level. But when theCo-operative Commonwealth Federation which changed its name to the NDP in 1961 began to rise, the two establishment parties decided to combine forces in a coalition government.

"It was ostensively to have a united war effort, but the reality was the Liberals and Conservatives, the old line parties of that day, bandied together to prevent the CCF ... from forming the government," said Mitchell.

The coalition ruled B.C. from 1941 to 1952, but when itbroke up because of infighting, the Social Credit party under W.A.C. Bennett upended the old order and quickly usurpedthem as the dominant choice for non-NDPsupporters.

Former British Columbia premier Bill Bennett was one of four Social Credit premiers who led B.C. for 36 of 39 years between 1952 and 1991. (The Canadian Press)

"Social Credit then became the small-c coalition of the centre-right,"said Mitchell. "The old Liberals and Conservatives stayed on, but they became minor fringe parties for a couple generations."

First led by W.A.C. Bennett and then by his son Bill, the Social Credit Party ruled B.C. for 36 of the next 39 years.

But by 1991 and with an election looming, the party was mired in scandal, andvoters and businesses who didn't have a home in the NDP began looking for a new option.

"The NDP had come to government in 1991 for the second time, and if not Social Credit, what was going to be the united non-socialist, non-social democratic alternative?" said Mitchell.

Mitchell himself was one 17 MLAs elected under the B.C. Liberal banner in that 1991 election. The formerly fringe party had formally split from the federal organization prior to the election, andbecame the official opposition primarily through the strength of leader Gordon Wilson's campaigning.

WATCH: Gordon Wilson's famous 1991 debate performance

B.C. Elections: 1991: Gordon Wilson's debate triumph3:42

"The Liberals re-emerged as a force in the opposition, but was not yet that vehicle. It took a few years for them to emerge as the single, centre-right alternative," said Mitchell.

It happened over the course of many years for a variety of reasons:the election of Gordon Campbell as leader, the complete collapse of the Social Credit party, and the failure of other options like the Reform Party and Progressive Democratic Alliance to make inroads.

But by 2001 they were the preferred option for all non-NDP voters, and won a historic 77 and 79 seats in B.C.'s legislature.

"The Liberals were anything but Liberal in the large L, centre-left sense ... but it became uniquely in the British Columbia context: necessary to become the single vessel to serve as an alternative to the NDP," said Mitchell.

The party's nameis theLiberals,but they're really the third iteration of what has been the dominant group in B.C. for decades: the sometimes right-wing, sometimes-centrist, always against the NDP, free enterprise party.

It may be why longtime B.C. residents accept the differencewith ease. But it doesn't make it any easier for outsiders to intuitively grasp.

"When people think of Liberals in British Columbia, they need to check their biases about what is a liberal," said Mitchell.

"To be a liberal in B.C. is a very different thing indeed."

Read the rest here:
Why the BC Liberals are sometimes liberal and sometimes not - CBC.ca

Earlier this week, Stephen Colberts opening monologue on his late night show was an angry rant against Trump and his treatment of one of Colberts CBS colleagues.

Among other things, he referred to Trump as Vladmir Putins cock holster.Heres a bit of what I wrote at RedState about the rant.

Colbert is incredibly lucky that he picked up hosting duties of a late night show with a majority liberal audience right before Trump became the president. The late night comedians who have decided to make Trump 95% of their jokes are setting themselves up to be one-trick ponies who will be worthless to their networks when the Trump Era is over.

If you are reduced to crappy puns and gay slurs in order to make your viewership happy, youve failed late night comedy and should be ashamed. But, these people know no shame. They know only ratings, and the bottom is going to fall out on them sooner or later.

Well, the news broke recently that the FCC is now investigating the slur, and liberals are all upset about it. The problem, as CNNMoney points out today, is that doing so is the FCCs job.

Despite all of Fridays social media chatter and conflicting news headlines, the FCC is doing exactly what it always does.

Following Mondays barrage of jokes, including one that implied Trump was taking part in a sexual act with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Colbert and The Late Show found itself in the middle of a backlash. Trump supporters felt he had crossed the line, and others said the joke was homophobic.

An FCC spokeman expanded on the issue to CNNMoney:

We review all consumer complaints as a matter of standard practice and rely on the law to determine whether action is warranted. The fact that a complaint is reviewed doesnt speak one way or another as to whether it has any merit.

But, naturally, social media was alight with comments from liberals who said this was a part of Trumps tyrannical plan to suppress any and all speech against him. Because that makes way more sense than the FCC, which hasalways maintained strict rules as to what can and cant be said on air, doing its job.

If there are complaints, the FCC investigates. Thats what it does. But, in their quest to make everything they dont like Trumps fault, liberals are going to say that Trumps administration is doing everything it can to squash public opposition and censor their opinions.

That is nuts, and it should not be tolerated at all.

Read more:
Liberals Are Super Upset About the FCC Going After Stephen Colbert - The Hayride

The healthcare vote lit a fire that could engulf the Republican House majority. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/AP

As House Republicans reached the vote count needed to pass an unpopular rewrite of a new healthcare law, Democrats chanted derisively. Na na na na, na na na na, they sang, confident Republicans would soon regret their support for the bill. Hey hey hey, goodbye!

Seven years before that, Democrats on the other side of the aisle had cast contentious votes for a healthcare bill with steep political consequences. Subsequently, in the first elections after Barack Obama took office, they lost their majority in the House in a resounding electoral rebuke.

On Thursday, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who lost her speakership in 2010 after playing an instrumental role in pushing through the Affordable Care Act, considered the Republican triumph.

They have this vote tattooed on them, she said. This is a scar they carry.

Republicans argued that the greater political risk would have been to do nothing. Failure to deliver on a signature campaign promise after seven years would have demoralized the base heading into an election cycle in which the party of the president usually loses seats.

[Republicans] have this vote tattooed on them. This is a scar they carry.

If we werent able to repeal and replace Obamacare, it would have been a bad midterm for us, said the New York congressman Chris Collins, who voted for the measure, after walking off the floor on Thursday. I think we will at least hold our own if not pick up seats in the midterm.

But soon after House Republicans passed their bill, political winds began to shift. Liberals sprang into action, organizing weekend protests outside Republican offices. Groups raising money to unseat House Republicans reported record-breaking hauls. By Friday morning, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report (CPR) had shifted 20 House races to categories more favorable to Democrats.

David Wasserman, the CPR House editor, called the healthcare bill an unequivocal political risk for dozens of Republicans who supported it and even possibly for those who did not. For example, the representatives Mike Coffman, of Colorado, and Leonard Lance, of New Jersey, both voted against the bill. Both saw their races moved into less safe categories, toss-up and lean R respectively.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) brushed off such assessments and pointed to the failure of pollsters and analysts to predict Trumps victory over Hillary Clinton in November.

House Republicans fulfilled the promise they made to the American people to repeal and replace Obamacare, an NRCC spokesman, Jesse Hunt, said in an email. [Thursday] marked the beginning of the end for the disastrous law. Let the Beltway prognosticators who predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide stare into their clouded crystal balls once again.

Let the Beltway prognosticators who predicted a Clinton landslide stare into their clouded crystal balls once again

Polls, however, have found that the Republican healthcare plan is woefully unpopular. A Quinnipiac poll released in late March found that just 17% of respondents expressed support while 56% opposed it.

Republicans approved the bill before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had time to analyze how much it would cost and how many people might lose coverage if the plan takes effect. An analysis of the first Republican plan, which did not reach the floor of the House, found that 24 million people would lose insurance coverage.

For most members, voting for the bill was probably a smart choice that made them safer, said Liz Mair, a Republican strategist. But for a handful of members, this was a risk that will probably cost them their jobs. The question is whether it is enough to flip the House.

Democrats need to gain 24 seats to win control in November 2018. At the top of their list of targets are 23 Republicans in districts that went for Clinton in November. Fourteen of them supported the healthcare plan.

One of those Republicans, Carlos Curbelo of Florida, issued a taped statement in which he said Thursdays vote was just a step to fixing healthcare and said lawmakers still have a long way to go before they get it right. Clinton won Curbelos district by 16 points.

Democratic organizers said the vote had unleashed a backlash on a scale they had not seen before.

The healthcare vote lit a fire that could engulf the Republican House majority, said Ben Wikler, Washington director of MoveOn.org, a liberal group. Unfortunately, it could also cost tens of millions of Americans their lives if it leads to a rollback of healthcare coverage.

MoveOn.org joined a coalition of liberal groups, including Planned Parenthood, to organize 75 protests targeting House Republicans who supported the bill and senators who will soon take it up. Wikler also pointed to a surge in political donations in the day since the vote.

ActBlue, an online fundraising platform for progressive organizations, set up a campaign in response to the healthcare vote, aiming to raise money for Democrats challenging 24 vulnerable Republicans who supported the repeal plan. In partnership with other liberal organizations, it quickly raised more than $2m.

Clinton issued a tweet that linked to the fundraising page, writing: A shameful failure of policy & morality by GOP today. Fight back on behalf of the millions of families that will be hurt by their actions.

Wikler said House Republicans can also expect to face a wall of outrage from people who feel personally threatened by their vote.

People are looking for any possible way to fight back, he said.

In Texas, Colin Allred, a civil rights attorney and former linebacker with the Tennessee Titans who recently announced a Democratic run to unseat the Republican congressman Pete Sessions, said constituents in the north Dallas district he hopes to represent were reacting in a visceral way to the healthcare vote.

On Thursday night, Allred said, dozens turned up to a coffeehouse campaign event that would typically draw only a handful of constituents.

People were angry, they were scared and they were really shocked at the callousness of this healthcare plan and the way it was done, Allred said.

Sessions, the chairman of the House rules committee, said the bill was imperfect but supported it as a first step toward repealing and replacing what he called a discriminatory system that picks winners, creates losers and oppresses American people. Democrats are targeting his suburban district, which Clinton won by two points in November.

This is where I was born and raised and I have never seen anything comparable to this, Allred said of liberal activism in the area. People here have been waiting a long time for vehicle to express that outrage and Im certain that in 2018 this reaction will not fade.

Read the original:
Is healthcare vote the tipping point for liberals regaining control of the House? - The Guardian

Liberal activists poured $2 million into progressive political groups immediately following House passage of the Republican bill to partially repeal Obamacare.

Daily Kos, ActBlue and Swing Left announced Friday online contributions from 45,000 small donors that will be used to back Democrats in the 2018 midterms. In the 2010 cycle, Republicans experienced similar activism in response to the passage of President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul.

"Americans are horrified that congressional Republicans just voted to take away their health care, and that's rekindled real anger anger the Daily Kos community is channeling with record-breaking donations at unheard-of speed," the group's political director, David Nir, said in a statement.

Republicans haven't repealed the Affordable Care Act yet. Their bill, the American Health Care Act, is now in the hands of the Senate. Republicans in that chamber are planning to write their own bill, and might never even put the House bill on the floor. But progressives, energized by opposition to President Trump and his drive to repeal Obamacare, are already mobilizing.

Democrats are hoping voter dissatisfaction with the GOP health care law can lead them back to the House majority next year, much as unhappiness with Obama's health care law helped put the Republicans back in power in 2010. The Democrats need to win 24 seats, net, to take back the majority; their targets include 23 Republicans sitting in districts that Hillary Clinton won in November, plus others where Trump won with less than 50 percent.

Daily Kos, a premier website for liberal activism, said it raised $800,000 from 17,200 donations in less than 24 hours following Thursday's health care vote in the House. Swing Left, a group formed in part by Pod Save America, a new podcast media venture established by former Obama White House aides, said it raised more than $800,000 from nearly 20,000 donors.

ActBlue, a one-stop website that allows donors to channel money to the candidate and group of their choice, said money was given through its portal to over 1,200 separate campaigns, organizations and funds.

Meanwhile, Republicans who voted for the AHCA are getting air cover from American Action Network, the political nonprofit aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. On Friday, AAN announced that it was investing $2 million in television advertising in 21 districts to support House Republicans who voted for the bill. Here's the script of the spot:

It's a bold plan to cut the deficit and provide one trillion dollars of job-creating tax relief.

It puts patients and doctors back in charge of health care.

Eliminating Washington's expensive mandates.

Empowering states to reduce health care costs, and

Protecting people with pre-existing conditions.

The Republican health plan provides families with more choices, better coverage, and lower premiums.

Thank [member] for keeping [his] word and fighting for the health care we deserve.

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Liberals raise $2 million off GOP healthcare bill - Washington Examiner