I was looking at the Conservative platform in Canada, and they promised to extend full unemployment insurance and maternity benefits to the self-employed. In the U.S. that would be denounced as a radical Communist initiative.

Canada also has government run and funded health care for all citizens. Again, far to the left of Obama and most Democrats. The Conservatives have pledged their support for this program, though they have made the radical step of allowing people to pay for some medical services. The UK adopted a similar sort of approach to their state-run system back under Blair.

Canada is in Afghanistan, and both Conservatives and Liberals have supported this . . . and as you know, Obama has called for increased presence in that country. The far left NDP has called for immediate withdrawal and peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Thus, I think Left and Right seem to be matters of context.

Left leaning parties got 63.4% of the vote.

It's truly unfortunate that the Left seems unable to unite behind a single party as they seem to be the majority in most countries.

The Conservatives were the dominant party in the House of Commons…and they increased their dominance. The opposition Liberal vote collapsed, and the left is in general disarray.

The Conservatives won an increased minority with 20 more seats…the Liberals lost about 20 seats…the socialist NDP gained about 5…the separtist Quebec party stayed the same…and the Greens were shut out.

The Liberals will collapse in a feeding frenzy as they search for a new leader, and there is no appetite for another election. As one CBC (the Canadian counterpart to the Beeb) commentator noted, it was a “de facto majority”.

The Conservatives won largely because their leader was more trusted on the economy than the Liberal or the socialist. No one seems to much like him, but he was felt to be calm and competent.

In fact, the Conservative minority tonight is pretty much a colossal fail on their part, given they called a mid-term election with the hopes of actually getting a majority mandate. That's why the CBC is calling this a “major defeat;” the Cons had pretty much all the pieces lined up to form a majority government, and they blew it.

Now go make sure that Obama gets elected. We'll keep things on the straight and narrow up here.