The final days of the provincial election campaign took an odd turn when a trip to a North Vancouver grocery store blew up in Premier Christy Clark’s face.
With a phalanx of reporters watching, a woman named Linda told Clark “I would never vote for you because ...” before Clark cut her off, saying “You don’t have to. That’s why we live in a democracy.”
Online, Linda became an everywoman, with the twitterati projecting their political frustrations by declaring “#IamLinda because ...” followed by any number of their grievances with Clark’s government.
Now, it’s not like the hashtag suddenly persuaded swaths of undecided voters and galvanized the NDP’s electoral chances. Most of the people using it online were NDP supporters to begin with. But the incident did demonstrate a level of arrogance on Clark’s part, turning her back on Linda without a moment to hear her out.
Perhaps worse, a similar pattern emerged in which the Liberals falsely accused the NDP of staging the embarrassment, much like they did with their own website being “hacked” and for spray-painting a swastikas on election signs. Clark has since apologized. It shows the risk of what happens when politicians emerge from their hermetically sealed echo chambers.
Politicians of all stripes are obsessed with staying “on message” – the carefully scripted party line they’ve calculated will help win them support.
Social media may give the people a voice but that does not make it the vox populi. Donald Trump’s many, many, (many) gaffes were made the subject of embarrassing Twitter campaigns but, today, he is the one with the nuclear codes. When you want to be heard in politics, you use an X not a #.
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