The Third Way

The latest Ipsos poll paints a rather dreary picture of Liberal fortunes, with what was once the natural governing party languishing more than 15 points behind both the NDP and the Conservatives.

Of course, the NDP are in their post-leadership honeymoon, the Liberals don't have a permanent leader, and a horse race poll when politics is the farthest thing from the electorate's mind won't tell you a lot. But I think we can safely assume the Liberals are a distant third, trailing two parties who are both intent on hugging the centre of the road, making it almost impossible to pass them. So what's a centrist party to do?

I agree with Rae's message of staying to the middle of the spectrum, but the days of finding sunny compromises between the NDP and Conservative extremes on every single issue are numbered. When you're the third place party you need to give people a reason to vote for you, and a milquetoast platform topped with some language about the "extremist" positions of two very non-extremist parties isn't going to be convincing.

Faced with this new reality, the challenge is standing out and being noticed. That likely means on occasion passing the two parties ahead of you on the right, and on occasion passing them on the left. So maybe the Liberals adopt a few "right wing" economic policies even the Conservatives dare not touch, like the abolishment of supply management. Maybe it means "out-NDPing" the NDP by proposing a national pharmacare program.

Of course, the entire concept of a left-right political spectrum is somewhat arbitrary when you think about it. Is democratic reform a right wing or a left wing issue? Either way, parties talk a lot less about it the closer they get to power, so there may be an opening there for the Liberals who are decidedly nowhere near power. There's certainly an opening on the "Quebec question", given the PQ may be in power a year from now, and both the Tories and NDP have spent long nights flirting with the separatists in recent years.

The other thing to consider is the dirty little secret that most voters aren’t reading through party platforms and casting their vote based on policy. Did Jack Layton leap from third to second because voters found his policies that much more compelling than Ignatieff's? Most voters would be hard pressed to identify a single area of cleavage between the two party platforms.

Now, I’m not saying the Liberals are one leadership change away from power. As I’ve written before, there’s a lot of structural work to be done, and even if voters didn’t know the intricacies of the Liberal and NDP platforms last election, they had a clear impression of party brands, and an overall sense of party values. But a party’s leader does matter, and it’s just as important to have a leader who can differentiate himself or herself from Mulcair and Harper, as it is to have policies that can be differentiated from the NDP and CPC platforms. That doesn’t mean the Liberals should search for the anti-Mulcair or shy away from an experienced and polished politician like Harper – only that there needs to be some kind of “value add” that makes their leader stand out. The brilliance of Jack was that he always smiled and could connect with voters – that’s an ability Michael Ignatieff lacked completely, and one both Harper and Mulcair struggle with.

In the past, all the Liberals needed to do to get elected was wedge themselves squarely between the extremes. There are still many issues for which that strategy makes sense from both an ideological and political perspective. But adopting that knee-jerk approach on every issue and failing to stand out is a sure fire path to irrelevance.

Making Sense of the NDP Gains in Quebec

In my mind, Chantal Hebert is the finest political columnist in Quebec. But I have a hard time understanding how she put deux et deux together in her column today. Here's the underlying thesis:

That hope is not totally unfounded. Over Jack Layton’s tenure, the NDP has gained a lot of strength in Quebec — mostly at the expense of the Liberals and mostly to the benefit of the Bloc.

Now, that certainly doesn't sound like crazy talk, and it fits in with what Hebert has been saying over the past year about the benefits of a Liberal-NDP merger or non-aggression pact.

Where the argument falls down, is in the supporting evidence. Let me call as my first witness, the finest political columnist in Quebec, Chantal Hebert, to rebut her own point. From earlier in the same article:

Since the New Democrats wrestled [Outremont] from the Liberals in 2007, it has fallen off the BQ radar. That was a fortunate development for NDP deputy leader Thomas Mulcair. In 2008, the erosion of the Bloc vote in his favour ensured his re-election.

Yes, despite Hebert's belief that the Liberals and NDP are splitting the federalist vote, it appears the NDP's lone victory in Quebec came with a little help from their separatist friends. This is consistent with the first two "second choice" polls I found on a google search - both show the NDP as the clear cut second choice of Bloc voters.

Now, that's not completely inconsistent with Hebert's argument. It's possible Bloc voters like the NDP but NDP voters don't like the Bloc (or, at least, prefer the Liberals). But I'm not so sure that's the case. Those same polls show that 20-25% of NDP voters in Quebec list the Bloc as their second choice. And just yesterday, Gilles Duceppe announced the poaching of a second former NDP candidate.

Moreover, a look at the 2008 Canadian Election Study shows the following previous election (2006) vote breakdown of NDP supporters in Quebec last election:

NDP 35%
Lib 23%
BQ 18%
CPC 13%
Green 5%

Yes, there's no denying some of the NDP's Quebec gains have come at the expense of the Liberals. It's certainly possible a strong NDP in Quebec hurts the Liberals. That's definitely true in Outremont.

But I just can't accept that this is as simple as the federalist vote being split. The NDP are fishing in Bloc waters, and I have to imagine that at least concerns Duceppe. And the fluidity between NDP and Bloc support in Quebec has to make you wonder if a Liberal-NDP pact would do either party any good there.

Proposals Certain to go Nowhere Fast: An Ongoing Series

Michael Byers has an interesting proposal in today’s Toronto Star, getting a bit of attention. Here are the key points:

There is only one surefire way to prevent a Harper majority [ED NOTE: …other than, you know, the opposition parties getting their act together]. The Liberals and NDP should agree to not run candidates against each other in the next campaign.

In each riding, the party whose candidate fared worst in the last election would pull its current candidate out, or refrain from nominating one.

Importantly, what is proposed is not a coalition, but a one-time ceasefire between two opposition parties whose combined vote share last time was significantly higher (44.4 per cent versus 37.6 per cent) than the Conservatives.

The only post-election condition in the agreement should be an unqualified public commitment to holding a national referendum on proportional representation within the first year.

The ceasefire agreement, once struck, could be expanded to include the Green party, which has always sought proportional representation and would benefit substantially from it.

An arrangement could be made to rectify this lack of representation by giving all five second-place Greens a clear run in the next election, with May having that opportunity in her new riding – in return for the Green party withdrawing its candidates from every other race.

Let’s start with the junior partner in this not-a-coalition. According to Byers' plan, the Greens would raise the white flag in all but their 5 second place ridings (3 of which are in Alberta, so good luck!). This isn’t an awful deal for the Liberals and Dippers – in the last election, if you make the somewhat far-fetched assumption that all Green votes would have transferred to the second place candidate, that would take 20 seats away from the Tories.

The problem is, that would drop the Greens down below 2% of the national vote, erasing the 2 million dollars a year they now get in funding from voter subsidies. You think Green Party members would be down with that? Remember, these are the same people who wouldn’t vote Liberal when Dion put forward the boldest environmental program ever seen in Canada. These are the same people who think the NDP has “sold out”. Good luck telling them to get into bed with these two parties, close their eyes, and think of proportional representation.

So the Greens are out.

Now, why does this deal suck for the Liberals-NDP notalition?

1. Even if you assume a perfect transfer of the Liberal and NDP vote, the two parties would have been below the 155 seats needed to pass a PR referendum last election. And good luck convincing the Bloc to vote for a system that would halve their seats.

2. You’d never have a 1-for-1 vote transfer. It just doesn’t work that way. So both parties, by virtue of running in fewer ridings, would lose a lot of cash on per-vote subsidy funding.

3. There would be huge internal dissention in the ranks when 97 Liberal ridings and 211 NDP ridings are told they couldn’t run candidates. Good luck getting the members (and already nominated candidates) in those ridings to volunteer for the party, donate money, and renew their memberships. I haven’t noticed too many Olivia Chow posters at Trinity-Spadina meetings…I suspect some of the members there might be a tad annoyed at this deal.

And while I know the media shies away from printing stories about internal party feuds, even they may pen one or two columns on the topic.

4. Even if this deal wouldn’t be for a formal coalition, I tend to think most voters (and Tory ad writers) wouldn’t make this fine distinction.


Beyond all that, if the Liberals are going to be a national party and a government-in-waiting, they need to act like it and this would send all the wrong messages. For the NDP, only running in 100 ridings would seriously undermine their credibility. Maybe there would be some value in doing this in a half-dozen 3-way split ridings, but on a national scale it would be a complete disaster that, in the long run, would only serve to weaken the left-wing parties, strengthening the Tories par consequence.

Liberal Bits and Bites

I've been out of town for a few days, so here's a quick run-down on some Liberal Party goings-on:

1) The Liberals have appointed Mauril Belanger and Navdeep Bains as platform/policy co-chairs. Nav is also heading out the Renewal Committee...or is it the Change Commission? or the Party Growth Group? or the Rejuvenation Task Force? Regardless, the point is that this bright young MP is being used by Ignatieff, despite it initially looking like he was snubbed by Iggy when the shadow cabinet was named.

2) The LPC nomination rules have been changed so that incumbent MPs will only be appointed if they have 400 members in the riding, and 40 Victory Fund donors. I really like this move - it protects incumbents from takeovers and, truth be told, if you can't sign up a few hundred Liberals and raise 5 grand in a Liberal-held riding, you have no business being handed the party's nomination. In fact, I wouldn't even mind it if they raised the fundraising threshold a bit higher.

3) I received my permanent Liberal membership card in the mail today. And, while I hate to sound like a cheerleader for the third straight point, I've got to give the party some credit on this one. Once integrated in with a solid database, this should let the party track it's members better, and it opens up a lot of possibilities for the LPC to use technology more effectively than they currently do.

4) Both the Liberal and Conservative websites currently have pictures of Barack Obama up on their front page, which you can be sure will piss the heck out of Jack Layton. Quite the change from the past few years when George Bush was the photo-op equivalent of a hairnet.