We can drive it home with one headlight

A few posts later, it appears I'm not as far away from The Wonderdog's point of view as one would suspect from the back-and-forth. That said, there are still a few ideas worth pointing out here.

First, I'm not sure where the idea came from that I'm advocating a base-only strategy. I reproduce from my comment last night:

Yes, the NDP needs to court leftish centrists (one very important group of swing voters), and part of the way to do that is to emphasize fiscal responsibility and sound, practical policies...
There are other groups of swing voters too, and the NDP should be trying to court all of them with a realistic chance of switching.
Another key group that I'd focus on would be populist and protest votes which went to the PCs last time, and which probably lost us several Western seats. Those votes will be better won with a mix of reason and genuine emotion (i.e. necessary outrage where people's voices aren't now getting heard).
In addition, this is the most likely time for there to be an opening in Quebec, and part of any strategy to sway both disenchanted Liberals and Bloc voters concerned by a new future leader has to include a central vision stronger than "relatively efficient management".

Some have questioned the viability of any attention paid to Quebec, and that's a fair question (if one where I'd still tend to disagree). But the point isn't to reach out only to the NDP's base, but rather to reach out to multiple groups. We can probably move up slightly from 20% by reaching out to left-Liberals; I think we can move up higher by looking for more opportunities.

As for the "not disturbing the apple cart" principle, I'd again think there's room for some subtlety here: we can be in favour of some change without being in favour of radical change, particularly if we explain the reasons for the change in a context of what works best.

Does this mean I agree entirely with the Wonderdog? Not exactly. The example I'll give is the Maher Arar situation, which has been pushed fairly extensively both by the NDP and in the Progressive Bloggers group. On my reading of the Wonderdog, there's no apparent reason to question the government's actions: we don't want to upset the apple cart of relations with the U.S., our government probably didn't violate international law merely by not keeping other countries from possibly doing so, and the economic value of one professional obviously isn't much of an argument for taking action.

That said, I'll argue that the NDP was right to highlight the emotional side of Arar's case. The helplessness and the fear involved in being rendered help point out where a wrong was committed, and our knowing the facts should offer a guide to better action in the future.

As for the Wonderdog's examples, I don't see for a second why we can't make use of all our arguments in favour of these policies. To blatantly plagiarize:

Subsidized daycare should be about giving children a better opportunity and about allowing parents to get to work. Staying out of Iraq, and similar future adventures, is about both keeping civilian limbs attached to civilian bodies where they belong, and about international law and multilateralism. A new deal for cities is about the economic engine of the country, and about ensuring that homeless people don't die in Toronto. And so on.

The proportions of which argument we want to use will vary; I suspect fear for our soldiers will always be a huge factor on war issues, while emotion cuts both ways on daycare when the Cons start up about "giving parents the right to stay home". There's room for debate on the best proportions for each isue, but I don't see cutting emotion out entirely as desirable on any of them.

As for the previous focus on unions, I'll agree that there's been a demographic shift, and that too much of a focus on union leaders results in both bad politics and bad policy. That's not a question of emotion vs. reason, but rather one of different forms of pragmatism.

I suspect the one irresolvable issue is the question of whether emotions are included within pragmatism. My take is that emotions themselves inform rationality, and to try to cut them out is to make reason less than it can be. I strongly suspect that the Wonderdog would disagree, and I don't see that as a huge problem - particularly for someone who's obviously a strong advocate for the NDP even if we disagree somewhat on tactics.