Ebb and flow

So much for post-Gomery outrage turning the tide against the Liberals, as a new poll puts the Libs squarely in the driver's seat electorally:

In the new sampling, the Liberals enjoy the support of 35 per cent of voters, up seven points. The Tories garnered 28 per cent compared to 31 per cent, while the NDP dropped to 16 per cent, from 20 per cent, on the weekend. The poll of 1,000 Canadians was conducted Saturday and Sunday and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 95 per cent of the time.

While some may have seen the temporary NDP boost in the polls as reason to force an election, to me last weekend's results were about the worst possible outcome for the NDP: enough of an increase to make pundits say the NDP should want to go to the polls, but also a drop as compared to the Cons that was bound to result in votes bleeding over to the Liberals. The new poll is simply the inevitable result, as moderate-left voters make clear that they don't want to see Harper in power.

With that said, there's no reason now to go back on this weekend's decision on health care. Bad policy is bad policy no matter what the polls say, and moreover those moderate-left voters are exactly the ones most likely to wonder why the Liberals were willing to precipitate an election in order to avoid defending health care. While the NDP should still be receptive to any meaningful offer from the Liberals, and should still be looking to push their ethics package among other policies within Parliament, the plan should be to vote the government down at the next opportunity barring a compelling reason to do otherwise.

After all, the backlash from the previous poll should be over, and there's a good ways to go before any election. The key for now is still to displace the Cons as the best possible alternative to continued Lib government...and that's easy enough to do by encouraging Harper to be Harper.