History repeating

The federal Libs went from a majority government to a minority to a three-ring circus by focusing on an all-negative, all-the-time strategy. Now, despite the earnest warnings of party supporters, Ontario's provincial Libs appear to be taking the first steps down the same road:

The provincial Liberals lost more than a by-election yesterday in the west-end Toronto riding of Parkdale-High Park; they also lost their innocence.

Under Dalton McGuinty's leadership for the past decade, the Liberals have generally been on the receiving end of negative campaigning and election smears...

There were, to be sure, attack ads aimed at the Conservatives in the last provincial election, including a highly effective series with the tag line: "Not this time, Ernie." But these ads were sponsored by a coalition of unions called "working families." That gave McGuinty and the Liberals plausible deniability of responsibility.

Not this time, Dalton.

In a desperation move in the final days of the Parkdale-High Park by-election campaign, the Liberals issued press releases smearing their NDP opponent — 56-year-old United Church minister Cheri DiNovo. On the basis of some old sermons, DiNovo was described as a "radical" whose judgment should be called into question.

Liberal bloggers went even further, calling DiNovo "DiNutso" and accusing her of being "a former drug dealer."

Some Liberals — including Gerard Kennedy, who held Parkdale-High Park for the Liberals before resigning the seat to run for the federal leadership — deplored these tactics.

But McGuinty himself refused to disassociate himself from the smearing of DiNovo despite repeat attempts by the media to get him to do so...

(T)he consequences are greater than the loss of just one riding. Now, if the Conservatives and New Democrats go negative in next year's province-wide campaign, which they sure will (with repeated references to broken promises by McGuinty), the Liberals will no longer be able to play the injured innocents.

Of course, there is another possible consequence of the by-election results: that the defeat will strengthen the faction within the Liberal party that detests negative campaigning and wants to take the high road to re-election by stressing the government's record.

On the other hand, the "go negative" faction was arguing last night that the tactic helped to close the gap between the Liberals and the NDP, which was even wider in internal party polling last week.

And there may well be federal Libs who believe that the "soldiers in our streets" ads against the federal Cons were all that stood in the way of a Con majority as well. But on any realistic analysis of the by-election, both the result and the tactics were a complete failure for a party which more than tripled its nearest opponent in the same riding in the previous election. And if the Libs really do see pure smearing as their best tactic for the next general election, then it'll take a wholesale move from the Libs to the NDP to keep Tory's Tories from winning power on the backs of understandably disillusioned voters.