Ground rules

The Saskatchewan NDP leadership race still looks to be stuck in neutral at best, with some significant frustration starting to leak out from those of us who would like to see a genuine contest develop: see e.g. GPM's latest, as well as the most recent Babble discussion thread. But one of the largest problems with potential contenders waiting to get into the contest may have to do with the strategy decisions which might result.

For any underdog with an early start, the blueprint for success is fairly widely available in the form of the Obama model: upbeat messaging from a charismatic candidate, coupled with an organization designed to turn positive impressions into committed support. And the result worked out perfectly for Obama's party as well as for him personally: while a hard-fought primary helped Obama to develop a massive campaign apparatus which boosted his cause tremendously in the general election, the fact that he could win the nomination by building a machine based on his own positives rather than attacks on Hillary Clinton made it far easier for the party to unite behind him once the contest was over.

Unfortunately, it's not clear that the same road will be as open to Saskatchewan's challengers - and it becomes less and less so with every day that goes by without another candidate jumping into the race. With Dwain Lingenfelter enjoying both a significant head start and the bulk of institutional support within the party, it may be extremely difficult for any other candidate to put together a competitive campaign based on an organization-building strategy if Lingenfelter has done even a passable job of using the resources at his disposal.

As a result, the easier path to victory for any challenger might seem to be to bank on a negative strategy to turn current members and new sign-ups against Lingenfelter, rather than working to seek out new blood. But whatever the likelihood of actually winning through those means, the prize would figure to be seriously diminished regardless of who emerged on top. Either Lingenfelter could hold on in the face of a barrage but carry a damaging set of negatives into a general election, or the challenger could try to lead the party into 2011 with irate Link supporters choosing to stay on the sidelines.

Since that can hardly be a positive result for anybody involved other than the NDP's rivals, I'll once again encourage challengers to get into the race, but with an exhortation to run with an eye to the long term as well. The ultimate measure of any candidate in the leadership race will be how much good their policy vision and organizational skills can offer the party and the province - and as eager as many of us are for a competitive race, I for one won't hesitate to criticize any candidate (including the one already there) who decides to go negative rather than keeping those factors in mind.