On competing visions

I'll echo Greg in mentioning that Brian Topp's latest is a must-read. But the most noteworthy part from my standpoint was Topp's willingness to point to the progressive coalition as a positive example of the NDP's vision and strategy:

Jack Layton's vision used to be that 163 Members of Parliament were elected from parties who claim to be progressive or centrist, versus 143 Conservatives. We are coming up on the first anniversary of Layton's attempt to have the government of Canada reflect that fact. Having been thwarted in this by the current leadership team in the Liberal Party, Layton and the New Democrats have reverted to type, and are seeking to achieve progress file-by-file (as Layton did on Toronto city council and in the Canadian Federation of Municipalities) in a Parliament where, you would think, progressives might have some leverage over a government dependent on them to survive.

In contrast to messages like the above, the NDP's strategy for too much of this year has involved at best a position that the coalition was a necessary evil, and at worst a failure to rebut the Cons' patently wrong view that it somehow represented an attack on democratic outcomes rather than an expression of them.

But with one of the NDP's public faces taking a step in the direction of explicitly defending and promoting the idea of coalition politics, it would stand to reason that the party can't be far behind. And that looks to position the NDP beautifully whenever the next federal election takes place.

After all, it's no secret that Stephen Harper's plan is to run against the idea of a coalition among the other parties - which makes sense for them given the hope that an election framed in those terms can give the Cons a couple of extra points which they're never going to pick up based on their own record in office. And equally obviously, the Libs' response is to deny that they're even remotely interested in that result while trying to change the subject - which can at least be rationally explained as an effort not to lose centre-right votes to the Cons, though I'm still far from sure it's ultimately a smart choice.

But let's not forget that the polls which are now wrongly cited as evidence that the coalition was radioactive actually showed support in the range of 30-50% - obviously providing for a significant pool of voters beyond the NDP's usual reach. And the demonstrations in favour of the coalition likely made for the greatest collaboration among diverse left-of-centre voices that Canada has seen for quite some time, hinting at exactly the type of potential energy that the NDP needs to tap into.

As a result, if the NDP positions itself to attack the Cons' anti-cooperation stance head on, it could find itself in the electoral sweet spot of being the clear alternative to the Cons on the ultimate ballot question, with a strong network of like-minded Canadians ready to offer their support to the principles at stake. And while there's a long way to go in challenging the false conventional wisdom that's taken root, it has to be a good sign that Topp appears to be setting the NDP up for exactly that type of message.