The NDP has re-launched its Unite4Change site for this fall's set of by-elections, and in the process looks to be even further ahead of the other parties than it was last year. (From what I can tell, the closest any of the Cons, Libs or Greens come to mentioning the by-elections on their respective sites is the inclusion of one event on Michael Ignatieff's events schedule.) But while it's worth noting the NDP's apparent head start in preparing for the November by-election dates, it's particularly worth pointing out one of the more subtle advantages it may hold compared to some of its competitors.
After years of planning out messages and strategies under a leader with a long-term vision for the party, the NDP has had a chance to develop plenty of messages which can be accessed and reinforced on a moment's notice while being left dormant when they don't apply. Which means that for virtually any major development in Canadian politics (based on issues or events), the NDP will have a ready response supported by past communication work.
Are there by-elections happening? Time to bring out "Unite4Change" both as a familiar message to those who have followed NDP by-election activity for awhile, and as a building block for a national message.
Are the Cons looking for excuses to once again extend Canada's military role in Afghanistan? There's a ready response to that. Climate change? Check. Tax fairness? Check. And so on.
Mind you, in every case there's some need for adaptation to the current issues at play: the tax message is only reinforced in the case of the HST where needless corporate cuts are paired with hikes on individuals, while action on climate change is now aimed toward establishing new global targets at Copenhagen rather than meeting the ones set at Kyoto. But in general, the NDP has been able to build up a consistent set of messages which it can tap into at any point while never pushing any of them to the point of fatigue at any time.
Not surprisingly, that makes for a huge contrast against the circumstances of the Libs. They've of course had four different leaders in the past four years - with all but interim chief Bill Graham spending much of their time trying to distance themselves from their predecessors, and most key party staff changing as well during that time. And to top it all off the Libs have actually changed substantive positions on plenty of issues (a prime example being their Afghanistan swings from starting a combat mission while in government, treating it as a free vote when they first went to opposition, then demanding an end to combat before agreeing to an extension), making for an even more complicated communications problem.
Based on that combination of regularly changing personnel and messages, the Libs are bound to have a far more limited number of themes even remotely developed for public consumption - meaning that they largely have to start from scratch in developing a message in any particular area. And even before that process starts, there's presumably some workload involved in documenting and cataloguing what the last few incarnations of the party have had to say on the details of each issue so as to limit the number of contradictions that can be avoided.
All of which suggests that whatever advantage the Libs may have had in fund-raising early this year, it may be serving to do little more than try to catch up to the NDP's head start in planning and message development. And to the extent that much of the goal of political messaging is to plant seeds which will come to fruition at the right time, it's questionable whether the Libs have enough time to develop any meaningful harvest by the next general election.
No comments:
Post a Comment