On coalition building

Rob Silver suggests that the Libs have three options in talking about the possibilities for a post-election coalition: ruling it out, saying nothing about it, or offering "clarity" defined as a relatively detailed statement of principles. But I'd argue that there's another option which is more likely to produce positive results than any of those.

Off the top, I'll agree with Silver that ruling out a coalition would be entirely counterproductive, and that the Libs won't be able to avoid talking about it. But why would the Libs want to offer the juicy target of a "five-point statement of principles", knowing that any detailed principles are bound to be both attacked directly, and ignored by the Cons when there's a stronger attack to be launched by pretending they've never been mentioned?

Simply put, the Cons' attack is going to be based on the idea that all possible coalitions are evil. That may be a tougher sell than the Cons might think, but it means that it doesn't matter how well a single possible form of coalition is framed: the Harper narrative will involve slamming the worst aspects of any possible coalition imaginable, and refusing to listen to any pleas that a set of principles will actually limit what the Libs will agree to.

So the only sensible countermeasure looks to me to be to take the opposite position on the broad principles of coalition politics. Rather than implicitly accepting any of the Cons' arbitrary factors which supposedly make a coalition illegitimate (and allowing that type of language to dominate the discussion), any party interested in participating in or supporting a coalition to take down the Cons should be talking up the value of cooperative politics: pointing to the many examples of coalitions which the Cons themselves seem perfectly happy to accept, highlighting areas where the Cons are isolated both in Canadian politics and around the world, and creating an underlying narrative that everybody in Ottawa agrees that it's possible for parties to work together to produce better results for Canadians - except for Stephen Harper and his insular, secretive Con government.

With that type of message, there's actually some positive content for all potential coalition parties to rally behind, while Harper will be forced on the defensive as the lone defender of the partisan buffoonery pushed by his government. And that looks like the best hope for a result that satisfies both the Libs' internal concerns, and the desire of many Canadians of multiple partisan stripes to remove the Cons from office.