On losing proposals

Jeffrey Simpson's latest column rightly recognizes the need for political parties to seek out voices beyond their elected MPs. But he seems to completely miss the point in his argument as to where that input can best be generated.

The problem is most visible in Simpson's oddly rhetorical question:

Every election, especially one with big voter swings, brings to Parliament dud MPs (and good ones, too) and sweeps out some excellent ones. It wasn’t the fault of many of the losing Liberal MPs that they were defeated; the political tides just ran strongly against them. With the best organized effort in the world, they were toast.

It wasn’t the fault of New Democrats that they didn’t win in New Brunswick or rural Western Canada, because the party is very weak in those parts. But the party needs input from those regions if it hopes to become a more national institution. Who better to provide it than former candidates?

Let's answer that question by asking one in return: aren't a party's weakest regions also bound to be the ones where it's most likely to have nominated paper candidates, or candidates who have relatively limited connections to the riding on the ground? In effect, while a forum for consulting defeated candidates might create an additional link to ridings with enough of an ongoing presence to already have a strong local candidate, it might serve only to further isolate the regions where there's actually the most need for input.

And what's worse, to the extent input might be based on the conditions as of the previous election date, a council dedicated to defeated candidates would only figure to exacerbate the tendency for parties to seek to re-fight the last campaign rather than getting prepared for the next one.

Which isn't to say that parties can't do more to get all kinds of people involved. And indeed, strengthened roles for locally-based riding associations would provide a forum for former candidates and other party supporters alike. But the answer surely isn't to give defeated candidates a privileged position over the rest of a party's activists and supporters - and I'd fully expect that a party which took up Simpson's suggestion would have plenty more defeated candidates to add to its list in future elections.