Movements and moments

Let's continue this line of thought about the federal NDP's most recent election campaign with my slight twist on one of the more familiar questions which has faced the party (in various forms) over a period of decades.

I'll start by drawing a distinction between two related goals which are bound to figure in a political party's plans. Any party with the foresight to last more than an election cycle will put meaningful effort into building a movement over the longer term; any party wanting to accomplish anything during an election cycle will likewise prioritize the goal of capturing the moment when it counts most during an election campaign.

And while I'll question the respective allocation of resources between those two goals in hindsight, there are certainly precedents the NDP could point to in focusing largely on a "capture the moment" philosophy.

The 2011 Orange Wave resulted in no small part from a phenomenal amount of movement-building work by Jack Layton and his team. But it also concluded with a crescendo of support which went far beyond what would have been expected based on the the party's infrastructure.

And the NDP's provincial election wins in Nova Scotia and Alberta can also be taken as triumphs of a "capture the moment" philosophy in different ways - with Nova Scotia being based on stronger party infrastructure but less appeal to activists (and likely serving as the model for the 2015 federal campaign), while Alberta reflected the converse.

After 2011, the federal NDP faced the task of converting its sudden increase in votes, seats and public opinion into other gains, including the development of a broader movement. And lest there be any doubt, it took some important steps to do so.

Not only did Tom Mulcair put in double duty personally to match his opponents' travel schedule while also serving as an ideal leader of the opposition in Parliament, but the NDP also started engaging members in the type of ongoing issue-based outreach which hadn't been seen in some time. And indeed, the NDP's success in 2015 was founded in no small part on the combination of parliamentary work and activist engagement around Bill C-51.

But the effort to build activist support was complicated by Justin Trudeau's arrival as the Libs' leader - which bumped the NDP from its place at the top of the polls, and prevented the NDP from being seen as the lone magnet for Harper opponents. Hence the rise of the "promiscuous progressive" whose support remained in play through most of the 2015 election campaign. 

Trudeau's rise represented a factor beyond the NDP's control. But the party also took numerous steps (including focusing on MP and candidate "discipline" as well as rejecting candidates for questionable reasons) which narrowed its range of acceptable supporters and dampened enthusiasm within its usual base - presumably with the goal of remaining acceptable to a wider range of voters in the hope of capturing late deciders.

That on its own was problematic enough. But coupled with a choice to focus relatively little on values and policy definition during the campaign, it set the NDP up for failure in the battle to be seen as the alternative to the Cons - or at least, took the shape of the campaign out of the NDP's hands.

To be fair, it's entirely possible that the commentariat would now be lauding the political brilliance of Prime Minister Tom Mulcair and his far-sighted team if Trudeau had fallen down during the campaign, leaving the NDP as an inoffensive alternative to clean up the anti-Conservative vote. But the NDP's election plan didn't work against a Lib campaign which ran smoothly - and the appeal to default status is certainly outdated now that the Libs are back in power.

Fortunately, if the above analysis holds up as to what went wrong, the election result on its own should push the NDP in the right direction out of necessity. A leader who can't rely on being perceived as the default alternative is bound to make the case for his own values; a smaller caucus will inevitably have to focus more on outreach and advocacy than on discipline; a party with less parliamentary resources will need to put proportionally more work into its base of volunteers and donors.

Those are thus the measures I'll be looking for in assessing Mulcair's continued leadership. While it's important to offer effective opposition in Ottawa, it's more clear than ever that the NDP's future success depends on its ability to foster and tap into an active progressive movement. And it's by developing that popular base over time (and keeping it all the more engaged during a campaign) that the NDP can best position itself to win overall voter support when it counts most.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Lana Payne criticizes two forms of cash hoarding: both the assets sitting idle in corporate coffers, and the money that's been funneled offshore by wealthy individuals:

By the end of each episode (of "Hoarders")...the audience finds out if the featured hoarders have been able to get their behaviour under control or if they have “fallen into the deep end of this painful disease.”
The difference between these hoarders and those we have been reading about in recent days in newspapers like The Guardian and The Globe and Mail is that one group acquires “a large number of possessions that others would consider useless,” and the other acquires possessions of value like cash and assets.

But both suffer from the inability to discard their hoarded possessions.

Take corporate Canada. Progressive economists have been complaining for some time about their cash and asset hoarding. Canada’s Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, has also been critical of corporate Canada’s hoarding practices, saying there is no reason keeping Canadian companies from investing.

Certainly they have been given incentive enough to do so. But billions in corporate tax cuts have instead been stockpiled on top of their more than half a trillion dollars in cash reserves, rather than invested in the economy.

 - The Star-Phoenix editorial board worries that the Council of the Federation's attempts to encourage cooperation on health care will come to nothing if we can't count on a federal government to take on exactly the leadership role the Harper Cons have abandoned:

Although eight years ago Ottawa was setting conditions on its grants and even talking about a national pharmacare program, including a universal bulk-buying strategy to control costs, the Harper government is clear about its disinclination to be a big part of Canada's flagship social contract.

Without any federal leadership, Canadians can expect their health system, like the dream of a national energy strategy, to be sacrificed at the altar of narrow-minded provincial politics.

- Dr. Dawg highlights the absurdity of the RCMP labeling anybody who dares to express concern about an anti-environment government and its resource-sector puppeteers as a security threat.

- Finally, I don't expect the suggestion to get far for a multitude of reasons. But Ralph Surette's proposal that younger Liberals (including Justin Trudeau) ought to turn their individual efforts to building the NDP at least offers a more plausible means to unite the vast majority of Canadian progressives than formal merger plans which would inevitably result in years of wrangling among two separate party structures.

Thursday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- For those wondering what might become of Nathan Cullen's leadership campaign plan to work with progressives of all party stripes, we now have part of the answer: in advance of the Calgary Centre by-election, Cullen will be reaching out to discuss how to challenge the Cons.

- Jim Stanford highlights rankings of corporate size showing just how dependent Canada already is on the finance and resource sectors - a problem which the Cons are of course determined to exacerbate.

- Meanwhile, Sarah Jaffe points out what I'm sure is only a purely coincidental combination of record high profits and all-time low wages as a share of the U.S.' economy.

- Finally, Alex Himelfarb has some ideas on how to take back our democracy:

We are living in a state of what the late American sociologist Robert Merton called anomie, when a society’s goals and means no longer serve most people.  Our model seems to be busted. Today’s problems seem more complex, unfamiliar, and our institutions seem unable to cope.

We are past the point of tinkering.  The goals that gave us shared purpose seem now out of reach, less relevant, and we have lost or are losing trust in government as a means for collective progress.
...
(M)any have opted out of conventional politics, including voting, but they are also finding new ways to engage in public life, in their communities or internationally, and some have taken to the streets, standing outside all our conventional institutions and conventional wisdom to find something new. They are the digital generation that can make those of us stuck in the industrial age so uncomfortable. How the semi-leaderless Occupy Movement or the students in the streets of Montreal drove so many of us crazy.  Their leadership was emergent, fragile, shifting, in a word, democratic. Networks and communities replaced hierarchies.  And the generational divide is exposed.  This is not the hyper-individualism or entitlement thinking that detractors claimed.  It is about rebuilding civil society from the ground up, about a new kind of solidarity and a different kind of leadership.

Finding new ways to engage and contribute, rejecting government as parent or nanny, refusing to see the state as the answer to everything – that is all part of a better future.  But to the extent that the young ignore conventional political institutions, including voting, to the extent that they do not engage with the state and try to make it better, we risk an ever-wider gap between civil society and state and a continuing erosion of our democracy.

Holding on to stale notions of leadership is dangerous but so too is disengagement.  We risk a state that becomes more and more remote and authoritarian, less and less willing or able to pursue a better future, to constrain the powerful, to listen to or help those who need government most, to solve problems that cut across our communities and the generations.

We need Canadians across the estates and across the generations to get indignant, to get engaged, to enter the fray, to re-imagine Canada, and to take back our democracy,

Presented for discussion

And we're off, with the first major internal point of discussion in the NDP's leadership race.

As a matter of strategy, it's fairly easy to see Nathan Cullen's announcement as a logical move - both to build his own name recognition at a point when most commentary is setting a Topp vs. Mulcair narrative (with Paul Dewar as the candidate receiving the next most attention), and to tap into one of the main ideas that likely won't find favour among the major candidates.

But it remains to be seen whether Cullen will alienate more support within the NDP than he'll attract in proposing the idea. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if the strategic benefit of any first-choice support (hello, Pat Martin!) which Cullen might win as a result gets counterbalanced by much greater difficulty in winning over second-choice support.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Unite the Left Behind the NDP

No longer just a post tag, now a reality.

Refreshing

No, there's nothing particularly surprising in the NDP strategy reported by Laura Payton. But isn't a pleasant change that the official opposition actually has such a thing?

On clear preferences

At least a few pundits have theorized that the NDP might get pushed into a merger due to the desire of Quebec voters to see greater cooperation among parties opposing the Cons, as evidenced by their support for past coalitions and other short-term cooperative efforts (which looks to have worked in the NDP's favour). But lest anybody think that logic might extend to a merger, let's put any doubt to rest:

The poll of just over 1,000 respondents — conducted over the Labour Day weekend — found that 63 per cent opposed a merger and just 24 per cent supported the idea, a trend that covered income, age and gender groups across Canada's regions.
...
And in Quebec — the new home to 59 of the NDP's 102 MPs in the House of Commons — 65 per cent of the poll respondents opposed a merger with just 23 per cent in favour.

In other words, Quebec voters - including the ones who handed the NDP its landslide victory in that province - are no more likely than Canadians anywhere else to think that a merger is worth discussing. And that reality should eliminate any argument that the NDP has the slightest reason to pursue a flawed strategy for the sake of holding onto its recent gains.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Chantal Hebert highlights how the Harper Cons are making a show of ignoring the needs of Quebec - and indeed making matters worse by the day:

Persichilli’s recruitment also compounds what amounts to the party’s greatest election failure in the shape of its abysmal absence in Quebec.

At a time when the province is opening up to the federalist parties for the first time in decades, the first post-election addition to the senior ranks of the PMO cannot speak French and has a track record of lamenting Quebec’s influence on national affairs.

Harper is hardly the first prime minister to ask a non-French speaker to oversee his political communications. In his day, Paul Martin relied on an English-only communications director. But Harper is the first to deal with a Quebec vacuum within his government by making it worse.
...
Queried by The Globe and Mail about this and other unflattering Quebec-related comments, Persichilli responded that in his new role he planned to treat Quebecers with the “utmost respect.”

But he is already off to a double standard for when Montreal’s La Presse came calling with the same questions, he declined to answer them.

- Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob point out that the conditional sentences being eliminated by the Harper Cons make for both a less expensive and more effective means of dealing with offenders:

The government has promised to further restrict the use of conditional sentences, claiming that its goal is to “protect the safety and security of our communities.” Yet it ignores substantial evidence demonstrating the opposite. The government indicated it would eliminate the use of the sanction for “serious and violent offenders,” but its bill also would have eliminated it for an offender whose offence involved breaking into a shed and stealing a bicycle.

Further restrictions will mean that offenders who otherwise would have received house arrest will go to a provincial, not federal, prison, thus ensuring that provincial/territorial costs will increase. Rather than benefiting the larger community through the use of punitive but simultaneously rehabilitative conditional sentences, the bill guarantees an increase in costs to the community. The government’s view that imprisonment pays for itself in crime reduction is a big lie.
...
It’s ironic that, while the Harper government wants to seriously increase the use of imprisonment on the false justification that it’s the most effective way to increase public safety, other countries are trying to seriously decrease its use. The United States, for instance, is considering moves toward sanctions such as house arrest. Canada and the U.S. are like ships passing in the night, but Canadians are the unfortunate passengers on the ship of fools.

- Hassan Arif argues against an NDP/Lib merger:

(A) merger would reduce our political choices, taking Canada from a multi-party system to a U.S.-style system of two monolithic parties - something even more limiting in the Canadian context, given the tradition of tight party discipline.

The benefits of a multi-party system can be seen, for example, in Ontario. In that province, while the Liberal government has provided progressive policies in areas such as environmental conservation, many northern Ontarians have felt neglected by the McGuinty government and by previous Tory governments. The NDP has been able to step into this void and provide a strong voice for northern Ontario, a particular legacy of Howard Hampton's tenure as Ontario NDP leader.

Coalition and cooperation (including, if acceptable to party members, non-compete agreements like the one Stéphane Dion's Liberals had with Elizabeth May in 2008) are desirable options in dealing with a united right. Merger, though, is far more drastic. It would reduce our political choices and may not be beneficial to either party. It should be approached with a large degree of scepticism.

- But as Ed Broadbent notes, there's no reason why anybody looking for the strongest possible progressive voice should see any problem with the existing party options:

Mr. Broadbent said that after the NDP breakthrough in Quebec on May 2, which propelled the party into Official Opposition for the first time in its 50-year history, the NDP now occupies the driver's seat at the federal level.

"The Liberals are in historic decline, election after election. People forget often, because of our wonderful breakthrough in Quebec, that we now have more seats in Toronto than the Liberals have," he said.

"Now is the time for progressive Liberals, as indeed progressive people from other parties, to come and join the NDP, and they don't have to agree with everything, just as all New Democrats don't agree with everything in the party, right? They could get in and help shape what the party becomes."

- Finally, Anne Kingston writes about the political coupling of Jack Layton and Olivia Chow:

It is a uniquely Canadian, multicultural, inclusive love story. Layton and Chow weren’t the first married couple to sit in the House of Commons (that was Nina and Gurmant Grewal), but they blazed a unique trail exemplifying social equality, says Segato, who still sometimes slips into the present tense when she’s referring to them: “What you see is a couple engaged in each other’s best good. The level of respect is so profound. They didn’t agree on every issue, but they had the discussion. They were the embodiment of the equal, feminist relationship. It’s not some political ideal. They’re living it.”
...
They did check in with one another by phone multiple times a day, a pattern that continued in Ottawa, “much to my annoyance,” Gallagher jokes, because it slowed down the schedule: “Working with Olivia, any number of times we’d be interrupted by Jack calling. Then when I moved to Ottawa I can’t tell you how many times Olivia would be brought in on speakerphone to be part of the decision. And it wasn’t just rubber-stamping, it was truly input.”

Another insider notes Chow’s patience rubbed off on Layton politically. “Olivia would say, ‘That’s a good idea but it’s not the right time,’ which isn’t a common discipline in political life. By the time Layton was federal leader [in 2003], he was a transformed political figure who thought strategically.”
...
Chow rejected the traditional ceremonial “wife” role, says Gallagher: “Olivia wanted no part of that; but both were there for the other publicly when required.” In public, they expressed unabashed affection, reflected in Layton’s 2005 proclamation: “Olivia is fundamental to my life. She is woven into every minute, every second, of my existence.”

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Canada's Prime Minister is openly advocating for the use of soldiers over mere books or arguments as a means of persuasion. Which of course means it's time to start making jokes about Thomas Mulcair.

- Speaking of whom, Mulcair's much-discussed comments also include one point which should speak nicely to the NDP's goal of continuing to build across Canada rather than looking for shortcuts:

Mulcair says he appreciates what Martin is saying, but he won't support a merger.

"He's doing a great job of putting an important idea out there, but I'm categorical," he said. "The reason we did so well in Quebec in particular, is the fact that we aren't the Liberals."

- Deep Climate posts a superb expose of the Ethical Oil Institute. [Update: And see also James Laxer on the myth that it's possible to build a sustainable economy primarily on volatile resource industries.]

- Finally, remember back when any comparisons between Jack Layton and Barack Obama were met with haughty dismissals to the effect that Layton could never match Obama's appeal? Just wondering.

On maturing processes

Let's take a look at a couple of final issues from #vancon2011, starting with the series of machinations around resolutions ruling out merger or non-compete agreements with the Liberals.

As I noted at the time, the convention planners gave a prominent place to a resolution ruling out a merger with the Liberals while giving a lower priority to one also ruling out a non-compete agreement - perhaps signalling that at least some within the party saw substantially different issues between the two, and an anti-merger resolution as a more reasonable outcome. But the panel combined the two into a single resolution.

Meanwhile, both resolutions referred specifically to the Libs alone, rather than to a set of general principles to be applied to dealings with other parties. (I'd hoped to amend the resolution in panel to remove the Lib reference so that it would apply to the NDP's dealings with any other party, but the question got called first.)

That left the plenary session to deal with a strongly-worded and restrictive resolution aimed solely at the Libs. And a combination of poorly-received speeches in favour and a strong appeal from Peter Stoffer in opposition resulted in the resolution being defeated.

Of course, that isn't to say that there seemed to be any particular appetite on the part of anybody speaking on either side to approve of merger or non-compete talks. But the plenary vote reflected the willingness of delegates to live up to the party's message of leaving the door open for co-operation where it's possible to do some good in the process.

Which figures to be a plus in the long run. But I'd think the progress of the resolution shows there's still work for the party to do in recognizing and defining its place on the Canadian political scene.

In effect, it seems that at least some delegates were eager to single out the Libs for denigration based on last month's election results. And the focus might have been understandable to a point given the longstanding rivalry between the two parties, as well as the fact that as recently as a couple of months ago the NDP perceived itself as facing an uphill climb to overtake the Libs.

But from my standpoint, the focus of the resolutions only made exactly the same mistake the NDP has criticized in others for so long - ascribing undue importance to the Libs instead of zeroing in on what the NDP has done and can do as a party. And hopefully by the next convention, the respective positioning of the NDP and the Libs (which still seems new now) will have become familiar enough that delegates won't see the need to trumpet it.

On strategic failures

Following up on this post, let's take a closer look at how the recommendations of the strategic voting sites which claimed to offer the only chance to stop Stephen Harper matched up with the list of ridings being pointed to as having given the Harper Cons their majority - looking both at whether the riding was correctly identified as one likely to affect the election outcome, and whether the strategic voting sites actually recommended that voters support the party with the best chance to defeat the Cons.

Riding	Identified	Correct Opponent
Labrador	0	0
Nipissing-Timiskaming	1 (PD)	1 (PD)
Bramalea-Gore-Malton	2 (CAW, PD)	0
Etobicoke Centre	0	0
Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar	3	3
Elmwood-Transcona	1 (C22)	1 (C22)
Montmagny-L'islet-Kamouraska-Riveire-du-Loup	2 (C22, PD)	0
Lotbiniere-Chutes-de-la-Chaudiere	1 (PD)	1 (PD)
Don Valley West	3	3
Mississauga East-Cooksville	0	0
Winnipeg South Centre	2 (CAW, PD)	2 (CAW, PD)
Yukon	0	0
Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River	0	0
Palliser	3	3
Total	18	14

So what can we tell from the chart?

To start with, strategic voting sites did an absolutely woeful job of identifying the ridings which proved decisive. Given free rein to identify as many seats as they saw as justifying an endorsement, the sites had 40 total chances to identify which ridings could actually stop a Harper majority (allowing for the fact that the CAW seems to have avoided endorsing candidates in Quebec). And their success rate in doing so was less than 50%.

What's more, the fact that the sites recognized that a riding mattered didn't guarantee that they'd get it right, as two ridings saw the NDP emerge as the leading challenger to the Cons contrary to "strategic" recommendations. Which leaves the strategic voting sites with a total success rate of a measly 35% in making the correct recommendation for a riding which proved decisive (to go with an epic fail rate of 10% where they actually endorsed the wrong party).

In fact, as the election turned out, a simple "vote NDP" strategy would have resulted in the correct vote in more of the ultimate swing ridings than following the advice of strategic voting sites. (And indeed the same would have applied to a simple "vote Lib" strategy.)

Now, none of the above is to doubt the sincerity of those who put together the recommendations in the first place. But there should be less doubt than ever that the more important work is to be done in building a broader electoral movement, not in trying to game the electoral system.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

On party interests

Scott Reid is probably right in describing what he thinks the Libs' strategy is driving at as our election campaign draws to a close. But let's take a step back and ask what it says about the party's desperation:

The least conventional ballot question in Canadian history is taking shape: Do you care about the Liberal party's future?
...
Harper and Layton may discover that many others dislike the idea of overlooking an institution that offers a reliably sensible and centrist option.

They may learn that Canadians are none too eager to reduce future national debates to twin poles of extreme opinion.

They may find that in the quiet of the ballot box, there are many voters who decide they value the Liberal party and will vote to preserve its ability to positively influence their future. Just as it has their past.

Leaving aside Reid's own personal stake in the Libs, let's turn the question around.

If, in an election where there was a close race between the Libs and Cons for government, the NDP had ever ended a campaign by declaring that voters should ignore policy, principle, leadership and strategy alike, and vote simply based on a desire to preserve their party's brand...

How well would that have gone over as a direct appeal?

And perhaps more importantly, how savagely would it have been shredded by a Lib party declaring that it proved the NDP wasn't interested in stopping a mutual opponent?

In effect, Reid's analysis looks to be the next stage of the Libs' culture of entitlement. Having failed in their effort to dictate that nobody else could stop the Harper Cons, they're now asking that voters put on hold every real consideration at play in the current election campaign - every prospect of replacing the Harper Cons with a better government - solely for the benefit of a party which has shown it can't win support on the merits.

Now, one might point to cases where a relatively similar message has fallen flat (anybody else hearing an echo of Ujjal Dosanjh's plea to at least allow for some B.C. opposition in 2001?). But Reid's pitch looks to be even less justifiable, since he's trying to make the case in an election whose outcome is actually in doubt.

If there's any saving grace for the Libs, it's that enough Canadians may have tuned them out that the message isn't certain to reach all of the voters who may yet vote Lib out of habit. But if "save the furniture" is now the Libs' public appeal rather than merely their internal rallying cry, then there's reason to think there are plenty more votes for the NDP to win as the campaign reaches an end.

They write letters

And if they aren't contributing to an NDP-led government, I heartily endorse the prospect that the Libs' top figures have plenty of time to keep right on writing open letters by this time next week.

Subtle

Canada's corporate sector is officially launching CASH Care to try to wrest control over our health sector from anybody who doesn't put profits first. This might be just the right time to have the party that fought for universal health care in charge to fight back the tide.

Scrambling

Call it a crazy hunch, but I'm guessing this is another rather bad sign for the Libs:

When the campaign began last month, the Liberals had prepared a strategy to roll out their ads in four phases – the first was to introduce Mr. Ignatieff, the rookie leader, to Canadians; the second phase was to promote the platform. The party launched a couple of attack ads in the third phase. Phase four was to be aimed at trying to get out the vote – it seems now, however, the Liberals have abandoned that plan as they drive toward May 2.

Which is telling in a couple of ways.

First, there's the fact that the Libs - who have bragged for ages about how they're so much better organized with Michael Ignatieff and Peter Donolo in charge than under previous structures - have officially reached the point of having to throw out the playbook they'd developed before the campaign. Instead, they're truly "making it up as they go along" for lack of any plan to deal with how the campaign has developed.

But perhaps more interestingly, it makes clear that the Libs don't see a get-out-the-vote message as a winner for them anymore - highlighting the fact that to the extent anybody new is going to be drawn into the election campaign, it's the NDP that figures to benefit.

On last gasps

I'll give the Libs this much: at the very least their latest attempt to counter the NDP's national surge might make a bit more sense than their previous one. But that's only true if one assumes that they see their numbers diving and the NDP's soaring as the campaign reaches its conclusion.

After all, as John Ibbitson notes, the latest ad doesn't make a lick of sense in trying to tie the NDP and Cons together in terms of policy. But that leaves one area where one might try to find a perceived uniformity of interest between the two. And the Libs are quite explicit about what they see as being the major similarity: both voted to bring down Paul Martin's Lib government in 2005.

Now, for anybody looking at the situation remotely reasonably that criticism doesn't figure to get very far. After all, it was thoroughly debunked from the beginning, and figures to be less and less relevant to most voters as Canada's political debate has moved in different directions since then.

But there's one group of voters which does figure to be motivated by an appeal to the Libs' continuing sense of entitlement to have held office at all times even since their 2006 election defeat. The ad will speak directly to the Libs' inner core, which may well have carried a grudge for over five years which can now give rise to some amount of additional motivation once it's activated through an election ad.

Here's the catch, though. While it works well on a purely tribal basis for stalwart Lib supporters, the ad also serves to exclude anybody who's so much as considered the possibility that the Libs shouldn't expect to be Canada's default government. And yet the Libs are using a broadcast medium which will put the ad in front of those voters in addition to the base they're seeking to reach.

Which looks to me like a signal that the Libs see a real possibility that a Layton wave will wipe them out across the country - and are thus pulling out all the stops to try to keep the top tier of party diehards in the fold, even at the expense of looking both insulting and incoherent to swing voters. And if the Libs are indeed in such dire straits that they need to advertise to reach their strongest supporters, then there figures to be a strong chance that the NDP can pull enough softer support away to present a serious challenge to Stephen Harper's stay in power.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Easter reading.

- We seem to have officially shifted from having commentators merely pointing out the NDP's surge, to making an effort to explain it. And David Goutor looks to have part of the answer:

Another old refrain is that the NDP is benefitting from finally dropping its past socialist rhetoric and adopting more moderate positions. This argument might be credible if there was any sign that voters have stopped seeing the NDP as a left-of-centre party. But the reality is the opposite — Layton and the NDP are in many ways the best known commodities in the election.

This points to a much more compelling explanation of the NDP’s success: Layton is getting rewarded for being so comfortable with what his party stands for and what he has to offer Canadians.
...
In one sense, the NDP’s rise can hardly be a surprise, as polls have consistently shown that a large chunk of the population supports many of the party’s policies, especially regarding social programs. It is no accident that the NDP’s rise has occurred just as issues like health care gained more public attention.

It’s also logical that Layton’s biggest gains have been in Canada’s most left-leaning province, Quebec. Indeed, if there is one long-term NDP strategy that is paying off, it is Layton’s effort to establish his party as a social democratic alternative to the Bloc for francophone voters in Quebec.

Of course, a new twist in this unpredictable campaign could turn voters in another direction. And a new wave of contrived hysteria about the threat of NDP socialism is likely on the way. But until voting day, and indeed for future elections, there is a valuable lesson from the NDP’s big surge in 2011: falling back on established values is not a bad way to get ahead.

And one can extend the analysis a few steps further in noting why the other parties haven't done so well. The Cons may be trying to take back the title of the party most opposed to government action, but they've thoroughly muddied up that message by also trying to take credit at the local level for stimulus spending. And the Libs seem to have run as far as they could from their platform and supposed principles under Stephane Dion - ensuring that voters would have little idea what they claim to stand for, and even less reason to believe whatever consistent message they can decipher.

- Meanwhile, Lorne Gunter is rather more annoyed that the NDP is gaining momentum. But he too offers a plausible explanation as to why it's happening:

There is no doubt in my mind why the NDP have so far been the big movers in the federal election campaign: Alone among the parties, the New Democrats have offered a positive vision for the country if they were to win the May 2 vote. I may not like their vision (and I don't)...But at least Jack Layton and his crew have managed to raise themselves above the name-calling and mudslinging - no matter how briefly - and give voters a reason to choose their party that doesn't involve only scare tactics about the threat posed by their opponents.
...
(T)he NDP's blend of green (environmental) and red (social-democratic) policies is at least a real vision for the country, whether or not you share that vision. And in an election almost devoid of vision, it's little wonder that the brightest light is attracting the most interest.

- Patrick Brethour points out another area where the Libs' attacks on the NDP make absolutely no sense:

The problem for the Liberals (in criticizing the NDP's cap-and-trade plan) is this: They envision having their own cap-and-trade system, functioning long before 2015, not much later than the NDP. Within a year, two years at the most, the Liberal program would be operating, according to Liberal environment critic Gerard Kennedy.

“We’d have a bit of a hurry-up agenda,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview in the opening week of the campaign, adding that a Liberal government would convene a first ministers’ meeting that included climate change issues in this calendar year.

“We do believe that it’s possible to do within a year or two, to have something up and running,” he said.
...
The Liberals seek to split an exceedingly slender hair: The tax-loving, unrealistic NDP would move within 10 months to set up a carbon trading system and use whatever funds it generates to pay for green programs.

But the fiscally responsible, thrifty Liberals would take 12 to 24 months to set up a carbon trading system and use whatever funds it generates to pay for green programs. Two months, evidently, is the difference between a fiscal apocalypse, and responsible government.

Perhaps the Liberal war room can divine the difference; it’s doubtful that Canadian voters can manage the feat.

Though in fairness to the Libs, they do have ample experience in claiming (however implausibly) that their arbitrary choice of two months' difference in timing makes for the lone explanation as to how programs promised for upwards of a decade were never delivered.

- As per usual, there's every reason for caution about reading too much into vote projections based on uncertain inputs and assumptions. But the Project Democracy numbers pointed out by Paul Dechene suggest there's a real chance to paint most of Regina orange next week.

- Finally, Douglas Bell offers his take on strategic voting in response to a Lib supporter whose actual ideas look to be a far better fit for the NDP:

And while he sat there spinning , I thought “I love this guy.” I thought that because he believes that the Charter actually matters and he believes that the G20 crackdown was bullshit and he believes a guaranteed annual income is the natural outcome of a just society and he believes a lot of the same stuff I believe. Plus he’s not a cynical bastard like a lot of other people in politics.

But this time, as much as I’ve pimped for the coalition and as much as I believe a Tory majority would be a disaster, I want to disagree with my friend. This time I want to vote NDP because it’s the right goddamn thing to do; because they ran the best campaign and because maybe just maybe politics isn’t about this campaign or the next campaign but the one after that.

Epic flail

I can only assume the Libs decided to make their latest ad by recording the first ideas blurted out in an anti-NDP brainstorming session without considering how they (a) fit together, or (b) fit into the broader campaign.

And I won't complain about the contradictory messages and general incoherence. But here's a helpful hint: when the loudest political machine in Canadian history has spent five years using taxes and crime as its main messages against you, you're not going to make gains on anybody suddenly echoing those exact themes in an ad against another party. About all that choice might accomplish is to help out the Harper Cons - which once again seems to be something the Libs are entirely willing to do in order to try to stop the NDP.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Friday Morning Links

Assorted material for your long weekend reading.

- Elly Alboim shares some observations on what we can expect out of a surge like the NDP's ascent in Quebec:

More often than not, these sorts of break outs cannot be reversed. They represent a collective decision making process that sometimes builds on mounting evidence or sometimes catches media by surprise after events or debates — although this would represent a very slow reaction to a debate. There are notable exceptions like the PC’s beating back the resurgent Liberals in 1988 but they are rare.

Often, the final results overshoot the initial wave. Momentum builds and begins to sweep into ridings that most think are not in play. I’ve been involved in dozens of CBC projection meetings where seasoned political reporters say that it is inconceivable that certain ridings and personalities are (sic) safe. And they weren’t. Canada is littered with former cabinet ministers who never should have lost. Some examples: Roy Romanow fell to a gas station attendant in her 20s. In the same election, the CBC did not put a mobile in Grant Devine’s riding in order to save money because his Tories could not possibly win...

The numbers don’t lie. On today’s numbers (if they hold), the NDP would be competitive in more than 20 ridings, not the two to four people speculate about.

Many say that without a ground game, it will be hard to take the ridings that are within reach. Ground game is important to identify and pull core and/or unmotivated voters. But voters know how to find polling stations and vote. In a wave where they are motivated, they manage to vote without being pulled by GOTV machines. The best example of this was the Rae Ontario win. At the time, the Ontario ballot did not even specify the party, so voters had to know who the candidates were. But NDP candidates won in ridings that had literally no ground game.

- And Josee Legault echoes the view that the first wave may only be the beginning:

While new polls will confirm, contradict or mitigate the NDP's sudden surge, there's another thing Duceppe must be worried about: that the numbers that came out this week, as much as they might be overestimating NDP support, could end up influencing still more Quebecers to give Jack Layton a try.

- Sam Norris at the Mace projects possible seat distributions, with predicted results of Con 131, NDP 81, and Lib 73.

- Which is why Michael Hollett is right to trumpet the ability of progressive voters to back what they genuinely want rather than buying the Libs' spin that they don't have a choice:

We’re being told to vote for the Liberals when they haven’t made a compelling case for us to want to do it on their merits. The strategic voting clan only wants us to vote NDP when the Libs are a lock.

I’m just not that cynical, and I don’t believe elections are a math problem. Sometimes results don’t add up, but breakthroughs happen, and real change occasionally takes place.
...
Many Canadians who are newly supporting the NDP this election are energized and galvanizing around the one truly progressive party in this country that they can believe in rather than put up with.

If we spend the last two weeks of this campaign looking for progressive candidates we can trust and not getting hustled into empty choices we might all be surprised to find ourselves waking up to a Canada we can believe in, too, on May 3.

- Susan Riley touches on a point I'll expand on later in pairing a discussion of the NDP's breakthrough with a comment on our ability to decide the outcome of the election:

Most startling is news this week that Jack Layton’s NDP is leading the Bloc Québécois in Quebec (or was at press time), in two polls. Whether this surge is sustainable, or concentrated enough to produce new seats for the NDP, it is a head-turning and hard-won breakthrough. If it persists and spreads, it could change everything.

And it is largely to Jack Layton’s credit. Despite being hobbled, literally, by a hip fracture, and still recovering from his recent bout with prostate cancer, the NDP leader has campaigned with increasing vigour and more optimism than any of his rivals.
...
(T)oo much ink, time and breath has been wasted on strategic, or academic, or marginal issues — from coalition speculation, to mini-scandals, to seat projections, to “trust.”

Campaigns and media alike have nimbly avoided more pressing concerns like how we get out of Libya, soaring gasoline prices, the return of inflation, the cost and safety of nuclear energy, or the need for affordable prescription drugs — although these issues come up at rallies.

Maybe the silence is a confession of impotence.

Still, it isn’t too late for voters to take back the election: to ignore the trivial obsessions of the media, the fleeting judgments of polls and those cascading, self-cancelling attack ads.

- And finally, given Stephen Harper's track record in issuing flat denials, does his response to Dimitri Soudas' alleged political interference in the Montreal Port Authority make it more or less likely that Soudas actually did interfere?

A growing movement

In case anybody was under the misapprehension that the NDP's growth was limited to Quebec, we now have our first poll showing the NDP alone in second place across Canada - in both voting intentions and seat projections:

The NDP has made its largest gains in Quebec, with an astonishing surge past the Bloc Quebecois in decided and leaning voter support, but the party has also moved up in British Columbia, and Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where a rise in support can turn into new House of Commons seats for the party.
...
Nationally, the survey gave the Conservative Party support from 36 per cent of decided and leaning voters, 25 per cent for the NDP, 23 per cent for the Liberal party, and six per cent each for the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. A separate Forum Research analysis, based partly on ridings won and lost in the 2008 election, suggest the survey results would give the Conservatives 149 of the 308 Commons seats if an election were held today, with 71 seats for the NDP, 64 for the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois would have 24 seats.

In other words, all previous strategic-voting scaremongering is now becoming as wrong in fact as it is in principle - both because the NDP is finding itself in the strongest position to challenge the Cons across the country, and because it may have a stronger baseline of expected seats to build from. And the prospects for a major change for the better in Ottawa are growing by the day.