No to 308

308 seems to be code for the Liberals should pander to the God, Gays and Gun crowd. Those who advocate such a policy seem to believe that such a strategy would allow the party to become more competitive in rural ridings and would not make the Liberals any the less effective in urban areas, particularly the big three. They are wrong on both accounts. The Liberals are not going to make up 50 point deficits in rural ridings West of Ontario. In Alberta, there was but one riding outside Calgary and Edmonton where the Liberals were within less then 60 points of a Conservative candidate! As for the cities, if the Liberals truly were the Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver plus the Maritimes party they would be much better shape. The truth is they were crushed in suburban Vancouver, lost seats in the 905 and won one but one seat off the Island of Montreal. I need not explain what happened in Quebec over the course of the last 5 years, but Vancouver needs some explaining. The Liberals saw their support in the Lower mainland ridings go up in 2006 even as they lost 6% nationally. The reason for the Liberal surge was that the Liberals were able to use the SSM issue to their advantage. Harper was deemed too socially conservative by many Vancouverites. All of that changed in 2008. Dion’s horrible English, his politically disastrous Green Shift, his lack of answer to Harper’s get tough on crime policies and his decision not to focus on any issue that might anger the social cons cost the Liberals dearly in Vancouver.

Given the economic downturn and a candidate who is fluent in English, the Liberals should be able roll back some of Conservative gains in suburban Vancouver. However, the next Liberal leader needs to put social issues back on the table if the Liberals and at the same time come up with an answer to Harper’s get tough on crime policies. As most of you know, I think a promise to legalize marijuana, would help the Liberals on both accounts. What is true of Vancouver is doubly true for Montreal. As the last election showed, the Conservatives Achilles heel in Quebec is that they are the wrong side of Quebecers when it comes to social issues. However, the Liberals will not be able to exploit that weakness unless they put social issues on the agenda. Needless to say, it would also work when it comes to Toronto.

Saddle Harper with the Sara Palins of the world, and the Liberals will win the cities, particularly the major cities. If they win the cities, they will win the country.

There is virtually no downside. So what if they loose Crowfoot by 80 points instead of 78 like they did last time.

308 and the 50 State Plan; Some Comparisons

Comparing ridings to states is comparing apples to oranges. We should be talking about a 10 province strategy to be consistent.

There are three major parties in Canada and not two. Now, I know this does not mesh with some people’s belief that the left right spectrum drives voting patterns, but historically, Western rural voters swing between the NDP and the conservative party de jour. Moreover, there are slew of working class neighborhoods (e.g., Surrey North, Nanaimo Cowichan) were voters do the same.

The Democrats garnered 42% in the South in 2004. The Liberals garnered 16.5% in the West in 2008. Outside of Vancouver, Victoria, and the southern part of Winnipeg there is no support for the Liberals to speak of. It is one thing to target every region of the country when you are flush with cash and have huge base of support in absolute numbers to work with; it is quite another when you are fighting it out with the Green party for 4th place outside of the urban centers. The Greens beat the Liberals in 8 seats in BC, 10 in Alberta, 2 in Saskatchewan and 1 in Manitoba. I dare say there was not a county that Nader outpolled Kerry.

308 Misguided

The Liberals are not going to win by trying to emulate the Democrats 50 strategy. It is one thing to try to build on a beach head that is anywhere from 30 to 45% of the vote and quite another to build something when you take 5 to 15% of the vote. Furthermore, there are also 3 major parties in Canada and not two. If support for the Conservatives goes down in rural Canada, the NDP gains. The reverse is also true.

Another misconception is that Obama won red states. It is more accurate to say that the changing face of Virginia, for example, has transformed the state from a Red state into a swing state. Obama won because the Republicans were crushed in ever major city outside of the South and youth showed up and voted for him by a margin of 2 to 1.

Liberals need to stop fooling themselves. A Liberal minority runs through suburban Vancouver, the 905, and Quebec. The Liberals, I am looking at you Mr. Ignatieff, will not win by appealing to gun owners in Wild Rose. The Liberals made inroads in Vancouver in 2006 because social issues mattered in that election and the Conservatives lost Quebec in 2008 because they were on the wrong side of Quebec when it came to social policy. The Liberals need to become more socially liberal; they do not need to pander to the pro bazooka crowd.

Obama and the Prospect of Legalizing Marijuana

The strongest argument against legalization of marijuana is that the Americans would fly off the rails. However, a Democratic president will soon be taking power and the Democratic base is open to such an idea. Moreover, Obama’s hands are tied in ways another leader hands would not be. The war and drugs, especially with regard to marijuana, has had a profound impact on the African American community in the States. If Obama was to toe the standard line in the face of Canada promising to end the war on drugs, he would be in a world of hurt politically. The African American community would not, of course, abandon him, but they would be unhappy and their unhappiness would have the potential to throw his whole presidency out of whack politically. His whole message of being the candidate of change would be called into question.
If the Liberals were to draw out how Obama’s message of change is not consistent with a hard line on marijuana, they should be able to tie Obama hands. As for any noise the Republicans might make, the more noise they make the better it would be for the Liberals. Let Republicans scream their opposition from the rooftops.

After all, Harper has been trying to create distance between himself and his social conservative base and the Bush administration ever since he became Prime Minster. If the Liberals promised to legalize marijuana, not only would Harper find himself in lock step Palin, John Walters, Fox news, the Washington Times, James Dobson, and the faculty at Bob Jones University and rest of the Republican apparatus that Canadians love to hate, but so too would Campaign for Life, Charles McVety and Real Women line up behind him. The Liberals could play the nationalist card and social conservative card all at once. The thought of being able to strike a fatal blow the US war on drugs will make Canadians a little giddy. If that was not enough, on the flip side of things, a legion of rock stars, intellectuals, movie stars, and high brow magazines, such as the New Yorker will line up behind the Liberals. John Stewart would eat such a proposal up. Canada would again be "cool".

Finally, such a promise would tear the Right apart. Libertarians and social conservatives would be at each other's throats and the National Post and great swaths of the Sun Media chain will side with the Liberals on this one! The National Post, Canada's flag ship of Canadian conservativism, has repeatedly called on marijuana to be legalized and has heaped scorn on the Conservative position.

Harper as Dr. Frankenstein

American “conservatism” today is largely a byproduct of Republican talking points and campaign tactics and strategy. Elitist liberals are effeminate snobs who are disconnected from reality; by contrast conservatives are real and unburdened by facts. It is talking points such as this that are conservatism’s first principles and not anything that Burke or even William F. Buckley wrote. In this sense the Republican party is literally writing dissent out of the script of what it means to be conservative. Something similar is happening to Canadian conservatism under Harper. Harper is redefining what it means to be a conservative and he is doing so by borrowing liberally from the Republican party. Indeed, it is hard to find a Conservative talking point or tactic that has not been borrowed from the Republicans. Republicans warned about “cutting and running”; Conservatives followed suite. The Republicans equated a government surplus as over-taxation; the Conservatives followed suite. The Republicans portrayed Kerry as effeminate elitist snob; the Conservatives did the same with Dion. The Republicans baited Michael Dukakis and kept him off message by telling out right lies about him; the Conservatives did the same with Dion and Dion’s Green Shift. The Bushies were all about message control; so is Harper.

This is not an entirely academic exercise. Rhetorical crap has consequences. Just look at Bush. Just look at what might have happened had McCain been elected and then died in office. Bush and Palin are not conservatives in any traditional sense. However their success within the Republican Party can only be accounted for by saying that each is an outgrowth of Republican rhetorical crap. Bush and Palin’s only redeeming features are that they fit the stereotype. Bush and Palin are not the authors of the Republicans decline. The Republican Party has played Frankenstein and Bush and Palin are their monsters. Harper also fancies himself a Dr. Frankenstein. The willingness of Conservatives to stomp on informed opinion and validate idiocy has the potential to cause Canada great harm.

Liberals need to be more than Stephen Harper on Prozac

Stephen Harper once said that Alliance party needed to be more than “Paul Martin in a hurry”. The Liberal party needs to realize that it needs to be more than Stephen Harper on Prozac and that is all it has been for a very long time. Despite all the talk in the media about Dion having moved the party to the left, the central plank in the Liberal platform was reducing income taxes and replacing it with a regressive tax. The Federal Liberal platform hardly differs at all from the one Gordon Campbell will be running on in May! Now granted the makings of “universal” daycare plan was in place when Martin lost in 2006, but in terms of implementation since 1993 the Liberals have only cut taxes and social spending. They have not implemented a major entitlement program since the 1960s. What has confused people is that the Liberals have failed miserably when it comes to standing up to “special interests”. Whether it be the Kelowna Accord, the Atlantic Accord, asymmetrical federalism, and Liberal party affirmative action, the Liberals have come to resemble at best a new social movement and provincial clearing house and at worst their servant.

The belief that Liberal party have moved left reinforces my belief that the Liberals need to reverse their traditional modus operandi. Instead of talking left – new left -- and governing right, they need to talk right and govern left. They can start by sending the right message to the public by cleaning up their own house. The core of liberalism as an ideology is universality; special provisions inevitably damage the party’s brand. Abolish the Women and Aboriginal People’s commissions, revamp the delegate selection process or dump it altogether and stop insisting on a quota of women candidates. The Liberals need simplify and de-clutter their message. Stop talking about women, aboriginals, Quebecers, rural Canadians, “cities” in speeches and talking points that reach a broad audience and get back to talking about just “Canadians”. Micro messaging turns off more voters than it attracts.

The Liberals also need to stop trying to minimize the differences between themselves and the Conservatives. When it comes to Quebec, taxes and most recently crime the Liberal party has been chasing after the Conservative party for years. Not only is this a daft strategy short term, long term it has been disastrous. These issues can not be “neutralized” in the way that Afghanistan was. Trying to match the Conservatives tax cut for tax, for example only serves to focus all the attention on an issue that the Conservatives will win on every single time.

The flip side of trying to minimize the differences between themselves and the Conservatives and not running on a truly alternative vision is that the Liberals have proclaimed themselves to be the champions of the status quo. Needless to say, this is an odd position for an ostensively liberal party to take. However, with Harper having been in power for 2 plus years now and the Bush regime thankfully at an end, the days of railing against the Conservatives “hidden agenda” are over.

The Liberals need to embrace universality again and I do not mean just the rhetoric. The Liberals need to promise to end the war on drugs instead of sitting back and letting the Conservatives box their ears in with their get tough on crime agenda. Finally the Liberals need to be confident that social liberalism and universal social programs are a better sell in Quebec than being called a “nation” and having a seat – or not -- at unesco.

Liberals and New Media; Some Brief Thoughts

Given their precarious financial situation, the Liberals need to take advantage of new media. The problem is they do not know how to do it. The good news is that they are not alone. The major parties seem to see new media as just another means by which to disseminate current talking points and boiler plate. The model is top down. For blogs to be any use to the party, the party should be thinking bottom up. This is what the Liberals should aim for.

The totality of interactions on self identified Liberal blogs produces and refines some talking points.

Lib blogs serves de facto war room, albeit a secondary one.

Lib blogs serves as means of spreading information that the MSM refuses to pick up

Lib blogs serves as means of extending the news cycle of issue that damaging to the Conservatives

Of course, for any of this to happen Lib blogs has to grow substantially larger. The number of regular posters is puny. The $64,000 question is to how to foster such development.

The potential of online video as means hitting the opposition over the head should be obvious by now and the Liberals seem to have caught on. What seems to escaped the party’s attention is how to use online video as means of reaching voters in a positive way. No one is going to watch boiler plate. No one cares whether Dion has a web journal. No one is going to watch how Liberals are going to be make Canada “a fairer, Greener”, place. If you want to catch people’s attention (a la what Obama was able to achieve on his essay on race), you have to talk up to them and not talk down. Online video should be seen as means of demonstrating your leader or team’s knowledge and smarts and not necessarily as means of furthering some policy end. You Tube is made for someone like Ignatieff.

Leadership Convention: I hope the field is small

I hope the Liberals have no more than 5 leadership hopefuls and that all are fluently bilingual.

Leadership Convention has to be held Before May

There is a lot of talk of turning the Liberal policy convention into a leadership convention. This is a terrible idea. The problems with the Liberal party go far beyond leadership and the party can ill afford to delay a policy convention or turn it into a complete afterthought. That said, if the policy convention is to be held at the beginning of May and mean something, the Liberal leadership contest has to be held even earlier. Now there are some who claim that the party can ill-afford to have the leadership convention in March or April. However, the longer the leadership contest goes the more money it will cost the party in terms of lost donations and the longer the party will remain adrift. The added bonus is that by having the leadership and policy conventions a month or so apart the Liberals should be able to dominate the political agenda. The economic downturn will tie Harper’s hands.

Harper Cabinet: Tokenism on Steroids

I see the Conservatives are adopting some of the Liberal's worst habits. This cabinet is as bloated as Paul Martin’s and same attention to tokenism is there. There is no reason to keep Oda in cabinet, for example, and the decision to put Leona Aglukkag in charge of Health is politics at its worst. Andrew Coyne was spot on. It sure would be nice if cabinet was based on, oh, merit instead of such things as regional representation, ethnicity and sex. The way Canada selects cabinet ministers bares more of a resemblance to how a Benetton ad is cast then the process by which it is done in other Western countries.

Fortunately for the country, but unfortunately for the Liberals, social conservative fruit cake Alice Wong did not make the grade. For those that do not know, she is right up there with Rob Anders and Cheryl Gallant. The same can be said of that intellectual giant Donna Cadman.

Brossard-La Prairie: Something smells

I am surprised that no one has commented on this, but I am sorry something went on in Brossard-La Prairie that needs to be looked into further.

563 rejected ballots

212 vote swing on the recount

How The Conservatives Successfully Branded Dion as a Wimp

Dion apologists are busy trotting out the line that Conservatives would have had just an easy a time defining Ignatieff or Rae. Who are they kidding? Sure with Rae there is a lot to work with, but Ignatieff did not give them much. What were they going to say? It is not as if they were going to claim that Ignatieff was as big a backer of the Iraq war as Stephen Harper. More importantly both would have been able to fight back and that matters. One reason that Conservatives were successful in defining Dion is, as I said, simple. His English is not good. People did not understand him or have to patience to listen to him and so turned to the Conservative translation instead.

Moreover, everything the Dion said and did fit perfectly with the Conservative caricature of him. They played him like a fiddle. The Conservatives painted Dion as an indecisive wimp. The worst thing Dion could do once the Conservatives started making everything into a confidence motion was to talk tough and then abstain. That is what a wimp would do. The worst thing Dion and Liberals could have done when the Conservatives started playing bully boy was to get high and mighty and self righteous, but that is exactly what the Liberals did every single time. (I am starting to think that the popping puffin was no gaffe but was rather part of deliberate attempt to emasculate Dion by having the media play it ad nauseum and having Dion and the Liberals get all huffy about it.) The way to handle Conservative bullying is to roll your eyes and mock them. Think of the fun Trudeau would have had with an – intellectual-- lightweight like Peter Van Loan. Tell John Baird that he looks like he is going to stroke and that putting Harper in sweater is about as strange a sight as Paris Hilton carrying around a dressed up pit bull instead of one of those puntable breeds. Do not demand an apology. An apology is what a wimp would ask for.

Then there is election itself. Dion said he was going to take the highroad and like any wimp he did. He wanted to show that if he could not beat Harper in the trenches at least he would show that he held the moral high ground. So instead of doing the smart thing and rolling out one hard hitting negative ad after another, Dion gave us the odd negative ad and a lot of sunshine, butterflies, flags and happy people. In other words, the Liberals rolled out just the kind of useless ads wimps would roll out.

What happened in the English debate was even worse. Dion needed to have some zingers reader. He needed to be brief and not verbose. He needed to hit Harper hard, the way big sister Elizabeth May did. Instead, Dion was hopelessly cheerful when not filled with righteous indignation. His accent was strong throughout, revealing why a bully might have taken notice of him in the first place. I thought I was watching a Conservative ad every time he spoke and “Do you think it is easy to make priorities?” stuck in my head the rest of the night.

So it is only fitting that Dion signs off by talking about the successful smear campaign against him and promising that he will do everything in his power to make to sure this does not happen to next Liberal leader. That is exactly what a wimp would do. But, fear not Stephane. The next leader won’t be a wimp.

Defining Dion: Why it worked

The Conservative were successfully able to define Dion for one simple reason. Dion’s English was not good enough and his accent very strong. Half of Dion’s sound bits were incomprehensible even to people whose first language was English. As for people who struggle with English, many would not have gotten a word he said. ESL students have a terrible time with accents and Dion’s was particularly pronounced. His inability to communicate turned him into a blank slate on which the Conservatives could write anything they pleased. The Liberal support in English Canada went down nearly 950,000 as a result. The Conservatives tried to pull the same thing off in Quebec, but Dion speaks French. The Liberal vote went up 94,000 there. The next Liberal leader must be able to speak both official languages flawlessly. That rules everyone from the last leadership convention out except for Rae and Ignatieff. Quebec will be key next election. Having a leader who speaks better French then Harper gives the Liberals the advantage there.

Dion Going but alas Not Gone

The good news is that Dion is leaving. The bad news is he is not gone yet. Another 6 months of near incomprehensible sound bits and tactical errors awaits us. I am giddy with excitement. At least the leadership race will generate publicity and the candidates will be able to take some shots at Harper.

It is Simple; Canadians Do not like Dion

Dionistas, as Mound of sound refers to them, seem not have heard of Occam's razor. Shaving away the sometimes paranoid stab in the back conspiracy theories, the most plausible explanation for why the Liberal vote was down 944,350 outside of Quebec is also the simplest and most straightforward. Canadians do not like Dion or his policies, particularly his green shift.
The sooner Dion goes, the better.

The Liberals can not afford to move to “the Center”

Sometimes when people talk about the Liberals needing to move to the center what they mean to this. The Liberals need to pander to the god gays and guns crowd to again seize power. I could not imagine a worse approach and one that would fatally damage the Liberal brand. The Liberal brand really shines through when the party is aggressively pursuing socially liberal policies. It was certainly true in 1968 and it was true in 2003. If for no other reason than who we are is wrapped up in who we are not, viz., not Americans and America is a conservative nation, Canadians want a “cool” Liberal party. Quebecers want a “cool” Liberal party. They do not want a Tim Horton’s coffee drinking Michael Ignatieff trying to be one of them. Besides the research is abundantly clear on this; lower income voters give much bigger weight to economic issues than to social ones. It is the well to do, that care most about social issues and Canada’s well to do are socially liberal.

As for Canadians outside of major centers, if you want to make headway with that group you promise to improve their economic lot. The Torries have done this. They promise them tax cuts every election and have more or less cornered the market in that regard. The Liberals need to promise to reduce expenses in a way the population can get their head around and that is by again embracing universality. People do not understand or care about means tested policies and this is all the Liberals have offered up for decades now. You can not strengthen your brand by proposing a means tested policy. Furthermore, the population knows that a means tested policy is politically vulnerable and is likely to be chopped in hard times or in Tory times. However if you think raising taxes is a hard see just try cutting a universal social program. A popular universal social programs quickly become part of what it means to be Canadian and real boon to the party that introduced it.

Dion's Kool-Aid drinking Bloogging Friends

I hate to be so bellicose, but my god Lib bloggers need get some perspective when it comes to Dion. This was not some minor hiccup on the road to a majority, this was arguably the worst showing in the party’s history and it was entirely predictable.

The Liberal vote was down by 849,425.

The Liberal vote was down 944,350 outside of Quebec. This is the biggest drop in history of the party. Yet the delusional Dion supports still want to maintain that Dion’s English and manner of speaking are fine. Christ.

The Liberal share of the popular vote was the worst in party history

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 8.3% in BC

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 3.94% in Alberta and at 11.36 this was the party’s worst ever showing in Alberta

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 7.55 % in Saskatchewan and at 14.85 this was the party’s worst ever showing in the province.

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 6.87% in Manitoba and at 19.13 this was the party’s worst ever showing in Manitoba

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 6.11% in Ontario

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 7.33% in Nova Scotia and this was the party’s second worst showing there.

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 4.33% in PEI.

The Liberal share of the popular vote was down 6.81% in New Brunswick.

BC and the Dion Disaster

While the Liberal share of the popular vote in other provinces has gone up and down over the years, the Liberal share of the popular vote in BC remained steady between 1993 to 2006 at between 27.6% to 28.8%. That all changed for the worse with Dion. The Liberal share of the popular vote in BC collapsed and the Liberals finished with 19% of the vote in 2008. The sooner Dion leaves, the better for the Liberals in BC. Oh yeah, he can take Mark Marissen with him.

There are at least 849,425 reasons to Dump Dion

The “good” news is that the number of people that voted for Harper was down even though his share of the popular vote went up. In 2006 5,374,071 Canadians voted for the Conservatives. In 2008 that number went down 168,737. Now here is the bad news for Liberals. Not only was the Liberal share of the popular vote at a historic low, the number of Canadians that voted Liberal was the lowest since 1984. And if you throw out 1984, you have to go back to 1965 to see so few ballots cast for the Liberals. The Liberal vote went down by 849,425. Between 2004 and 2006, the number of people casting the vote for the Liberals went down by 471,692.

This is this is the second worst election performance for the Liberals in modern era.

Dump Dion

Sharpen Your Knifes

Let us review.

The Liberal share of the popular vote has never been lower. The Liberals where down everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, accept Montreal. They bled votes to the Greens, to NDP, and above all to the Conservatives. Thousands upn thousands of Liberal voters also just stayed home.

The next Liberal leader must be able to speak both French and English flawlessly. Dion Kool aid drinkers can claim that Dion's English was not a big deal, but they are deluding themselves. It was a huge deal.

The next Liberal leader must be willing to play smash mouth politics. Dion’s high road approach left the Liberals high and dry.

The next Liberal leader must renew the Liberal brand that is all but dead. That means he or she must embrace universality and full blooded social liberalism.

Dump Dion