A Parting on the Left...
For the last couple of days, we've been hearing Jack Layton making his case for 'strategic voting,' but in his case, he's asking for all Liberals to 'lend the NDP their votes' this time around. Apparently, Jack doesn't understand how such things work.
Instead of making a case for a rational strategic campaign, where NDPs help Libs where it makes sense and vice versa, he's decided the time is ripe to ask the Liberal supporters to cut their political throats for the NDP. Commit seppuku like good Liberal Samurai, and die.
Never mind that Jack's strategy all but ensures a Conservative majority, where the NDP can dangle and swing in the wind. Now is the time to fire their bolt, and hope to become one of the two top contending parties.
My first federal election vote was cast for an NDP candidate back in 1988. In the end, it counted for bupkis. I've voted Liberal ever since, but I've always remembered that campaign where the slogan "This time, Ed" caught my budding political mind and heart, and I've always maintained a soft spot for the NDP. While later I loathed the Reform party, the Alliance and finally the current iteration of the Conservatives, I have always until recently liked the NDP.
The NDP were always the 'next on my list' party who I wouldn't have failed to vote for had I been in a riding where I felt such a vote would have counted; had circumstances been different, I likely would have revelled living in one of those ridings, especially during the past year.
I think I noticed the change first when I learned that the RCMP investigation into the current Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale's possible leaking of the governments direction on income trusts was in fact triggered by the NDP. While I can't fault them for drawing attention to the possibility of a criminal act, I can fault them for timing; well that's not entirely true, in a machiavellian way I can totally appreciate the stab. Just like helping bring down the government when they did, the move to create even more sound and fury over possible criminal activity on the part of the Liberals must have been an opportunity to juicy to pass up, especially for a party that desperately wants it's shot at the big time. Being a power broker must have whet their appetites.
Was it that calculated a move? We may never know. I'll be interested to see if Ralph Goodale is fully exonerated. I'll be even more interested to see where all this calculated political maneuving and stabbing lands the NDP; I do know the aren't the same party I've always admired, and may not be again until Jack "Stab" Layton has moved on, and the NDP again resemble the party that Ed would lead.
For over a decade the Liberals have enjoyed their supremacy thanks to a divide on the right, but now a parting on the Right is now a parting on the Left; now we wait to see if the NDP and Liberal voters have the sense to come together to limit the power of the resurgeant right-wing in Canada.
Instead of making a case for a rational strategic campaign, where NDPs help Libs where it makes sense and vice versa, he's decided the time is ripe to ask the Liberal supporters to cut their political throats for the NDP. Commit seppuku like good Liberal Samurai, and die.
Never mind that Jack's strategy all but ensures a Conservative majority, where the NDP can dangle and swing in the wind. Now is the time to fire their bolt, and hope to become one of the two top contending parties.
My first federal election vote was cast for an NDP candidate back in 1988. In the end, it counted for bupkis. I've voted Liberal ever since, but I've always remembered that campaign where the slogan "This time, Ed" caught my budding political mind and heart, and I've always maintained a soft spot for the NDP. While later I loathed the Reform party, the Alliance and finally the current iteration of the Conservatives, I have always until recently liked the NDP.
The NDP were always the 'next on my list' party who I wouldn't have failed to vote for had I been in a riding where I felt such a vote would have counted; had circumstances been different, I likely would have revelled living in one of those ridings, especially during the past year.
I think I noticed the change first when I learned that the RCMP investigation into the current Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale's possible leaking of the governments direction on income trusts was in fact triggered by the NDP. While I can't fault them for drawing attention to the possibility of a criminal act, I can fault them for timing; well that's not entirely true, in a machiavellian way I can totally appreciate the stab. Just like helping bring down the government when they did, the move to create even more sound and fury over possible criminal activity on the part of the Liberals must have been an opportunity to juicy to pass up, especially for a party that desperately wants it's shot at the big time. Being a power broker must have whet their appetites.
Was it that calculated a move? We may never know. I'll be interested to see if Ralph Goodale is fully exonerated. I'll be even more interested to see where all this calculated political maneuving and stabbing lands the NDP; I do know the aren't the same party I've always admired, and may not be again until Jack "Stab" Layton has moved on, and the NDP again resemble the party that Ed would lead.
For over a decade the Liberals have enjoyed their supremacy thanks to a divide on the right, but now a parting on the Right is now a parting on the Left; now we wait to see if the NDP and Liberal voters have the sense to come together to limit the power of the resurgeant right-wing in Canada.
posted by Robert at 9:57 PM
5 Comments:
I think Jack does understand. He understands that there are disaffected Liberal supporters who don't wish to vote Conservative and he, rightly, offers them the choice of the NDP.
I fail to see how that is wrong considering if these Liberals who feel betrayed by the party didn't have the NDP as an outlet they would only have the Conservatives as the only other option.
Besides, the NDP do not exist merely to prop up Liberal Minority Governements. They are a viable party that need votes to get seats despite what the Liberals want or need.
Ok, apparently you don't understand either.
I do.
A "stab in the back" theory just doesn't float. It is not the NDP's job to Support the Liberals. Each party looks after their own interest and when it is politically expediant to drop the axe, you do it.
That's politics. It's messy, unfair and oppurtunistic but perfectly normal.
You seem to be under the impression that the Liberals are owed some sort of allegience by the NDP. They do not.
Jack will not ask disaffected Liberals to stay the course. He is fighting for his poltical life too. It's not as desperate as say Martin or Harper either of which will lose their job depending on teh outcome, but he has to get himself a better position.
I mean what exactly would you have the NDP do? Not run for the benifit of the Liberal Party?
Seriously, this was always a danger the Liberals faced by trying to position themselves in the middle. For years it worked against the Conservative parties and the NDP and the Liberals benifited. Now their own positioning alng with the scandals have put them in trouble.
In some ridings that may mean a split vote, but really, when has it been otherwise? Did the NDP not take away "Left" voters from the Liberals before?
The Liberals pissed away their support and Layton is hoping to pick up and use the pieces.
There is nothing sinister or tragic about it. In fact, such a courting keeps the bleed of support from going completely Conservative. Damned if you do damned if you don't.
If anyone is to be blamed for the NDP rising as a threat in some traditional Liberal ridings, it's the Liberals.
I never said Jack and the NDP owed the Liberal anything, did I?
Yes, I think I even give credit where it's due for the pure political reasoning behind the moves.
I just think that the assertion that Liberals should vote en masse for the NDP in an effort to counteract the Conservatives is the second most bizarre appeal by a leader in this election.
What is the first? Stephen Harpers appeal to voters to not worry about giving the CPC a majority, because they won't be able to do much anyway. Who did he think he was kidding?
Of course the NDP should run; but if JL were really concerned about holding the Conservatives to a minority, then he might back the idea of strategic voting, which goes both ways... yes, it does involve Liberals changing their vote to ridings where the race is between the NDP and the Conservatives.
If that were the case in my riding, I would have voted NDP.
Instead, Jack Layton is probably focused on the $1.75 they'll get for each vote; don't get me wrong, I won't fault them for that.
Oh well. The parting on the Left is here; could spell a decade or more of Conservative rule.
Maybe the Liberals should shift a little more to the right...
"Instead, Jack Layton is probably focused on the $1.75 they'll get for each vote; don't get me wrong, I won't fault them for that."
Excuse me, but exactly what do you think the Liberals have been focussing on? Their party is over $30 million in debt thanks to the preposterous profligacy of the two Martin campaigns plus the Liberal Party's historic failure to find a substantial individual donor base. They have relied on business money to finance the party. That is now prohibited thanks to Chretien's amendments to the Act.
The only way the Liberals can even service their debt and maintain minimal peacetime office operations is with the $1.75 in government rebates. Their chances of paying down their debt are basically zero, unless and until they get some actual supporters, ... you know, people who actually believe in their cause and are willing to back it up, instead of just riding a wave that's financed by sugar daddies in corporate offices, plus some of the usual graft and patronage, which of course, is now gone along with the corporate loot.
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