Why Would Anyone Vote...Liberal?!

Last week I wrote a rather extreme article suggesting that no one should vote NDP in this election, on the view that if you were conservative you would vote Tory, and if you were progressive and concerned about a Tory government, you really should vote strategically for the Liberals. Voting NDP would split the progressive vote, and would likely ensure a Conservative government, possibly even a majority one at that. A week is a long time in politics, as the saying goes. Now the NDP have blown by the Liberals in several polls, and so many could mockingly ask why anyone would vote Liberal - the same strategic calculus I advanced in my piece last week would suggest that progressive voters not wanting a Conservative government ought to vote NDP given the current numbers.

Perhaps. On the purely strategic argument, this may be true enough. But even half-a-week is a long time in politics. And polls can be soft - remember Truman and Dewey? This is not entirely unrelated to the strategic voting considerations. Because one has to question whether the NDP is ready for government, and whether that question is going to increasingly dawn on voters as election day looms. Ultimately, that is the test - when I argued for strategic voting for the Liberals, it was on the premise that the Liberals could not only plausibly win an election, but that they could form a better government than the Conservatives. That premise does not hold true for the NDP. Jack Layton and his party may have served an important role in opposition, and might even preform wonderfully as the official opposition - but the party simply does not have the bench strength, or frankly a set of realistic policies in hand, to form a government. And that should be a fundamental consideration on voting day.

Back in the 80s Eddie Murphy used to joke in a stand-up routine that one day liberal Americans would elect Jesse Jackson as President by mistake. People would vote for him to assuage their white guilt, never expecting him to win, only to wake up the day after to learn that he had won. There was an aspect of that scenario when Bob Rae and the Ontario NDP won the provincial election in 1990. Bob was popular, and many people voted for the NDP out of protest against Liberal arrogance and perceived corruption, but the NDP was not expected to win - until everyone woke up the next day and discovered that it had. And then what? It didn't have the experience or the bench to govern effectively. Bob Rae himself was a good politician then, but he did not have the depth of experiecne in his cabinet, or a party that could escape the entanglements of its earlier unrealistic policy positions. When he diverted from his party's ideology, he faced revolt. His government preformed woefully, and the provincial NDP has been in the wilderness ever since. It is of course that legacy that largely prevented Rae from assuming leadership of the Federal Liberal Party, and no doubt many Liberals are wondering today how things might look if Bob was at the helm now.

The same can be said for Jack Layton today - popular, the most charismatic of the leaders in the race, and smart enough. But who else is there in the party? Start to figure out what the NDP cabinet would look like. Think through some of the party's platforms on the assumption that they would be actually implemented as government policy and not just election rhetoric. Some of its economic positions are simply untenable. Look past the media buzz around Layton, and you do not see a government in waiting. And when push comes to shove on election day, the bottom may well drop out of the NDP support for that very reason.

The question is, where is the support going to go? Back to the Bloc in Quebec? Largely to the Conservatives in Ontario? The Globe & Mail today, quailing at even the mere thought of an NDP government, yesterday endorsed Harper and the Conservatives. It did so notwithstanding its recognition that Harper has contributed to the debasement of Canadian democracy, and the absence of any meaningful policy debate in this campaign. On the other hand, Andrew Coyne in MacLeans endorsed the Liberals precisely because the Conservatives have done so much violence to Canadian democratic values, and because the NDP is simply not up to the task of governing.

So notwithstanding the polling numbers, and my arguments for strategic voting, I do not ask "why would anyone vote Liberal?", or endorse the NDP for progressive votes. On the contrary, if one dreads what a Conservative majority might do, or even fears the message that would be sent by re-elecing a Tory minority - effectively shrugging our collective shoulders at the erosion of our democratic institutions and the injury to our fundamental value system - then one should still vote Liberal. Iggy may not have unfurled much in the way of a grand vision, or inspired much passion in this campaign, but the Liberals as a party have the competence and the depth to govern. It is a party that still reflects reasonable and realistic economic policy on the one hand, while on the other a return to core Canadian values such as respect for the rule of law, compassion in social policy-making, and being an independent honest-broker on the world stage. - CM.