Toronto Star: NDP strategy of attacking Liberals not working.

Scott,
You stated in your blog that "Their advisers are quoted in the papers as not wanting to support a H of C committee inquiry into the Cadman bribery allegations because rather then investigate an issue that could prove extremely damaging to the government, they’d rather not give Dion and the Liberals a solid issue to run on."  Do you have a reference for that?  It was my understanding that the official line from the NDP is that this is a criminal matter, and that a committee inquiry wasn’t really necessary/useful to determine if something actually happened.

As an NDP supporter, I personally feel that the NDP goes after the Cons far more often than the Libs (although the same can’t be said for many of the NDP bloggers).  I certainly agree with you though that the thinking is that it would be easier to gain votes from the Libs than from the Cons.  Of course, the Liberals have been ‘borrowing’ NDP votes for quite some time, so isn’t turnabout fair play?

I think that the NDP are saying one thing and thinking another.

The new found confidence of Liberals is interesting BUT it certainly DOES NOT absolve them for the sin of propping up the Harper government every bloody day in Parliament.
Sheeeesh!

Alan: Quoted anonymous NDP adviser is up in my update, stating it isnt in the NDP’s best interest to damage the Cons over Cadman, as it helps the Liberals.

I’ve remembered the 88 election well.  Rick Salutin and Gerry Caplan told me in one of my uni lectures that the NDP blew it by letting John Turner get back into the game.

Broadbent spent the first part of the campaign, which was managed by someone from Washington (are we seeing this again), focusing on issues that they had strength on ie. health care, women’s issues.  By doing so, he let Turner ran away with the Free Trade issue and managed to lose major seats in Toronto.  It was tactical voting that gave the NDP a hold of Sask and BC, something they will have to fight hard on against the Greens.

The same thing is happening again.  Layton is in danger of ceding key issues ie. the environment and Tory corruption to the Grits.  Why are the NDP focusing on a re-negotiation of NAFTA and ATM fees as key election platform issues?  How many "beer and popcorn" voters do Layton hope to attract, when Hillary’s failures and Lizzie May’s successes showed that the progressive left voters have moved on. 

I don’t think I need to point out I’m not a Dipper, but just to play devil’s advocate…
…what is the NDP supposed to do? They <i>are</I> attacking Harper - a lot. Check out the NDP website - there’s more there going after Harper than after Dion. Furthermore, <i>the NDP is voting against the government</I>. They aren’t voting against the Liberals - they’re asking the Liberals to help them hold Harper to account. So should it be any wonder that they’re pissed off with Dion for waving the white flag?
Here’s the thing for all the vote-splitting complainers: vote-splitting happens for a reason, most often because mutual disdain for an enemy is not sufficient to overcome policy differences. This is why strategic voting usually fails: lots of voters provincially in the mid-90s disliked Harris, but not so much that they were all willing to vote Liberal to stop him. The same applies to the federal PCs and Alliance versus the Chretien Liberals prior to the merger that created the CPC.
The reason that principled New Democrats can’t stomach backing the Grits to stop Harper is (1) they don’t see enough of a difference between the Grits and Tories to justify it and (2) they’ve been stabbed in the back so many times by the Grits, who say one thing and then do another, or treat NDP support as spare bag of votes they can exploit when they want to, that there is a lot of genuine animosity there. It’s like the old saying goes: if it was strictly about policy, Tories and Dippers would loathe each other more than they loathe the Grits. But because the Tories and Dippers each profess (sometimes honoured more in the breach than in practice, I grant) to commit themselves to a set of principles, even if those are unpopular with some people, and stick to their guns, there is at least a certain level of grudging respect afforded between the CPC and the NDP.
Tactically, it also makes no sense for the NDP to frame Harper as a maniac - because they know that if voters are too spooked, they will rally to the Liberals as the only viable alternative. This is why they’ve constantly referred to the Harper agenda as "wrong" for Canada, but not "scary". They want voters who are annoyed with Harper, not scared of him. And by lumping the Grits in with Harper - an opportunity which has presented itself because of Dion’s repeated rollovers - they kill two birds with one stone.
So on it’s face, this strategy makes sense. So why hasn’t it worked? Well first, they have the Greens eating into their "vote parking lot" constituency, that 5%-and-slowly-increasing segment of the population, which isn’t ideological but its just disillusioned with the "establishment" parties - the Tories and Grits - and so votes for the next best alternative. Second, <i>their policies still suck</I> - but I don’t know why this is a surprise to them. They’ve lost something like 23 elections in a row. Finally - and this is the real wake-up call for every opposition party - <i>not that many people are that upset with the Harper government</I>. Sure, somewhere in the range of 60 to 65% of the country won’t vote for him. But they still don’t think he’s such a grave risk that they’re willing to throw their lot behind a single, anyone-but-Harper movement.
And of course, we can always leave it to the <i>Toronto Star</I> to plead with the NDP not to attack their precious pet Liberal Party.

Really, Scott? Kevvyd? You don’t see Liberals attacking the NDP at least as much as the reverse? (Right here, for instance?) You see no irony that "NDP wrongly attacks Libs" has become the dominant Liberal attack on the NDP? Never mind that Dion is the one making Parliament debate twilight zone motions condemning the NDP. I think this Liberal caucus needs to be targeted more and protected less. Not to "win votes" for anyone else. But to shame these weak MPs into acting — now and as a precedent for next time.  On this note, though I’m a Dipper, I credit many Libloggers for demanding better of late. You’re made of better stuff than your federal caucus. Because the bottom line is that Dion has been rubber-stamping Harper’s central goals. More war in Afghanistan. A frozen environment file. Monster tax cuts that gut our capacity to invest in social programs. These changes will resonate for decades, constraining whoever forms government after the election that Dion is endlessly "feeling out." 

Kevvyd: Yes, Harper’s an easy target. And Greg Weston’s "anonymous sources" aside, I see Layton going after Harper hard. But Dion’s crew promised to oppose Harper’s goals too — and if anything, I think progressives should be more pointed about shaming those Liberal MPs into doing their jobs and stopping the free flow of Harper’s agenda. 

When the NDP ignores the Cons and goes after the Liberals more often then not,  and its bloggers have spent even way more time the past 2 years attacking Liberals , it was unrealistic not to expect the chickens will occasionally come home to roost when that strategy fails to pay off.

Liberals: complain loudly about the government, then refuse to vote against it.

NDP: complain loudly about the government, and constantly vote against it.

I fail to see what the NDP is doing wrong in terms of its actions. Substantively, they are doing everything right, like, you know, behaving like an actual opposition.The little narrative, Scott, that you and others are trying to peddle is that the NDP is somehow being punished by voters for attacking the Liberals, which is nonsense. It’s entirely possible that the NDP’s failure to earn votes is due to other factors - namely, having extremist policies, and having its "anti-establishment" mantle stolen from it by the Green Party.
At any rate, it’s a sad day when the best the Liberals can do to deflect from their own worries is point out how pitifully the NDP is doing.

Sean,

Not in Sask.  Don’t think the Greens’ libertarian economics do well in that province.

In 2004 the combined support the two conservative parties in BC dropped more than 21 points and the Liberals share of the popular vote went up only slightly (27.7 vs. 28.57). So where did that support go. Most of it went to the NDP. At the same time as Alliance/new Conservative Party lost its status as a Western protest party the Federal NDP partly regained its status as one stopped being weighed down by its provincial brethren. As a result, for the first time since the 1988 election Federal voters returned to the NDP in droves. That is just one reason why Jack Layton’s Ontariocentric attack the Liberals strategy is so hopelessly misconceived. The Grits and NDP are not battling for the same voter in most of BC. The Conservatives and NDP are.

When questioned about their attack the Liberals first strategy, the NDP retort is always to say that they vote against the government.  The thing is this meaning nothing at all.  So long as the Liberals are abstaining, it does not matter a lick how the NDP votes.  What matters far more is what they say in public and what they do in committee and it clear to everyone that they focusing on the Liberals and not the Conservatives — just ask to the party strategists.   

Another blogger got me looking into Layton’s attacks on the Liberals, and I noticed that Layton  doesn’t just attack Liberal MPs, he actually slurs liberals, per se (such as in the NDP slogan "liberals don’t stand for anything" used in the US to mean anyone right of the Republicans).  He also  uses right-wing venues, such as the National Post (where he once shared a page with Conrad Black and David Frum) or Stephen Taylors blog (where he started by saying he would rather talk to a conservative than a liberal).

I don’t think Layton’s slurs on Liberals are just aimed at trying to shift left-leaning Liberal votes, he also seems to be trying to help Harper.  And in more ways than simply blocking the Cadman affair from being investigated. 

Observant, I would distinquish between where votes go and party leaders attacking each other. 

Greens do attract Conservative votes too, although probably not as many as Liberal and NDP votes combined.  Some people claim the NDP didn’t really try in these by-elections, so their votes may have been reduced for that reason.  If so, it would be difficult to make any general statements about leakage to the Green party. 

The main attacks on the NDP from the Liberals and Greens are the claims that the NDP spends too much time attacking Liberals and should focus more on Harper.  I agree with that statement, although the NDP will see it differently.  Is this the "attack" on the NDP you were referring to, or something else?

Shorter Shorter SHORTER NDP bloggers:

"We want to do what Reform did. It won’t work. Crap."