Alberta PC + Wildrose Votes ≠ Victory

It is the confidently stated certainty of right wing Albertans that the NDPs win in 2015 was a PC collapse fluke and will not be repeated.  That a protest vote spiraled, the result wasn't what people expected and it couldn't happen again.

Which rewrites what we all remember, a surging leading NDP from the moment the leaders debate ended, until an election day result that had become a clear certainty for weeks before it happened.

Albertans knew full well exactly what they were doing.

The shred of hope the Albertan right clings to, is the belief that if they could just merge the two right wing parties their combined vote would drive the socialist heathens from the temple and God would be back in his Heaven and 'all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

It's not much of a hope.

There's reasons the right wing movement in Alberta fractured into two different parties, just as it did federally back in the 80s and 90s.  Those reasons, which largely boil down to rising right wing extremism in the North American conservative movement, have not gone away.  They have not been resolved.  They have not eased, to the contrary they are more raw and inflamed than ever.  The conservative movement has become captive to an extremism that is both a reactionary response to massive demographic progressive cultural change and an accelerant for that same change.

Assuming it is even possible that the two parties could merge into one vehicle - by no means a certainty even if Kenny's takeover of the PCs is at this point - that vehicle will be instantly compromised.

The unavoidable bedrock certainty is that either Wildrose voters abandon an entity they consider too moderate or PC voters one that seems too extreme. The only choice is where to take the electoral bullet, in the heart or in the head.

If the PCs and Wildrose merge a big chunk of their own right and moderate wings memberships immediately decamp to either new or existing right wing or moderate parties.  They will be, pardon the imagery, bleeding from both ends.  Wildrose extremism doesn't play in the cities, PC social liberalism, such as it is, is unacceptable to the Wildrose base.  This is the same unyielding iceberg right wing hopes in Alberta are sailing for at top speed that they were in 2015.

Could the NDP lose the next election?  Certainly, anything is possible and this is a diverse province made up of diverse interests.  Is monolithic right wing dominance returning for another generation?  Almost certainly not.  The demographics simply make that impossible.

The NDP is now and forever the progressive voting option for Albertans and a choice they will pick again if not this election than the one after that or the one after that.  Conservatives will come back to power in Alberta some day but likely not until the constantly changing demographics of both urban and rural Alberta blunt the power of the extremists sufficiently to return a moderate conservative option to the fore.

Until then the conservative True Believers are the permanent wall between the movement and power.

Inconvenient democracy

Climenhaga nails one of the things that bugs me most about the Leap Manifesto. It would be impossible to institute its program in a democracy.

Literally impossible. You could not win power on this program and you could not institute this program even if you didn't spring it on the public until after you took power.

Its a program that casually writes off hundreds of thousands of jobs with an airy 'Oh don't worry, we'll provide training in windmill and solar panel maintenance.'

It's a program that would require confiscation, heavy handed federal control of key extraction and manufacturing sectors, tearing up trade and labour deals, revenue share agreements with First Nations and international contracts.  It would make stakeholders who are ideological friends of the theoretical Leap Manifesto enacting government winners and take people who would be expected to be ideological foes and rubbing their faces into the dirt.

You could do this in China. Indeed, some of the macro steps China is taking now that the way they've poisoned themselves is unmissable seem almost the inspiration here.

You could not institute this program in a democracy.

So this document then becomes the mournful song of the proud loser spelling out just how great things would be in defiantly impossible idealism if you fools would just be smart enough to pick him  - or something more sinister.

There is no persuasion in this document, just ingroup self satisfaction or exclusionary scorn for anyone too selfish and short sighted or possibly some kind of racist capitalist CEO lighting his cigars in boardrooms with hundred dollar bills and for WHATEVER REASON, just not willing to do what it takes to save the world.

People who want to take control of a democratic movement's agenda and possibly its leadership itself who ARE NOT interested in persuasion worry me, and they should worry you too.

Something else to remember.

The NDP hashes out its debates and policy differences and schisms right out in the open. We don't hide, we don't run from cameras and we stand by who and what we are revealed to be in public unhidden and uncensored.

The 2015 Wildrose AGM held its policy debates secretly hidden behind closed doors. The media was not allowed, the contents of these secret meetings were hidden and the results issued forth like proclamations from a shrouded politburo.

If you guessed this was to hide embarrassing rantings about lakes of fire, ungenerous remarks about gay and trans and Muslim and refugee and unionized people, nutty conspiracy theories and paranoid venom... Well how insultingly accurate of you.

Some parties have the courage to stand up forthrightly and say this is who we are, warts and all. We may not all agree and some of the things displayed may even be damaging but at least we aren't hiding our true selves.

A word of warning

To any Wildrosers and Conservatives making hay over the Leap Manifesto or planning to, think seriously about some of the resolutions passed at your own conventions and how much you want the public to believe your party or any government it might form would be bound by them.

The NDP has some people who let idealism overpower common sense. Your parties have some supporters who are straight up hate mongers with extreme and bigoted views far outside the Albertan and Canadian mainstream.

If you want to play dueling embarrassing convention resolutions that is not going to go as well as you think.

What a mess

I'm a proud New Democrat and I've always felt more sympathy for the left wing of the party.   I believe the party made a tragic and mindbogglingly stupid decision to run too far to the right during the election.

Mulcair had to go and deserved to lose.

But the vote to study and debate the Leap Manifesto (NOT adopt it, an important distinction you can expect to be roundly ignored in the coming days and weeks.) massively overcompensated and took the party too far left.

In ten days, and I'm sorry shell-shocked Manitoba New Democrats but its true, there will only be one NDP government in Canada. The convention just made its job far more difficult and its chance of reelection in 3 years far more fraught than it would have been.  That's a pragmatic, unambiguous reality that convention goers were warned against explicitly and chose to ignore.

The Leap Manifesto was a masterpiece of high level manipulative communication.  Long sections full of stuff that all progressives can find to agree with but inextricably bound with poison pills in every section couched in rhetoric deliberately designed to force 'If you disagree with this that means you also disagree with THIS' false conclusions.  I've already had one earnest and slightly hysterical young ND tell me that opposing Leap means 'attacking our environmental and indigenous allies'.  Leap and its supporters rhetoric is explicitly designed to result in such nonsense.

The Alberta NDP and its government and its supporters have been left with no choice but to denounce this manifesto and those who support it in harsh and unforgiving turns.  This will be devastating for party unity and I will be shocked if it doesn't result in increased support for following the example of every other party in the country and disconnecting the provincial and federal parties into separate entities.

All of it unnecessary as the market keeps the oil in the ground anyway and the supporters of Leap congratulate themselves on their moral and political correctness and sneer at the considerations required for basic pragmatic governance.

Sigh

My sympathies are usually with the left wing of the party and there's much about Leap that I agree with in principle.

The 'Leave it in the ground' movement is an unforced error damaging to both the provincial and federal party.

Why pick a fight the market is already winning for you?  The oil can't be squeezed out of the sand or pipelines built to ship it at the current price, it would be just barely profitable at twice the price.

OPEC may be finally talking about closing the spigots but Iran has years of sanctions to recover from and will be even more unwilling to follow Saudi lead than usual so an ocean of Iranian oil will be keeping the price lower for quite awhile.

Alberta's NDP government will be improving regulations, promoting renewables and shutting down coal plants in the meantime. 

This is a silly, alienating, unnecessary proposal that looks like an attack on Alberta while the goals of the resolution will largely be achieved by the market anyway.

Question for the day

Question for the day, if Danielle Smith and Jim Prentice hadn't tried their ultimately disastrous little coup-slash-merger and both had gone into the provincial election leading their respective parties would the election result have been different?

Its an article of faith with right wingers that yes, it would. That the scandal hung over the election leading to the dismay that made people vote NDP purely as a protest vote against the government, certainly not because they actually wanted them to WIN.

Progressives believe the result would have been pretty much the same and in one of the few areas of accord Danielle Smith agrees, arguing the election results vindicates the unite the right attempt even if it failed. That she and Prentice had taken a long hard look at polling showing Alberta moving considerably to the left and tried to save Alberta from an NDP victory that happened anyway.

So is there an alternate universe next door where Jim Prentice managed to win and the Wildrose is either the opposition under Danielle Smith or in third party status? Or is Rachel Notley still Premier in the Alberta where Smith and Prentice never attempted their shotgun wedding of Alberta right wingers?

The Alberta NDP outrageously refuse to stop governing just because it makes right wingers unhappy

The CFIB, a far right front group masquerading as a small business federation calls for the Alberta NDP to reverse all of the policies they were elected on because of the downturn.

If we were in a recovery the rationale would be 'cancel your policies so as not to risk the recovery.' If we were in good times their argument would be to 'Cancel all your policies to avoid causing a downturn.' There is NO CIRCUMSTANCE OR CONDITIONS under which they would ever support NDP policies - which mainstream economists would consider straightforward Keynesian stimulus and refusal to protect the well off at the expense of the weakest.

Their objections are not pragmatic, nonpartisan, reality based or any other variation of 'Just the facts ma'am.' that they pretend they are. They are ideological and based on economic theories strongly disputed by the majority of serious economists. The theories that opposed pensions, public health care, infrastructure spending, child labour laws, the very existence of minimum wages or basic labour and environmental standards as tyranny.

These are extreme radicals far outside of the Alberta mainstream being puffed up and supported by a right wing media controlled by corporate interests who benefit directly from such theories being implemented.

Like the angry extremists calling for Albertan's democratic will to be annulled because the election didn't turn out the way they had hoped, they are driven by a profoundly antidemocratic animus to the will of the people.

What to expect

To the rest of Canada, sometime Tuesday afternoon you will hear a ruptured steam-whistle wail with upper register notes of castrated steer coming from the vicinity of Alberta.

Do not be alarmed.

This will merely be the inevitable, carefully rehearsed reaction of the Wildrose, Ezra Levant and the Sun News chain and the owners of the Post Media editorial board to the contents of Alberta's first NDP provincial budget.

Those contents will be uncontroversial, commonsense changes to the tax code, many very similar to the stated plans of the former Progressive Conservative government but with a greater emphasis on shared responsibility and contribution. There will be nods to the stimulant effects of deficit spending on much needed infrastructure projects, a central place for environmental stewardship and support for front line services rather than neglect as they are needed most.

It won't be the communist manifesto. Rachel Notley will not be calling for nationalization, confiscation or declare a worker's paradise. CEOs and oil company executives will not be brought in for public show trials.

Simply a pragmatic progressive budget with pro-growth policies and common sense solutions.

And of course, that's what the shriekers are more afraid of than anything else.

Re-writing History only weeks later

Tom Mulcair says he's staying on as NDP leader but it may not be up to him.

There's a concerted attempt to peg the beginning of the NDPs decline in fortunes to the eruption of the Niqab controversy because that's an honorable and incontestable reason for losing, but our numbers started dropping before it erupted and the Liberals held the same position and manifestly did not suffer because of it.

The real turning point began with the absurd 'No deficits' promise when it became clear the NDP was running to the economic right of the Liberals and allowing them to become the real change alternative. I absolutely REFUSE to let that history be elided as the attempt to do so is clearly intended to short-circuit the necessary debate about the NDPs baffling, economically and politically suicidal lurch to the right.

We arrived at the moment where Canadians finally came to us - and didn't find us where they were looking for us.

Learning from Failed Strategies

Newscaster: And we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere. And to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. - The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Conservatives engaged in a despicable, pandering campaign of dog-whistle xenophobia specifically against Muslims.  This despite the PQ campaign that tried to do the same thing last year resulting in electoral annihilation.

The NDP decided to run a safe, nonthreatening, centrist campaign where the party completely accepted the neoliberal consensus of austerity and deficit hysteria - this despite the fact Canadian voters were aching for change and that a similar campaign to the right of the liberals by the NDP in Ontario last year was a disaster costing the party multiple seats.

The NDP campaign of 2015 was brilliant... when Tony Blair ran it in 1997.

The NDP ran a campaign on the assumption that voters have completely internalized the conservative framing on spending, austerity, deficits and the whole downward trajectory in public spending of the last several decades and will punish anyone who deviates from it.

But the NDP promised balance budgets and lost more than half their seats, the Liberals promised multiple deficits to finance reinvestment in Canada's infrastructure and won a landslide.

Times have changed.

But political strategists like generals are always fighting the last war.

The Pendulum Swing

There seems to be a resurgence for the left in electoral politics.  Bernie Sanders is drawing huge crowds and worrying establishment Democrats and in the UK Jeremy Corbyn, originally a protest nomination for Labour party leadership and very much a UK equivalent of Sanders is causing alarm among Blairite Labour Party elites by giving every sign that he might be about to win.

And of course here in Canada the so called center left Liberals are a distant third while the left wing NDP is a credible contender for government itself.

The so called center left parties like Canada's Liberals internalized the message post Reagan that the only alternative was neoliberal economics and politics run for the benefit of the few and the wealthy with at best, some token nobelese oblige thrown to the poor as their policies swelled their ranks.  Emboldened, the political right charged ever further down the field to the kind of far right extremism that conservatives once purged from their ranks dragging the hapless moderate middle with them.

Now Canadian Liberals, Wall Street Democrats and Blairite Labour Party grandees all watch in shock and fury as the progressives they have repeatedly used, abused, lied to and disrespected abandon them in droves.  'Such people are unelectable!' they howl 'You are throwing power to the far right!' - who they share almost all the same policies with - but such alarmist rhetoric is based on outdated views of the electorate at large.

In the US the public at large elected a black man named Barack Hussein Obama as President in 2008 and re-elected him four years later and will elect any of the Democrats currently vying for the nomination Clinton, Sanders, ANYONE over any of the lunatics currently cage-battling to run the Republicans.

In Canada the NDP just elected a majority government in the most right wing province in the country and is polling in the lead federally.  In the UK the Labour Party just lost the most recent election largely because they became too right wing to keep the support of Scottish voters who turned to a left wing nationalist alternative and until they realize that if people want to vote Tory they will vote Tory not Tory lite they will be in permanent opposition. 

Far from being a disaster Corbyn is their only hope.

Acting with principle makes the difference

Desperate, poll driven policy designed to triangulate with ruthless electoral precision and avoid giving the government something to attack them with has driven the Liberal Party down to third party status.

Firmly and conscientiously opposing the Government's hop, skip and a jump from a police state overplay with C-51 was viewed as a catastrophic mistake by the NDP.  Commentators confidently predicted that Thomas Mulcair had misread the public mood after the attack on parliament and this would be where the Liberals, more in tune with the electorate would pull away into firm second place and Harper, most in tune of all, into the lead.

Instead, despite the great effort of the media to create that narrative, the Canadian public recoiled in disgust from the savage, ideological Conservatives and also the blatant, amoral schemers the Liberals openly pronounced themselves to be.

"“I do not want this government making political hay out of an issue … or trying to, out of an issue as important as security for Canadians,This conversation might be different if we weren’t months from an election campaign, but we are,” - Justin Trudeau

And so the rights and freedoms of Canadians are knowingly and openly sacrificed to protect the Liberal Party of Canada's standing in the polls.  This has always been the Liberal Party's MO, Trudeau's just the first leader stupid enough to admit it openly. 

Meanwhile the NDP stood on principle and staked out a position that was deeply unpopular in the polls, and benefit now from being there waiting when the Canadian public reached the same conclusion.

That's called leadership, its something voters remember in the polling booth.

“

Conflicted about Foothills

#andp
This is hard, I'm conflicted and not happy to be writing this.

Bob Hawkesworth has thrown his hat into the ring for the Foothills by-election to replace Jim Prentice who took his ball and slunk home on election night resigning his seat before the votes that won it for him were even counted.

Bob is a stellar candidate, experienced, skilled and a great potential addition to Alberta's NDP government.  He kept the NDP fires burning in Calgary during some dark years and I'd be glad to see him in government now that the party is in ascendency.

BUT....

He had the chance to run in the general.  He could have put himself out there, back in the startlingly recent days when running as a New Democrat in Calgary was quixotic at best.  He didn't.  Anne Wilson did. 

Anne Wilson is a criminal lawyer specializing in legal aid cases who put her life on hold to make a kamikaze run against the leader of the mighty PC dynasty in Calgary Foothills in order to bring attention to starved social services in Alberta.  While Bob sat the General out, she was campaigning hard against the leader of the PCs.  And ultimately came within a few thousand votes of beating him as the orange wave crushed the Progressive Conservative Party.

Lots of commentators recognize that between the wave, the government's honeymoon and lingering anger at Prentice's punk move on election night Calgary Foothills is an extremely likely pickup for the NDP in the coming by-election.

And now, Bob Hawkesworth has thrown his hat in the ring.

And as much as I like him, as much as I think he'd make a great candidate and a great MLA that offends my sense of justice.

Anne Wilson put herself out there, she knocked on doors and put up signs and committed months of her life to give the NDP a voice in a riding that was an all but guaranteed PC win.  Bob sat the General out, there no shame in that, he's put himself on the line in a lot of elections and won some and lost some, he was in fact the guy who beat Jim Prentice the first time he ever ran for office decades ago. He had every right in the world to take a break from campaigning, maybe he was saving himself for the federal race or had family considerations or just didn't want to expend the energy on an all but guaranteed loss.

But Anne Wilson did.

She put her life on hold she campaigned hard and she came within a few thousand votes of defeating the leader of the PCs in the party's stronghold.

And now Bob Hawkesworth wants to, forgive the hyperbole, swoop in and benefit from the orange wave that Anne Wilson along with all the other NDP candidates helped create in the general.

Once again, Bob is awesome, he's a great guy, he'd make a great candidate, a great MLA and probably with his long experience a great cabinet minister.

But pushing aside the woman who put the work in during the general now that the byelection is a much better bet for an NDP candidate leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The magic number is 40%

#NDP #ABNDP
 Any single party that can get 40% of the electorate behind them wins. Federally or provincially. And the test isn't just that they can, its that no other party can. 

This is why, sad and horrifying as the prospect is, that the Conservatives have an excellent chance of winning the next federal election.  It's also why the Alberta NDP have an excellent chance of being reelected in four years and starting a new Alberta dynasty.

A three way tie means the Conservatives probably win federally.  Of the two progressive parties the NDP have a better chance of solidifying the progressive vote than the Liberals but very probably neither has the time to do it before October, The progressive split will probably continue and if it does, Harper wins.  I will be delighted to be proven wrong but I'm afraid I'm probably right.

In Alberta, frustrated right wingers like to harp on the fact that 60% of Albertans didn't vote for the NDP.  But of course the point is that no other single party could come close to that 40% the NDP won.  

'Ah ha!' They say, but its only because the right wing is divided between the Wild Rose and the PCs.'  Of course this is based on the highly questionable conclusion that Wild Rose and PC voters are generic right wingers who could end up following one party and this is of course nonsense.  The real vitriol and bile in the recent Alberta election was that between PCs and Wild Rose.  They are NOT interchangeable voters.  The many reluctant progressives who supported the PCs to keep out the Wild Rose will throw their support to the NDP or the Liberals or the Alberta Party.  That's assuming the PCs don't keep staggering on, and if they do they certainly won't win back the Wild Rose voters.

The electoral math favours the NDP, and so does the cyclical nature of petroleum prices.  The NDP will probably be going into the next election on the heels of a boom, and voters reward governments lucky enough to match the boom bust cycle to the electoral cycle. That's at least part of why Prentice called the early election that was his downfall.

The Alberta right wing split and renewed boom should be enough to get the ANDP another 40% at least next time, and that's all any government needs barring bringing in proportional representation.

A clear contrast

Straight up; I am glad the Wildrose is the opposition.  I disagree with them about practically everything but they are clean compared to the PCs. 

Also I quite like the stark ideological contrast.  There will be two clearly defined, diametrically opposed viewpoints in governance and opposition.  Far more illuminating then the mushy but nasty neo-liberal corporatism of the PCs.

I predict a honeymoon as the NDP government and the Wildrose opposition cordially agree on campaign finance reform and a brisk sweep out of entrenched cronyism.  Then we can get down to articulating clearly defined opposing positions. 

I welcome Brian Jean, leader of the official opposition.

Brace Yourself

Calgary Sun: Even the NDP would be better than the PCs!

#abvote

"The dynasty deserves to fall. Regardless of whether Alberta swings left or right, the province will be in better hands."

VOTE!

#abvote

 Alberta Progressives, 

The right wingers, the dedicated small 'c' conservatives, the people who think going on strike should be grounds for firing, the people who know better than to say out loud certain things, but who still hate gays and immigrants and public workers and YOU and know the dog whistles to look for, the people who make you sad and mad and ashamed when you think of them running our province or being catered to....

They are going to vote. They are intensely, incandescently motivated to vote now that it really does look like Canada's conservative heartland is about to be delivered up to the socialist hordes, they will be more likely to vote than in any election in YEARS in this province. They desperately want to cancel out YOUR vote.

And they still might. Riding a wave election must be like surfing a tidal wave and wiping out at the last minute is more than possible.

If you think your vote doesn't matter IT DOES, in 2004 the election of MLA Thomas Lukaszuk came down to a half dozen appeals and THREE votes. That kind of knife's edge could be repeated in any riding in this province right now.

VOTE!

And donate to the NDP, the Conservatives are reaping  last minute panic donations from Corporate Alberta. Don't let the PCs saturation ad buy their way out of their hole without the NDP being able to fight back.

Rachel Notley Owned the Night

The story at the #abvotes Leadership debate was of Jim Prentice making the biggest tactical error of a career full of them.

He spent the night building up Alberta's already popular NDP leader into an unquestioned legitimate contender to the highest office in the province.  At every opportunity, repeatedly and ostentatiously he turned his back on Liberal leader David Swann and Wild Rose leader Brian Jean.  The intent was to diminish them both with a priority on blunting the Wild Rose (Though both assisted mightily in promoting their irrelevance, Swan with his cadaverous, ghost at the wedding stage presence, a tired old man who knows what vote he had has fled to the NDP and Jean with his wide vacant eyes and child's haircut, for all the world Opie from the Andy Griffith Show as played by William H. Macey, mindlessly droning his single message anti-tax right wing orthodoxy.) and that it most certainly did, but if Prentice thought it was safe to promote Rachel Notley based on the assumption she can't win in the country he may have miscalculated badly, we will know in a little more than a week.

The spectacularly condescending and pompous "I know the math is difficult" gaffe is going to do more damage than people think - possibly fatal damage.

I think the credibility he afforded Rachel Notley, combined with his own unlikable, insufferable prick demeanour and her sunny but no nonsense professional presentation sent a lot of on the fence voters Notley's way.