(written for rabble.ca's election coverage)
The difference between American and Canadian voters is that in a one on one contest, Americans just might choose the rickety-reactionary McCain-Palin jalopy. There’s no way in a one on one contest that Stephen Harper would win.
Most Canadians don’t want a hard right government. But the configuration of our politics means they’re likely to get one.
Although there’s plenty to go around, the major share of the blame for this goes to the Liberals. They still believe that they are the titans of Canadian politics, the natural governing party, sure to return to the helm, if not this time under Stephane Dion, then next time under another leader.
Novice Liberal Bob Rae made this clear when he wrote in his blog that Jack Layton was the Ralph Nader of this campaign, not the Barack Obama. In Rae’s mind, Layton and the NDP are just spoilers who are blocking the migration of progressives to the Liberals who are the only ones who can defeat Stephen Harper.
Sorry Bob, if Layton is not Obama, Dion is not Mackenzie King or Pierre Trudeau. And you remind me more of Hazen Argue (older readers will get this) than of Sir Lancelot.
Yes, if Harper wins a majority---and he still can be stopped---it is a virtual certainty that the next election will be fought on different terms. Angry Canadians who will not be able to stomach one more minute of neo-con rule will force the other parties (not including the Bloc) to forge a one-time electoral alliance to get the Conservatives out. With the Conservatives then defeated, the new government will---fingers crossed---enact a system of proportional representation which will end the problem of vote splitting once and for all.
The too haughty Liberals still delude themselves that all this trouble could be avoided if social democrats would fold their tents and make for the Grit castle.
We’re not going to do it Bob. The last time social democrats voted en masse for the Liberals in 1993, the Chretien-Martin government endorsed NAFTA and gutted social programs.
Yes, a one time deal to bring in PR could be in the cards after four years of a Harper electoral dictatorship. But the Liberals will have to accept that New Democrats are a major political force that’s not going away.
Canadians don’t deserve what they’re likely to get this time. But our politicians are more like mules that visionaries.
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11 comments:
I say Bob is part Hazen Argue, part Ramsay Mac.
Unfortunately for Bob, he doesn't realize that the Conservatives are the new "Liberals in a hurry."
The Liberals are going to be punished in this election for many reasons.
First, they spent the last two years supporting the Conservatives or abstaining from critical votes. The votes on immigration, the budgets, and the war on Afghanistan are the most important examples.
Second, Canadians are tired of the old Liberal arrogance, the presumption that the LPC is the natural governing party of Canada.
Third, they are running a confused and disorganized campaign centred around an unpopular leader whose policy proposals are not being conveyed in a clear, concise manner.
Fourth, the LPC is weakened by an inability to appreciate the real class forces in Canadian society. The Conservatives increasingly have the support of big business and the media because they articulate a political-economic strategy that matches the real forms of economic power in Canadian society. Specifically, the Conservative agenda for a decentralized economic union, which is highly integrated with US capitalism and the world market, matches both the economic interests of Canadian capital and the national aspirations of Quebec, and in the process creates the foundation for a new power bloc in Canada.
This real drift in class politics means that the LPC has to decide which side it is on: either on the side of capital or on the side of labour/progressive social forces.
In the present, it is trying once again to be the party of 'national unity' and to accommodate both. However, the space for reconciling these social forces is increasingly truncated, leaving the Liberals wobbling incoherently in the centre.
The NDP, despite a drift to centrist politics under Layton, is still the most consistent defender of the progressive agenda in Canada. It maintains a limited, though important connection to real progressive social movements, and thus has a more legitimate base amongst the layer of Canadians who live on the other side of neoliberalism in Canada.
At the same time, they have a weak base in Quebec -- based on decades of political myopia on the national question -- and split votes with the Liberals for the progressive, urban voting bloc in Canadian cities.
In my view, the only way out of the electoral/class impasse -- short of revolution! -- is for the Liberals, NDP, and Greens to unite around the following points:
1. opposition to neoliberalism and the free market agenda.
2. recognition of Quebec as a nation -- and of the multinational reality of Canada.
3. a revitalized, progressive national economic policy for Canada that takes on climate change, that refuses Canadian participation in imperial wars, that supports equality and civil liberties, and that builds national programs like child care, health care, etc.
4. proportional representation.
Until the Liberals sort out the contradictory mix of class forces embedded in their party, and until the NDP stops trying to displace the Liberals as the opposition, we will see Conservative victories -- not because Dion is unpopular but because the Tories hold the real class power in Canadian society.
There is a real polarization of class forces at work -- expressed most clearly in the Conservative platform -- but one side (the wrong side) is much more conscious of the real struggle at hand.
To fight the Conservative agenda, the Liberals will need to split -- let the Manley-types go to the Conservatives and the Dion-types form a new left-centre voting bloc with the NDP and Greens based on the agenda outlined above.
Short of doing this, the Conservatives will keep winning (but hopefully not majorities) at the expense of the majoritarian progressive community in Canada.
Awesome to hear you say something positive, caveat-ridden as it is, about "your" NDP once in a while.
If we can just get you to sustain it, things will be going swimmingly!
If James Laxer is defending the NDP in practice, they must be doing something right.
Great post, Mr. Laxer!
While I like your idea of a parliamentary coalition to bring in PR and end the chances of a neo-con government in the foreseeable future, I think laying the blame at the Liberal doorstep is disingenuous in the extreme. The person who most stands in the way of this is Jack Layton, and the smoking gun is that the NDP/Libs had more seats than the Conservatives in the last parliament, and I’m sure Paul Martin would have accepted any terms to stay on as PM PM.
Jack wants the NDP to replace the Liberal Party, and he’ll accept mandatory minimums for young offenders and smear the environmental program endorsed by David Suzuki and the Sierra Club to get there. And talk about excluding parties and saying they should just join your tent: I think Elizabeth May views Jack the same way.
It is true, in 1993, we lost Mulroney/Campbell for Chretien, and saw cutbacks that hurt social programs but saved national unity by balancing the budget. The last time Social Democrats refused to get behind the Liberals we lost Kelowna, Child Care, the NDP supported infusion into health care and put gay marriage at risk.
More importantly, not even the most enthusiastic Liberal reader of opinion polls thinks a majority government is at all within reach. So considering the fact that Jack would never in a million years accept a coalition, and therefore the only chance to oust Harper is for Dion to get more seats than the CPC, and considering that it would at best be a minority Liberal government, I'm voting Liberal.
Bob Rae hit the nail on the head.
As I said above, the NDP will have to stop playing the same game as the Liberals, ie, trying to be the official opposition by stealing the urban progressive vote and by dissing the national rights of Quebec.
At the same time, the LPC does embody an outdated and contradictory mix of social forces -- for example, both social democrats and militaristic neoliberals -- which are incapable of presenting a coherent platform, especially for Quebec and the working class in Canada.
We need an entirely new configuration of left politics. There is a real shift in the dynamics of class and nation, and a real coalescence of social power in and around the CPC, but the progressive vote is still acting as if we're in the 1960s and 1970s and as if Harper is a crazy aberration.
NDP is the only enabler For HarpersCult. Unbelievable you are not seeing it as the plain fact.
There is no way NDP will ever get a be elected To Govern In Canada . the Country has No appetite for so leftwing ideology .They may prevent the Liberals To win therefore Harper can come Up with Two fat thumbs up...
Wonderful Prospect .
Marta
Prof. James:
Methinks you’re too sanguine about the next election. Are Canadians seething with rage at the loss of the daycare system that Harper shot down? Seems to me, all that voters need is a few tax cuts to keep them happy.
And why do progressive, normally sane, astute individuals keep voting Liberal? Because the Liberals can still seduce them –- and I’m one of them -- with a few shards of liberalism – money for the arts and court challenges; Supreme Court nominees who are mildly progressive. By contrast, Harper’s first appointee boasted to the Parliamentary committee that he is a strict constructionalist when it comes to the Charter, and look what the PM’s done to arts funding. We think of that, hold our noses, and vote Liberal.
Remember that series of episodes in Peanuts, where Lucy manages to persuade poor old Charlie Brown that she will hold the football when he tries to kick it? Of course, she yanks it away at the crucial moment and down he goes on his backside. Yet, he keeps coming back for more. Good grief, we’re a nation of Charlie Browns!
By the way, please stop talking about “social democrats.” It’s a meaningless phrase. We are socialists!
While the big egos on the center-left try to battle it out...
the 60% of us who will vote against Harper are watching the county go down the drain (like 1988)
And Layton (Broadbent-redux) has the most blood on his hands
McKenzie King did it with the Progressives in 1926
Dion & May made a good start...
It ain't too late for some selfless moves now to save the country
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