Will they will, or will they won't, be buddies? That’s the question a lot of Albertans keep asking themselves about the provincial Liberals and the Alberta New Democrats.
After all, as the Democratic Renewal Project, Alberta's minuscule but determined unite-the-left faction, endlessly repeats, if only the Liberals and the NDP could get together they might somehow be able to defeat the province's right if it splits its vote between the Conservatives and the Wildrose Alliance in the next provincial election.
Actually, the right-wing vote is so strong in many parts of this province, and the Liberal-NDP rivalry so intense, that this idea is not much more than a pipedream for the coalition zealots of the DRP, the always optimistic Yente of Alberta's political left.
But as the recent post-election shuffle in the United Kingdom illustrates, it may be the wrong question for Albertans to be asking anyway.
Maybe the real question, come the next election, is who will cut a deal with Premier Ed Stelmach's Conservatives to keep the Wildrose Alliance out of power -- the Liberals, or the New Democrats?
The most reliable recent polls seem to suggest that the Conservatives are still leading the Alliance by enough committed voters to form a razor-thin majority. But the trend has not been in their favour. Stelmach's leadership is prone to stumbles, and the Alliance under former journalist and Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith has continued to see its support grow.
So it is not outlandish to suppose that if the government waits until March 2012 to call an election, as the stubborn Stelmach has promised, the Wildrose Alliance under Smith could be in a position to form a minority government.
In that event, there will be plenty of pressure on the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats alike to do something to keep the far-right Alliance -- with its market fundamentalist ideas on charter schools, "right-to-work" labour laws and privatized health care -- as far as possible from power.
But given both their long history of animosity toward one another and the arithmetic of Alberta politics, it is much more likely Liberals or even New Democrats would be able to cut a coalition deal with the Conservatives than with each other.
Liberal ambivalence about the New Democrats was clearly on display at the Alberta Liberal convention in Edmonton last weekend when delegates narrowly passed a mealy-mouthed resolution to "work together" with "other progressive parties" in the next election.
The timid resolution, which passed 81 to 64, infuriated as many Alberta Liberals as it pleased. Alberta Liberal Leader David Swann marched out for an emergency meeting, then marched back to say the vote changed nothing much.
For his part, Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason said he was willing to speak with Swann, but dismissed coalition talk -- as indeed he must, since his party has even less appetite for it than the Liberals.
There's just no way either of these gentlemen is going to say of the other any time soon, "is you is, or is you ain’t, my baby?"
Meanwhile, it's unlikely Premier Stelmach and his Conservatives would dignify this kind of talk with a comment, at least while they still lead in the polls.
But that would change quickly if the premier faced losing power to Smith, and either the Liberals or the NDP were prepared to play the kingmaker as British Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg did across the pond last weekend.
Of course, if the Wildrose Alliance wins decisively, what's left of Stelmach's Tories will be quietly absorbed into its ranks soon enough. The same thing would probably happen if the Tories won big and the Wildrose results disappointed the new party's supporters.
Then everything will be back to normal in Alberta -- one massive right-wing party in power and two tiny centre-left parties fighting it out for the scraps.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga's blog, Alberta Diary.
David, I think it's the wrong question entirely. The question should be: "WHEN is the NDP going to finally concede that its holding up progress by insisting on futile go-it-alone politics in Alberta?" Progressives and apathetic non-voters in the province are frustrated beyond belief with the petty partisan squabbling that has permitted the right wing to rule unimpeded for generation after generation - 40 years for Conservatives, and 70 with Conservatives and Social Credit combined.
Why does a prinicpled committment to NDP partisan politics (or any other party for that matter) take moral priority over the authentic desperate needs and desires of those in the province who want to see change for the better? Why does the fact that 47% of all Alberta votes only garner 13% of the seats not seem to bother those so hotly opposed to cooperation?
As John Kenneth Galbraith says, "When I encounter new facts, I sometimes change my mind. What do YOU do?... The "new fact" in this situation happens to be the rise of the Wildrose Party, which now more than ever -- and perhaps for ONLY this one short window of opportunity -- gives the progressive side a chance to walk up the middle. But it will only happen this one election, as you can be sure that if the Cons and Wildrose (much more likely to be allies than the Liberals/Conservatives!!) see the tiniest threat of a united alliance of progressives emerging they will reunite - a la Reform/Conservative. And then we're back to square one, again, for another 40 years and our chance will be gone like the wind.
Despite what pundits say, in fact, a comparison of the Liberal and the actually quite moderate Alberta NDP platforms prove to have much more common ground than differences. Much more. In any case, why not build on common ground, with the thinking that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?
David, as a fellow Albertan, I would like to sit down at a table and discuss this with you in length, but alas, in this province, all discussion of reasonable cooperation is usually swept aside. This is precisely why the Liberal resolution, yes, a grudging admission that they need to work with others, is an audacious, almost historic, move in this ossified province. I am dissapointed that. so far, that you don't seem to have defended collaboration within your party walls as the most reasonable and pragmatic, hold-your-nose strategy at this time, regardless of the fact that you are clearly a committeed NDPer, as am I.
I'll be espeically interested to see what response the labour unions in Alberta will have if, thanks to the divisions on the progressive side, the Wild Rose assumes power and eviscerates them from bowel to neck, or the Conservatives get a winning 35% mandate to do the same. But by then, I suppose it won't matter. By supporting a go-it-alone NDP strategy, labour will have brought it upon their own heads and no one will be left to stand for them but those little weak factions left fighting over the scraps, as you say. Someone ought to tell them this.
For mature adults, cooperation and dialogue is the way of the future.
The flaw in this "unite the left" idea is the perception that the Liberals are left in any way.
They don't have progressive ideas and their actions over the last many years have been anything but progressive. They're a party backed by corporate money advocating corporate solutions, just like the other corporate parties.
Alberta and Canada benefit from having a social democratic alternative. I"m amazed at how often people point to the NDP and ask it to dissolve itself whenever the right makes gains or the Liberals fail to connect with voters.
How will it help counter either Wildrose or the Conservatives for the NDP to merge into some vague centrist amalgam?
The examples I've seen thus far show the opposite of DRP logic in action when Liberal or NDP support drops in a riding - Conservative support remains the same or goes up.
A quick hypothesis is this - at least some small N NDP voters identify with the party on its populist "working Albertan" (bus drivers are just like us!) appeal. This appeal is apparent among some Conservatives, even if it's phony (farmers are just like us!). Liberals under Taft and Swann can be seen as academic and out of touch.
Likewise, liberal minded folks might not like the nasty social conservative agenda of the Tories, or their poor management, but when the choice of business-minded Liberal candidates are removed, the vote goes to the Tories rather than to the "socialists" who would "ruin the economy".
I think too much DRP analysis is based on the ideological spectrum of the parties, and the assumed ideology of those who vote for them, as opposed to their brand image and other factors (protest votes, personal appeal of local candidates etc).
Can anyone promoting cooperation via non-competition show evidence that their proposed scheme would work? Is a little research into recent Alberta electoral data to back up your rhetoric too much to ask?
Once we've gotten over that small hurdle of showing some evidence that it would work, then we can talk about the political and philosophical implications of the proposal and whether or not it would backfire etc.
I've been watching the reaction from some small-l liberal voters since the cooperation motion passed. This is in no way a representation of all liberal voters, but there are some that are mentioning their displeasure at the motion that was passed at convention. Ironically, some are talking about voting NDP now.
The notion that not supporting the Liberals should be regrettable if it leads to a Wildrose victory is silly. Why not go one step further and ask Labour in Alberta to back the Tories to prevent the even further right wing Wildrose from obtaining power?
"Why not ask the Labour to back the Tories to prevent the Wildrose from taking power?"
Because again, I think if you'd examine Conservative policies on many issues, you'd see that theirs and Wildrose are far more closely aligned than Libs and Tories. It hardly makes sense for a party (Liberal), that, for example, believes in strongly funded PUBLIC health care and education, to align with a party (Wildrose and Cons) whose bottom line fiscal agenda means they have -- or undoubtedly will -- cut public health services to the bone and encourage tuition fee increases, etc.
You also asked: "Can anyone promoting cooperation via non-competition show evidence that their proposed scheme would work? Is a little research into recent Alberta electoral data to back up your rhetoric too much to ask?"
One can only make so many points in a comment, but here are three: Linda Duncan's NDP federal campaign, where Liberals asked other Liberals on the doorsteps (the "Liberals for Linda" campaign) to vote for her, not their own candidate. 1. Joe Clark's campaign, where progressives, including many NDPers, apparently voted for moderate Joe in order to put a stop to Reform. 3. Dr. Swann's own campaign, where a good mix of progressives supported him in Mountainview. And there are others, but the point is, with encouragement from leaders, it could be possible to make sure the strongest, acceptable progressive candidate from a particular party gets solid support in each district. That would go a long way, particularly if there were only ONE progressive candidate in a riding; even the Liberals would get that message. In any case, even if such a cooperative strategy had never been employed in Alberta before (and, in fact, it was in Alberta's early years) doesn't mean it can NEVER happen here. It just means that Albertans, and frankly Canadians, have a lot of catching up to do on this topic. The more we allow the subject for discussion, the more comfortable Canadians will become with the idea. After all, why shouldn't a government reflect a diversity of majority similar opinions, doesn't that reflect who we are as a nation? What's so wrong with that, even if the parties in bed with each other aren't rote-identical? Why is it that the majority of western governments, especially in Europe, ruled by a coalition of diverse parties via the cooperative strategy and Proportional Representation, manage to get along very well?
Obviously, in a city such as Calgary - strongly small-c conservative - it might not help to have NDPs overtly campaigning for the Liberal candidates, but it would help if they would leave their candidate off the ballot, so that only a LIberal remains, leaving those who are ideologically opposed to draconian policies to vote Liberal.
Many Liberals, understanding the strategy if led by the party leader, would vote for the NDP candidate as well, in ridings more predisposed to voting NDP, especially now since Stelmach and the Wild Rose have turned increasingly hard. When Stelmach won his riding, and it appeared as though the Liberal vote moved over to support him (this is the example NDPers often quote), there were several reasons at play here: the ethnic vote, the fact that he was a new, untested leader who was sold the public as "moderate" against the other Conservative candidates when he was, frankly, the opposite, and the fact that the NDP vote declined as well, indicating that not only Liberals stayed home to abandoned their party to vote for another, but the NDP did as well.
Finally, no one is "asking the NDP to merger" with the Liberals. Truly.
What the strategy is is this: That the NDP, Liberals, and Vision, hold their noses and work together tactically in a TEMPORARY 2012 alliance, which if it wins, would ideally result in enacting some form of electoral reform such as Proportional Representation. From that point forward, it would be all gloves off and ALL parties would go back to isolation if they liked as per usual, except now, our votes as NDPers or whatever parties people want to for would actually count. Thus, for example, the current 2 NDP MLAs would be 7, instead. This is my hope, anyway, because after voting for years and seeing no progress, I see no other way out; I really don't.
One last point to Blair. Okay, we can argue all day and night about whether the Liberals are left or not - in any case, (I don't think this campaign is a "unite the left' campaign, but one asking moderate and progressive voters alike to put their heads together to find a way out of Alberta's perpetual electoral mess), but I think the far more essential message is this, like the federal Liberals who passed a lot of progressive and modern legislation including Medicare (an NDP idea), thanks to the NDP poking a stick in their eye to do it, the same could be done here. I repeat what I wrote above: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That's how SUCCESSFUL campaigns have to work in difficult regions where first-past-the-post is a reality. If not, the hard-right divides and conquers us all, perhaps for another 40 years. Why is that a better option than hold-your-nose cooperation?Well, that's my take on things, anyway.
Sorry to be clear, I'm looking for data, evidence, not anecdotes and speculation. As your proposal is provincial based, provincial examples would also be nice.
Please provide multiple recent examples where Liberals or NDPers have dropped off the ballot either literally or through a less focused campaign, and the result was better fortune for the other. Without solid evidence, there is no reason to engage in further discussion on this issue, and the continued promotion of the idea with it's potential pitfalls and backlashes is misguided at best.
Recent provincial historical trends in Peace River, Edmonton-Calder, and Edmonton-Glenora do not support DRP logic. One parties lack of candidacy or strong campaigns did not result in better results for the other. Votes do not automatically transfer between the "moderate" parties. Any strategy based on this assumption will fail.
And, Linda Duncan's situation is contradictory to DRP logic. The Liberals ran a stronger campaign in 2008 than they did in 2006. The Liberals made a strategic error and ran a right wing liberal against her. That and some strategic voting likely helped. But if you look at the data, the Liberal vote decrease is much larger than the NDP vote increase. Also noteworthy is that there was no shift in the Green vote despite a likely winner with strong environmental credentials on the ballot and the endorsement of at least one prominent Green in the riding - so I think the idea of appealing to Greens in the DRP proposal needs further examination, or should be scrapped like the rest of the plan. I've spoken with some Tories in Strathcona who switched votes as well due to party dissatisfaction or dislike of Jaffer, the NDP gains were clearly not all won by the Liberal decrease. Perhaps we can ask the Tories not to run against Linda Duncan next time as well, as their Liberal enemy would be Linda Duncan's enemy as well.
For Swann in Mountain View, the NDP and Greens were nearly a non-factor, but interestingly enough, and again, contrary to DRP logic, from 2004 to 2008, the NDP and Greens dropped in both raw votes and vote %. According to the DRP, these votes should go to the Liberals as being the closest ideological cousin. But they do not, the Liberal vote totals and % went down. Yet another case of the DRP assumption not playing out.
Having the NDP not run against the Libs in Calgary would likely backfire. Calgarians would see right through the scheme, and the media would certainly help. Remember it was Harper's Calgary based Tories who (falsley) stirred up the sentiment of the "undemocratic" nature of the scary socialist coalition. Voters bought it. The Libs in Calgary are best to ignore the NDP and run strong campaigns of their own.
I'm not a political statistician, so I can't parse the numbers, etc., however, the most recent provincial example of a pre-arranged cooperative electoral strategy would be where the NDP and Liberals combined to win in the 1999 Saskatchewan election. Had those parties chosen to immediately set up a public referendum on some kind of electoral reform (PR, etc.), the situation in Saskatchewan might today be quite different. What a shame they didn't have the foresight to do it.
As strategic voting hasn't been tried by Alberta parties to my knowledge, in recent history, in a formal way, I can't give you examples where someone "dropped off the ballot," although the fact that the NDP candidate did not put out any or much signage nor turn up to the debate in the 2009 Calgary-Glenmore by-election, no doubt diminished the NDP vote in that election. Even if his 178 votes had been thrown towards the Liberal candidate, Avalon Roberts, her numbers still would have fallen short of the Wildrose by 130. But who's to say that had they joined forces, that more apathetic citizens wouldn't have come out to vote for her, seeing a tighter race? We'll never know. But the beauty of this idea in Alberta, and perhaps in Canada, is that it IS a NEW and bold idea that gives us that kind of exciting "who knows what can happen?" scenario, and that it is does have precedence in many European countries. Without solid precedence to prove to you that this could happen, are you saying that we can NEVER try something different in Alberta? Not ever? I find that defeatist thinking.
I will just conclude my comments with this: You can hold onto a position - giving valid reasons and not so valid reasons. BUt when one side refuses to negotiate and simply enter into open, reasonable cooperative dialogue with another - as within a divorce - any excuse will do. And it appears that in blogs like this, the goalpost reasons for "why we can't do it" shift from day to day, meaning that we can never truly focus on the one or two reasons why the other side is so opposed to trying to find common ground against the more powerful opponent.
To my mind, however, there is nothing that excuses an ideology that gives right wing victory to dominate election after election, without facing ourselves in the mirror and asking, "What can we TRULY do differently this time that will get apathetic and divided Albertans off the couch to vote for a more reasonable alliance than the regime we have in power, now?" I'll tell you what HAS been proven time after time: that a little more "elbow grease" and "a few more dollars in the party's coffers" isn't the answer.
What was the cooperation agreement? I know they entered into a post-electoral agreement to govern, but if wikipedia* is to be believed, they ran a full slate of candidates against each other. Heck, the Liberals almost beat the New Dems in Saskatoon Southeast in a tight race - must have been some electoral strategy. While interesting and note worthy, I don't believe this lends any weight to the DRP's argument that non-competition is the best solution for Alberta's political woes.
I'm not saying new ideas can't ever be tested. Labour tried out the Albertans for Change fiasco, and I was initially supportive as well. However, given that many individual riding results in Alberta trend exactly the opposite as DRP vote splitting theory predicts, it is sensible to expect some evidence in Alberta politics that supports the scheme. Especially when there is possibility of real damage to both parties by enacting it, which would be of no benefit to the non-conservatives in the province.
I've entered into plenty of dialog with DRPers. Just because they've failed to convince me their strategy would work doesn't mean I haven't approached the idea openly. Heck, I used to muse openly about just the same sort of idea, but upon closer examination of the other parties and voter trends, as well as having more interaction with Alberta voters themselves, has lead me to believe that the proposal will fail.
Let me be clear, there are many reasons I'm against the scheme, and I don't think those reasons have shifted any. It just seems pratical to me to address the question of "Does anyone have any evidence that this will work?" before getting into the other objections.
On your point that work and funding don't improve results, it's not always the case, but I've observed direct evidence poll by poll where we've put in good work and where we haven't, it does matter, and it does pay off.
So we're at an impasse, I'm looking for some evidence to counter the examples that contradict the apparently false assumptions that would lead to success for your proposal, and you don't currently have any. While this might require some "elbow grease", or even "dollars in the DRPs coffers" - how about having an opinion poll conducted?
Barring any convincing evidence, I can't be sure that you're offering a pragmatic alternative to the status quo. I appreciate the attempt to seek change, even if I feel it is wrong and misguided.*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatchewan_general_election,_1999