BC Election Aftermath

"Gary Doer has also neutralized the issue. Here, though, it plays big time."

He neutralized it by finally winning after losing three elections in a row and then by governing competently - up until then, the knock against the NDP in Manitoba was exactly the same as the knock against the NDP in BC. People pointed to the Pawley gov't and said "look at how incompetent they. they can't run a peanut stand" etc... (of course there are tons of examples of utterly incompetent rightwing governments in in Canada from Grant Devine to Mulroney - but people will always have this deep-seated sub-conscious prejuduce that if you are rightwing you are ipso facto a good bean-counter). The British Labour Party lost four elections in a row and was also seen as unable to "manage the economy" and people said in the early 90s that Labour could never win again etc.. the same things they said about Labour in Australia after John Howard won four elections in a row. In the end, the only way to really change that perception is to win power and then govern effectively.

With regard to the BC election, it was close enough in the end that I think that there are some things the NDP could have done differently that MIGHT have causeda different outcome (or maybe they would have caused a worse outcome - we will never know). With regard to the carbon tax, I will maintain until the day i die that its bad public policy. But, the reality is that once gas prices tumbled from their heights f this past summer it shoud have been clear that making opposition to the carbon tax such a high profile part of the platform would cause the campaign to get dragged off message by having to respond to criticism from ENGOs - while not gaining enough votes to make it worth it since with gas prices having fallen - people just weren't that angry about the carbon tax anymore. In retrospect, the NDP should have announced a policy weeks before the campaign began, saying that they would leave the first phase of the tax in place but suspend all future proposed increases in the tax - take a few lumps from Tzipi and co. and get it all over with BEFORE the campaign. With regard to the economy, on the one hand it is absurd for the NDP to try to claim that if they were in power, BC would suddenly be shielded from the global recession etc...but by going to the other extreme and not focusing on the economy at all - they gave the unfortunate impression that they were running away from the issue - further cementing the stereotype that Carol James is just some well-meaning social worker who has never had to meet a payroll (of course no one ever bothered mention that Campbell's "business experience" is over 20 years old and most of it was bad!).