WhatFinger


Realistically speaking, the majority of Canadians don’t subscribe to any ideologically consistent set of principles

Springing the Power Trap



Paul Adams has written a book — Power Trap: How fear and loathing between the Liberals and NDP keep Harper in power — which supposedly offers a winning formula for Canada’s progressives.
Now I have not read this book, but according to its reviews, Adams’s thesis is based on the simplistic notion that there are two just two types of voters in Canada: Those who voted Conservative and Those Who Voted for Anybody Else. And Adams defines “Those who Voted for Anybody Else” as “progressives.” By the way, according to Adams, progressives are the white-hat wearing good guys. They care about stopping climate change, they want to bring about more economic equality and they desperately want a national leader not named Stephen Harper.

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At any rate, Adams checked out the results of the last federal election and discovered that about 56 per cent of the Canadian population can be classified as “progressive”, solely because they didn’t vote Conservative. This statistic leads him to believe that if the progressive parties, i.e., New Democrats and Liberals and Greens, could only put aside their petty differences and unite to form a single Progressive Party, they could easily smite the Harper Tories and turn Canada into an environment-loving, egalitarian utopia for all time. And on the surface this seems logical. After all, according to my own mathematical calculations, a party that won 56 per cent of the vote in a two party race would prevail. Yet, unfortunately for Adams, politics in Canada is a little more complicated than he believes. For one thing, the political universe is not as stark or as black and white as he imagines. In the real world there are not just two diametrically opposed ideological monoliths –i.e. Right vs. Left – battling it out. Rather, the population is divided into a myriad of voting clusters or as I call them “tribes,” each with their own attitudes, interests, hopes and fears. Some tribes care about economic issues like taxes, jobs and the budget; others are more into foreign policy and defence issues; some are concerned about social questions, like education, health care and the environment; others focus on urban matters like crime, drugs and immigration; then there is the moral tribe which is sensitive to issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. In short, it’s an ideological mish-mash out there. And realistically speaking, the majority of Canadians don’t subscribe to any ideologically consistent set of principles. What voters do care about are their values. And this is why somebody who voted against Harper in 2011 won’t necessarily oppose every Conservative Party policy. A populist small town Canadian, for instance, might have voted NDP because he doesn’t like tax cuts to big corporations, but he might also support the Conservative plan to scrap the gun registry. Or an urban Canadian might have voted Liberal because he opposed Harper’s policy on the environment, but this same voter could also passionately agree with the government’s position on supporting Israel. As a result, it’s not unreasonable to expect that both these “progressive” voters might be persuaded to support the Tories in the next election. My point is a political party can win over the allegiances of various tribes and put together a winning coalition, if it communicates the right message. Adams might be perturbed to learn that former U.S. president Bill Clinton – surely a progressive – supported the reactionary-sounding idea of school uniforms. He also supported Harperian ideas like tax cuts, hiring more police and welfare reform. Why did Clinton take these non-progressive stands? He did it because he hoped it would win over the voting clusters that care about values like patriotism, safe streets and fiscal responsibility. He was basically trying to lure Americans who may have traditionally voted Republican. At any rate, with all this in mind let’s examine what could happen in a hypothetical election pitting the Harper Conservatives against the hypothetical Paul Adams Progressive Party (PAPP). First off, if I am a Conservative strategist, I would seek out fault lines in the PAPP voting coalition, to see if I could poach away some of its tribes, much like Clinton poached away voting blocs from the Republicans. And one poachable tribe that comes immediately to mind is the “Law and Order” cluster. The fact is a lot of Canadians would favour “getting tough” on criminals, regardless of which party they supported in 2011. Indeed, a recent poll showed that a whopping 63 per cent of Canadians support capital punishment. And surely that 63 per cent must include some of Adams’s progressives. So let’s say in our pretend election the Conservatives promise to hire more police and to enact more laws to get two-bit punks off our streets. And let’s say the PAPP leader counters by offering progressive solutions to crime: midnight basketball leagues; more lenient paroles, rehabilitation treatment for hardened-criminals. Any guesses which party would win that debate? Or let’s take the environment issue. No doubt in order to stop climate change PAPP would support imposing a massive carbon tax on gasoline, it would curtail the oil sands development and just generally favour slowing down economic growth, even if that means putting thousands of people out of work. I am fairly certain such a platform would win the support of David Suzuki, but it would also likely drive a lot of so-called progressive voters into the Harper camp. Just ask Stephane Dion. (It’s interesting to note that former Liberal (progressive) Prime Minister Jean Chretien did next to nothing to avert a climate change catastrophe.) And finally, let’s consider the biggest challenge for PAPP – Quebec. I dare say a large chunk of PAPP’s potential progressive voting base resides in La Belle Province. Recall that outside Quebec the Harper Tories won about 48 percent of the popular vote. Yet winning in Quebec would present PAPP with a strategic dilemma. In order to woo Quebec voters, PAPP would necessarily be forced to take stances that would be unpopular in the rest of Canada. For instance, would PAPP support granting Quebec special privileges and powers? If it did it, this might alienate many voters in English Canada, who might otherwise support PAPP’s progressive agenda. Just consider a recent poll which indicated about half of Canadians living outside Quebec don’t care if the province separates! Canadians are in no mood to pander to Quebec. Now don’t get me wrong. My point isn’t that PAPP would fail. Such a party absolutely could win an election if it had the right leadership and the right campaign message. Oh and it would also have to seriously dilute some of its more progressive ideas. What I am saying is, however, is that even a single united progressive party would have a tough time toppling the Harper Tories. Indeed, all things being equal, I’d say Harper would defeat a single merged Opposition opponent if he faced one in 2015. I know my argument will disappoint the “Let’s Unite Our Left-Wing Parties and March to Certain Victory” crowd. But winning power is rarely that simple. To read Paul Adams’ rejoinder: “Well no, that’s not what I think”, click here.


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Gerry Nicholls -- Bio and Archives

Gerry Nicholls is a Toronto writer and a senior fellow with the Democracy Institute. His web site is Making sense with Nicholls


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