Here's a man who knows his history, so let me put this in a way he can understand: the Germans learned in the world wars how difficult it can be to fight a war on two fronts. Eventually, the forces on either side of you get their machines working at full capacity, and your stretched resources cannot effectively put up a resistance on both flanks simultaneously.
This looks like the election when the left finally coalesces around an actual left-leaning national party. This phenomenon already took place on the right a decade ago, when the Reform/Alliance and Progressive Conservative forces made nice and united under Stephen Harper. With the reorientation of the progressive vote in Quebec spurring an Orange Crush now sweeping the nation towards a radical re-shifting of the political landscape, the Liberals look shell-shocked.
It didn't have to be this way. When Harper became leader of the Conservative Party, it was clear to me that any attempt to keep them out of power would require a leftist reaction from the Liberals. After Paul Martin lost the January 2006 election, the Grits were presented an opportunity to do just that. Bob Rae, the former NDP premier of Ontario, was seeking the leadership in a field that included Ken Dryden, Stephane Dion, Scott Brison, Ignatieff and others. He was clearly the way to go if a truly centre-left orientation was to take hold of the party. Ignatieff, though popular in some circles, did not have the internal support to win the leadership at a convention where his growth potential was viewed as very weak. Dion, though left-leaning himself, was not seen as a credible alternative by those who valued beating Harper above all else.
Well, you know what happened -- egos got in the way. Ignatieff couldn't admit he could not win and refused to do the sensible thing (throw his support behind Rae) because he was determined to humble his old university buddy. Rae fell off the ballot and Ignatieff got served by Dion.
In my mind, that is the root of what we are seeing today. At some point, disaffected left-leaning voters were always going to need somewhere to go that could push the Conservatives out of power. The Liberals were stuck in purgatory after the sponsorship scandal, and Harper was busy sucking up all the centre-right air in a bid to make his fledging party more palatable to the electorate. So the Liberals did the stupidest thing possible: pretended to be left-leaning while eventually moving to pursue a centre-right agenda.
This worked in the past, but people, the 20th century is so over.
The Liberals tanked under Dion, as predicted, and the party began the process of turfing him almost immediately after the debacle that was the 2008 election was over. But not soon enough to avoid the Coalition Crisis that very nearly saw him become Prime Minister. The Liberal brand took another hit.
The diversionary Dion experiment was time that could have been better spent re-establishing Rae's leadership credentials if Liberals had chosen him instead. I'm not going to pronounce judgement on Rae as a politician here; it's not the focus of my thoughts in this context. I'm simply pointing out that Rae could have provided the one thing the Liberals have lacked since 2004 -- credible clash with the Conservatives.
Dion clashed, that's for sure, but he clashed with everyone -- the Tories, the other opposition parties, the Liberal leadership, the electorate. But by comparison, Rae represented a brighter opportunity to stake out new ground in contrast to the Conservatives and a firmer foundation from which to rebuild the party internally. A Liberal party that chose to try and squeeze out a bigger space for itself on the centre-left would have been more successful with a guy who had more gravitas, statesmanlike credentials and campaigning experience than they ever were with Dion.
The party then chose Ignatieff as leader in May 2009 and squeezed Rae out again, this time without even bothering to have a true leadership contest. Rae was outmanouvred that time by a guy who didn't leave anything to chance while Dion was busy blowing his shot. The new leader immediately tried to force an election, failed, and the Liberal downward spiral continued.
Which leads us to the present moment. Ignatieff has always been hawkish on foreign affairs and defense issues. In many ways he is indistinguishable from Harper from a policy perspective. From 2004 to 2011, the progression of the Liberal leadership has been to try and take on the Tories on their turf. In the midst of all that, they have tried to tell progressives that their votes are necessary to stop Harper from gaining a majority of House seats, and so they should hold their noses and vote Liberal.
I always felt this was wrong-headed. For them to govern, I believe they should have staked out ground a little further left than that with a leader who is not a Harper clone or as flawed as Dion, then appeal to centrists who used to vote Progressive Conservative and ask them to return Canada to a state they could recognize. In that way, the 20-25% of Canadians that form Harper's hard-core base could never again get close to power. There are more votes in this configuration, and more potential avenues to power. I could never figure out how the Liberals couldn't see that.
Instead, they allowed whatever limited progressive credibility they had after Chretien left office be frittered away through the combination of ineptitude, infighting, awful election campaigns in 2005-06 and 2008, and parliamentary miscalculations and missteps. Now in this campaign, their leader is not viewed as truly progressive and their performance as a party during the campaign has been, to put it mildly, underwhelming. By taking on Harper following his rules, they were bound to lose from the start.
That's one of the main reasons the NDP is surging now. Jack Layton has remained consistent for years on what he wants to do, he has never wavered from his commitment to work with other parties in Parliament no matter what the electorate says, and he is the most credible progressive voice on the federal scene. His message has been more positive than the other parties, and more directly aimed at the wide swatch of lower and middle class voters concerned about Tory policies. For years he has been putting in work to create new avenues of support for the party, and has remained doggedly focused on becoming Prime Minister, an objective greeted with snorts of derision from most people until about 10 days ago. Now that the Green Party and Bloc vote have swung to him, and the polls are showing he's the only leader with momentum in the final days of a suddenly-fascinating campaign, the errors of past years have come home to roost for the Liberals.
The electorate is no longer chicken when it comes to voting NDP. The trends are firming up, and the NDP continues to grow in support, even in polls released today. There will be a big shift in voting patterns come Monday. It's no longer a question of if Layton will make big gains, but rather a question of how big.
I'm sure Bob Rae as leader of the Liberal Party during this time of radical rethinking of progressive electoral strategy would have made the Grits more competitive than the increasingly desperate and shrill Michael Ignatieff.
I believe we are witnessing the end as we know it of the most successful political party in the democratic world. The Liberal Party of Canada will live on after May 2 -- this is a prognosis, not an obituary. But if current polling numbers hold true to election day (and I believe they will), it may be a very long time before we see it rise to challenge for a majority government again.
Thank you, Liberals. Orange juice is my favorite drink anyway. I'll be sipping it liberally on Monday night.
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