Quebec politics have always puzzled me and Quebec Liberal politics have always infuriated me. And I'm feeling both emotions the more I read about how the Liberal Party is blocking popular former MP and cabinet minister Martin Cauchon from even seeking the Liberal nomination in the riding of Outremont.
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Having largely stayed-out of the blogsphere this morning I missed the news the Liberal Party has appointed former provincial NDP cabinet minister and aboriginal activist Joan Beatty as our by-election candidate in the Saskatchewan riding of Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River.
Certainly it’s good news for the party and for Stephane Dion that we were able to attract such a strong candidate, who I understand was also being wooed to run in that riding for the NDP. While this will be the toughest of the four by-election seats for the Liberals to hold (not that I think there will/should be by-elections), this will make it a very interesting race. As an aside, I was reading on a dipper blog the other day (can’t recall which) about how a past Liberal candidate in the Maratimes deciding not to run federally for the Libs again signaled doom and gloom for the party, and a coming orange wave. I wonder what greater message they’d read into Beatty’s decision to jump to the Libs?
But seriously, let’s address the criticisms that were widely raised today about the decision. First, on the appointment. While I myself prefer open nomination process driven by the local riding, I have little time for people calling appointments like this undemocratic. While I’d make an exception were the appointee unqualified/a party hack of no accomplishment, that’s clearly not the case here. So, as long as the LPC constitution gives the leader the discretionary right to appoint candidates, the leader exercising that right is just fine. The power of appointment was given to the leader democratically, and can be taken away democratically too, by amending the constitution. I don’t recall ever hearing of such a motion even being proposed, so such complaints have always rung hollow for me. Additionally, Dion campaigned on a promise to use appointments if necessary to run more female candidates. He’s fulfilling that promise, seems democratic to me.
Then there’s David Orchard, who was very interested in the seat. I’m not sure of his reaction to the appointment. I’m not a big Orchard fan, I’m a bit leery of the guy to be honest, but I hope he finds another riding and gets some support from the party because I don’t like the way he seems to have been treated here. It seems some in the party decided to try to put some distance between it and Mr. Orchard. If he was good enough to be a key part of Dion’s leadership win, he’s good enough to be a candidate now. I was at the victory party that night in Montreal, and I was surprised when, during his remarks to the crowd at the hotel, Dion brought Orchard up and signaled him out for his effort. While I think Beatty is right for this riding, I also think loyalty is very important in politics, and I think Orchard is owed better treatment.
What I really wanted to talk to though is a pattern that seems re-enforced by the party’s handling of the Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River nomination process. And that’s the emerging, and by now I think painfully obvious, pattern of sloppy and amateur management and organization by the campaign/electoral team.
This never should have gotten to the point of being controversial, and wouldn’t have were it not handled so sloppily. If they had an appointment in mind for this riding they should have waved off Orchard long ago, and let him focus his efforts elsewhere, making it clear from the outset. If he’d ignored such a wave-off that would have been his mistake, and his undoing. Instead things were allowed to fester, and degenerate into a public spectacle.
Sound familiar? It reminds me of the mess of a nomination process in Outremont that culminated with Jocelyn Coulon being parachuted in at the last minute. Now, I’m not predicting another Outremont. But Desnethé, Outremont, the whole March Garneau thing, the whole Justin Trudeau thing, the way Scarborough-Southwest was handled, and others paint a picture of a sloppy handling of nominations by the LPC.
And it speaks to a wider problem of avoidable communications and strategy mistakes and faux-pas that goes beyond just nominations. I don’t want to overstate the problem, as I do see positive developments in other areas, and clearly we’re not the only party to have nomination issues. It just seems like we’re being hurt repeatedly by entirely avoidable mistakes. That’s annoying, unfortunate, and left unchecked not good at all.
UPDATE: Thought I had this pic somewhere of Dion and Orchard at the victory party in Montreal, dug it out of my archives:
It's just after 10:00 pm on Monday night as I type this, Eastern Standard Time. The great journalist, Mike Duffy, has called Outremont for the NDP. With 70 polls reporting its Muclair 43 per cent, Coulon 35.5 per cent. Oh, the humanity!
I'm getting sleepy. I really need to go to bed, but I'm afraid. Will I ever wake-up again? Will the Earth still be turning the morning after this apocalyptic result? Maybe I should go to church instead. I mean, I've never been religious, but at times like this!
OK, I'm sorry. That's enough of the sarcasm. Serious times call for serious analysis. Not necessarily sober analysis though (I'm not the Senate after all), so I'm going to go make a rum and coke. I'm going to need it for this one. Excuse me a moment....
I'm back, double rum and coke in hand. Thanks for your patience. Luckily I hit the duty free on the way back from San Francisco last week. Bacardi Lemon, good stuff, and only US$17. It's like $30 at the LCBO.
Alright, analysis time. A warning to all the trolls, whether you're Conservative trolls or Conservative trolls pretending to be lifelong Liberals: while I will give my honest opinion, you may feel free to just skip reading and scroll down to the “post a comment” link to call me a Dion/Liberal apologist. I won't mind. Not while I have my rum and coke. Although unfortunately, I'm almost out of Coke. Lots of rum still though.
OK, so 90 polls reporting now and its Muclair 48, Coulin 29. Mon dieu, tabernac and assorted other French profanities I can't spell! I mean, I figured the NDP would probably take it but I figured it'd be close. This is freaking insane.
Now, I had a number of I feel very valid counterarguments ready to go to explain a tight Liberal loss/NDP win. For example, this is a seat that Jean Lapierre (darling of the soft nationalist, anti-Dion (anti in the sense of polar opposite philosophy wise) movement) narrowly held onto last election. Also, Muclair is a wildly popular former Liberal cabinet minister,so he's not just another candidate, and is going to swing a lot of votes on his personal popularity alone.
All very good arguments in a tight race. But 49/29 now? Tougher case to make. Where's that rum and coke...
As has been said elsewhere, it can't be spun. It's bad for the Liberal Party. So is the result in the other two ridings. It can't be spun, but can it be explained?
I'm just a humble uninformed blogger watching this trainwreck from suburban Toronto, but allow me to wildly speculate without basis, as that's what blogging is all about after all, is it not?
So, as I've already said you've got a riding a nationalist Liberal narrowly kept in 2006. Add in a popular former cab min as the NDP candidate.
With vacant seats also in Ontario and B.C. (Saskatchewan wasn't quite officially vacant yet) too, Harper calls just the three Quebec by-elections because he knows Dion is iffy in Quebec, and without a strong BC/ONT result to counterbalance a bad Quebec showing the optics are double-plus bad. Great strategy by Harper, btw. Harper sent the word out to his people: we want an NDP win, so don't campaign too hard. Indeed, look at the Con result in Outremont: 8.3 per cent. In the other two ridings, they had 36.2 in SHB and won with an astounding 59.7 in Roberval. But just 8 in Outremont? Clearly, either the Cons ran a unilingual Albertan or they phoned this one in to boost the NDP.
Finally, a look a comparison of these results to the 2006 results show the Liberal vote largely held, the shift was a massive one from the BQ, whose vote collapsed to 10 per cent, and went to the NDP. That's the margin of difference. I'd attribute that shift partially to Muclair's personal popularity, and part of a desire of the separatists, who I'll freely admit hate Dion for making them look stupid over the years, to embarrass Dion and seeing the NDP as the best positioned to win here.
Now, none of that should be considered excuses for the Liberal result. Just an explanation. Sure, we may not have lost much of our vote, but we sure didn't build it either, and we need to start building our vote to win. For that, the fault is ours.
The Quebec landscape
Before getting to that though, let me switch my uninformed and baseless speculation to the Quebec big picture. But first, let me mute Mike Duffy because even with a double rum and coke I can't stand that guy.
Ahh, that's better. Now then, Quebec at large. Speaking as a unilingual anglophone from B.C. living in Toronto, here's my view of Quebec. The days of Liberal sweeps of Quebec are over. The BQ, while hobbled, is never going to go away. The Conservatives are back again too, and they're not going to go away. Time will tell if Muclair has coattails – I have my doubts, unless Jack can recruit the rest of Jean Charest's cabinet --- but time will tell. But for many years, the Liberals were the default federalist option. That's not the case anymore, and it's not likely to be again. So, Liberals need to redefine their expectations in Quebec, and their strategy.
Speaking incredibly simplistically, I've always seen Quebec as divided into perhaps three groups: the staunch federalists, the staunch nationalists/separatists, and the soft nationalists. The BQ naturally has the separatists. The Liberals traditionally had the staunch federalists. And both sides would fight for the mushy soft nationalists. These are voters that, while not separatists, want more power for Quebec and wouldn't be above using the separatist threat to get it.
I'd argue this latter group, or at least the later strategy, has generally prevailed in the PLQ over the years. It's an approach Chretien shunned, part of the reason why the PLQ kept him out of the referendum campaign till the very end.
Fast-forward to the Martin Prime Ministership. He brings in a new Quebec team and a new approach, let's call it the Lapierre approach. They say we've got the federalist vote locked-up, let's go after that soft nationalist vote now. It doesn't work, although you can rightly attribute some blame to sponsorship. But in taking the soft nationalist strategy they start to bleed their federalist base away. Incidentally, this is the point in 2004 where they recall Dion from the backbenches to rally the federalist base.
Anyway, fast-forward to today. There's a third player in the Quebec scene, the Conservatives, and they're fighting the BQ on its home turf for those soft nationalist votes. And clearly having some success, after all, not all of these people are separtists, many are just nationalists that want more power for Quebec, that fits in well with Harper's weak federalism view of Canadian government, and the nation thing helped too.
The debate within the Liberal Party, as it has been for many years, is do we now join the Cons in fighting the BQ on that soft nationalist ground? That's the approach I'd say is favoured by the LPC(Q), and indeed by many of the Quebec delegation that was in Montreal. It's an approach that is the opposite of the one Dion has espoused throughout his career though, which was why most of the Quebec delegates that weren't with Dion at the start didn't go to him in the final ballot.
I've always argued that we should take the strong federalist strategy, because with the BQ and the Cons fighting for that soft nationalist vote we could have the federalist vote to ourselves, and if I'm casting a male lead for the Captain Canada role it's hard to do better for Dion.
After tonight though, I'm not sure if either approach is the way to go. Perhaps this thinking is out of date. What do modern Quebecers want from their federal government? What can the Liberal Party deliver that, and this is key here, is also palatable to the rest of Canada? I think this is a soul searching exercise that the LPC needs to do in Quebec, and I think Dion needs to lead it. And I think Dion and the LPC(Q) need to find some way of getting on the same page. Develop a new strategy, and get behind it.
The shorter term
I'm running low on coke zero, does rum mix with lemonade? Well, it is lemon-flavoured rum, so maybe. Let's find out. In the absence of kool-aid (which, I know Con trolls, would be so apropos) it'll have to do. Excuse me a moment.
I'm back and mmm, damm, I can report lemon rum mixes beautifully with lemonade. I now have the strength to carry-on.
Alright then, so as I says saying before you can explain what happened tonight but it's hard to view it as anything but a train wreck. A post morteum needs to be done immediately to determine just what the heck happened. Having already covered-off the strategy, the logistics need to be looked at pretty closely.
If reports like Justin's are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt that it's not, then this is a serious problem. There's lots of blame to go around here, from the campaign on the ground to the provincial organization to the leader himself. Some hard questions need to be asked, and houses need to be cleaned. All the factors working against the Liberals here aside, this sounds like it was an amateur effort, and for a modern (and historically relatively successful) political party that's just not acceptable.
Of course, there will be those that will call for Dion's head. Most of them will be Conservatives, Conservatives pretending to be Liberals, and a few Liberals hiding behind the veil of anonymity speaking to Jane Taber. They'll be in a minority however.
Dion does need to shoulder his share of the blame here though, along with the provincial organization. Make no mistake though, he's not going anywhere. I think even the minority know that. What needs to happen, as I said earlier, as the leader needs to reach-out to that Quebec organization, find some kind of common ground, and come out unified on a new Quebec strategy. That's a tough needle to thread though: while his federalism is why they dislike him in Quebec, it's also part of why we like him in the rest of Canada, or would if we'd remind him. So we need to balance that.
Fissures
While we clearly have work to do in Quebec, in the rest of Canada we're in a competitive position. Work to do, but good position. A fall election call by Harper, undoubtedly more likely after tonight, would still be a gamble. We have so many issues the Cons are vulnerable on. So it's not all doom and gloom for the LPC, although the negative press and stalled momentum that will result from tonight can't be underestimated.
But what this by-election, and certainly this last week from hell with fake e-mails and anonymous-source filled news stories, has served to make abundantly clear is that the LPC is not as united as many of us had thought, or at least hoped, that it was. When the going got tough the fingers got pointing, and the conspiracy theories began to flow.
These things have a danger of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. I think on the ground, we're united. I think the caucus is united. But I think many of the organizers in all camps haven't totally put down their swords. I think some of the people that supported other candidates need to realize Dion is going to lead us into the next election and get on board, and I think some of the Dion people need to stop seeing conspirators behind every bush, give them the benefit of the doubt, and stop saying incredibly stupid crap to the media.
And I seem to have petered out here, after an hour and a half and some 2000+ words, without a natural conclusion. So, I'll end with some profanity. Fellow Liberals of all stripes and persuasions: smarten the fuck-up. We have a heckuva lotta work to do, and it begins tomorrow.
And seriously, try the lemon rum and lemonade. Delish. I leave this post to the trolls, and go to watch Jimmy Kimmel. And BTW, great for Jeremy Piven last night at the Emmys, and Katherine Hiegl.
Antonio posted this pic of a campaign sign for Jocelyn Coulon, the Liberal candidate in the Outremont by-election. This looks like one of the big roadside ones, not the small lawn signs, but I still gather this will be the new look we'll have in the next general campaign.
I'd be interested in your thoughts. While Antonio complains there's too much green and not enough red, I disagree. I think they look sharp, the green leaves are understated and play the environmental theme in a subtle, low key way. There's still lots of red (maybe a scene red and green maple leafs instead of just green would have worked better?) and the Liberal logo is still featured prominently.
And forgive me for saying so, but I'm just glad we've moved on from the cult of personality era and are just saying Liberal, rather than something like Stephane Dion's Liberal Team.
On a contrarian note though I have to wonder: photos of the candidate on signs, good or bad idea? I've always understood the usual political maxim to be no: they're more likely to get vandalized, mustaches, etc. Costs a bit more too no doubt. I remember all the Liberal signs in 04 had Martin's face on them (the plastic bag lawn ones), they faded in the sun in about a week and he ended-up looking, shall we say, not so flattering. While I like the look with the photo here stylistically, I still wonder if it's the right way to go.
Your thoughts, thumbs up or down?
