Suck It Up, Progressives: We Need a Coalition Now

[Oscar]

Suck It Up, Progressives: We Need a Coalition Now

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/04/15/Su ... on-Needed/ ]

A short-term, hard-knuckle run at the Conservatives is possible, but requires sacrifice.

By Ian Gill, 15 Apr 2015, TheTyee.ca

EXCERPT

Calling all martyrs

Just for argument's sake, let's say there are about 30 ridings where a coalition for the spilling, so to speak, would make the difference between Harper winning or not. What if, with the tacit but not public endorsement of the parties centrale, the Liberals and the Democrats each run candidates in those ridings, but consciously work together to get the vote out only for the candidate who can knock off a Tory. Radical as it sounds, and okay, ridiculous as it might seem, that means you have Libs and Dems getting the vote out for Liberal candidates in some of those swing ridings; ditto on behalf of NDP candidates in others. Between them, the parties pick up 30 seats they wouldn't otherwise win, and the Tories lose seats they don't deserve to win. Stalwarts for each party who simply cannot stomach the thought of voting anything but their favoured party can still do so, since they will still have a candidate on the ballot. But if, during the campaign, the grassroots rallies around one progressive candidate, not two, then maybe, just maybe, mission gets accomplished, and Harper gets the hook.

Yes, that means in each of those 30 ridings, one candidate has to agree to fall on his or her sword, but since by splitting the vote they aren't going to get elected anyway, what will they really have lost? The right to fight for second or third? How Canadian. Get over it.

In an interview with the Hill Times, [ http://www.hilltimes.com/news/politics/ ... says/41557 ] Waddell echoed what the Ekos poll back in December said about a majority of Canadians wanting someone to figure out how to unseat Harper. "I believe... the public would like to see them (the Liberals and the NDP) get together, before the election (emphasis added). That would ensure the defeat of the Harper government." While Waddell wasn't talking to what I am proposing here as a way to get the parties working together, he did acknowledge that at the riding level, it's hard to disrupt people's loyalties. "It's hard for traditional NDP insiders and workers," Waddell said. "They want to fight the Liberals and the Liberals want to fight them."

For the most part, in most parts of the country, they should go ahead and do just that. But in maybe 20, maybe 30, maybe even 50 ridings, they can't if they really want Harper gone. It might seem a lot to ask -- candidates to lie doggo, campaign workers to cross the floor (or the street) and sleep with the enemy for six weeks -- and yet, as Gerald Caplan wrote in the Globe, "some kind of long-term rapprochement between the NDP and the Liberals must be pursued. Don't think, after a lifetime of deep attachment to the NDP, it doesn't kill me to write these words. But anything else is a recipe for continued Conservative rule, a fate that Canadian progressives must not inflict on our country in the name of party loyalty (emphasis added)."

All I'm saying is, don't wait till after the election to craft a "long-term rapprochement" when a short-term, hard-knuckle run at the Conservatives is possible. The leadership for this needs to come from the critical ridings, and it needs to be organized so as to add up to enough seats to tip the scales. Afterwards, with Harper gone, the parties can squabble themselves silly about who gets to play what role in a Liberal-NDP coalition. And the candidates who effectively stood down to bring this to pass? Well, instead of being just another wannabe who lost to a Tory, they can be publicly lionized as one of the selfless Dirty Thirty, or however many it turns out to be, who helped run Harper out on a rail.

It's time for progressives to handicap Harper and make election history in Canada, not doom us all to repeat it -- and Tom and Justin don't have to get off their high horses to do it. The grassroots just needs to giddy up, lest the race be lost before it starts.

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Harper will continue to win majorities if NDP, Liberals don't join forces, says former NDP MP

[ http://www.hilltimes.com/news/politics/ ... says/41557 ]

'I believe the public would like to see them get together, before the election. That would ensure the defeat of the Harper government,' says former NDP MP Ian Waddell.

By TIM NAUMETZ | Published: Friday, 03/27/2015 3:47 pm EDT Last Updated: Saturday, 03/28/2015 12:34 am EDT

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will win a second majority government in a general election this year unless Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party warm up to hints of an NDP willingness to join forces before the election, says a former B.C. NDP MP elected to five terms in the House of Commons before Jean Chretien exploited Conservative division in 1993 to begin 13 years of Liberal power in Ottawa. [ . . . . . ]