Election 2011

[Dennis Ruhl]

The fact is that equality of representation does matter and mature democracies strive to achieve it, overcoming entrenched resistance from the heavy minorities.

So the 1991 census is frozen in time in Parliament.  Time for someone to ask the courts to redistribute as Parliament has failed.

 

[Old Sweat]

The following story from The Hill Times is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright act.

'Vaughan showed us no seat is safe,' say Liberals

The three federal byelections last week shifted the political landscape in favour of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

By TIM NAUMETZ

Published December 6, 2010
         
The three federal byelections last week shifted the political landscape in favour of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives to an extent few observers and voters are aware and, because of a strategic Conservative decision on candidate selection for the Winnipeg North contest, gave the Liberals the sense and image of showing well while actually playing into Conservative hands.

A top Tory from Winnipeg told The Hill Times that had the Conservatives mounted the same candidate who ran in Winnipeg North in the 2008 election, Ray Larkin, whose daughter Marni Larkin is a senior director and organizer for the federal Conservatives in Manitoba, NDP candidate Kevin Chief would likely have won.

Instead, late last summer, after Mr. Lamoureux defeated a prominent member of the large Filipino community in the riding for the byelection nomination, the Conservatives dropped Mr. Larkin and selected a little-known member of the Filipino expatriate population, Julie Javier, who barely ran a campaign, avoided candidate debates and media interviews, featured a mobile poster mounted atop an automobile that sporadically appeared in the riding, and drew criticism from even Conservative party members for her lacklustre effort.

The end result gave Ms. Javier a paltry 1,647 votes, which NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) says came largely from a diehard knot of Filipino Conservative supporters who supported the tough-on-crime agenda Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) drew attention to on his only low-profile visit to the riding. Had Mr. Larkin been the Conservative candidate, after having won 5,033 votes and 22 per cent of the vote in the 2008 election, Liberal candidate Kevin Lamoureux, who resigned his provincial legislative assembly seat to contest the byelection, would have lost, the senior Conservative said.

It appears that despite allegations the Conservatives put up Ms. Javier to draw votes from the Liberals, the opposite was the case—Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives wanted Mr. Lamoureux to win.

Party insiders say there is one main reason: They want Mr. Ignatieff to be leading the Liberal Party into the next general election. Mr. Ignatieff has the lowest personal voter support ratings on the federal scene, perhaps since Brian Mulroney, although not for the same reasons, and he has been unable to bring the party's support above the 30-per-cent threshold in public opinion polls.

Critics say he has no political instincts and makes mistakes. For example, last week he got the Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette riding wrong when he was addressing his caucus.

"If they lost all three, the knives would have been out," the Conservative said. Another told The Hill Times in an earlier interview after the byelections: "We're happy Iggy is staying."

It was the second time Mr. Lamoureux, a veteran of the Manitoba assembly, had resigned his provincial seat to run federally. The first time, in 2000, he lost a bid to defeat Mr. Martin in Winnipeg Centre. Mr. Martin predicts Mr. Lamoureux will give no boost to Liberal chances in Manitoba in the next federal vote, calling him a "dilettante" in the provincial political scene.

Mr. Martin and the senior Conservative agreed Mr. Lamoureux's victory will not threaten Conservative incumbents in Winnipeg going into the next federal election. "Rob Bruinooge [Winnipeg South, Man.]and Shelly Glover [Saint Boniface, Man.] are doing a good job, they're solid," the Conservative said.

Not wanting to be identified, he noted, as well that the Conservative candidate placement also meant Mr. Lamoureux was running against members of two minorities—the Filipino community and a member of the large aboriginal community that the riding is also home to.

Mr. Martin speculated that the credentials and history of the star NDP candidate, Kevin Chief, a gifted and accomplished leader at the University of Winnipeg who grew up in a poor district in Winnipeg North and obtained a degree at the university through basketball scholarships, would have given the NDP a boost nationally had he won a seat in the Commons. It might have been at the expense of certain Conservative ridings as well as Liberal-held territory.

A second Conservative from Winnipeg also told The Hill Times the Conservatives wanted Mr. Lamoureux to win, although he later retracted the comment.

In the meantime, organizers with each of the parties told The Hill Times the Conservatives threw everything they had into the Vaughan, Ont., byelection to get former Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino into Parliament. Mr. Fantino's victory, as close as it was with his margin of only 964 votes against Liberal Tony Genco, represents a potential leap ahead for the Conservatives in neighbouring Metro Toronto ridings.

One veteran Liberal told The Hill Times even though Liberal MPs played up the fact Mr. Fantino won with such a narrow margin, the fact that the Vaughan Italian-Canadian community swung heavily toward Mr. Fantino is another signal new and old immigrant communities in the City of Toronto proper are ready to change their voting patterns. The Liberal noted even the large Polish community is shifting toward Mr. Harper, in part out of discontent with past Liberal measures such as the legalization of same-sex marriage, and in part because of the Conservative focus on crime. The Liberal said Mr. Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, Alta.,) have been working visible minority and immigrant communities more intensively than most people know. Mr. Harper recently attended a locally high-profile wedding in one of the neighbourhoods in Toronto, impressing local citizens, but did not publicize the appearance through the national news media.

"Vaughan showed us that no seats are safe," the Liberal said.

At the same time, say New Democrat organizers, the NDP nearly ignored Vaughan, focusing on Winnipeg North instead with its federal as well as local organizational support. Mr. Chief's campaign manager, Patrick Costigan, is a staffer at the party's Ottawa head office, and Brad Lavigne, the party's national director, told The Hill Times there was no point in wasting valuable resources in Vaughan, where 26-year-old NDP candidate Kevin Bordian garnered only 661 votes, 1.7 per cent of the byelection ballots, compared to 5,442 votes, 9.6 per cent, the party's candidate won in Vaughan in the 2008 general election.

In the third byelection, in Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette in Manitoba, the Liberal Party barely put up a fight, New Democrats and local Conservatives say. There, a district in which two Cabinet ministers from the Manitoba NDP government reside, and helped out in the bylections, the NDP increased its vote share to 26.5 per cent from 16 per cent in the 2008 election and its candidate, Denise Harder, placed a healthy second to Conservative Robert Sopuck.

Pollster Frank Graves said he found it "incredible" that the Conservatives would construct such an election scenario, with the ulterior aim of helping the candidate representing their chief opponent in the riding. But he acknowledged the Conservative motive of doing everything it can—without suffering self-inflicted damage as in this case—to keep Mr. Ignatieff afloat.

"That's even bigger than just two byelections," said Mr. Graves. "It's unprecedented."

The NDP strategy in Vaughan and the Liberal approach to Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette raised suggestions that, while the Conservatives may have controlled the outcome of the byelections, the Liberals and NDP may be in a better position in the next general election, when they can pick and choose the districts in which they want to pour resources.

Liberal MP Judy Sgro (York West, Ont.) said she heard hints of that message from voters when she knocked on doors supporting Mr. Genco in Vaughan.

"People are getting fed up, they want to start seeing us, I think, get together and start eliminating the minority situation, they're clearly tired of that, I heard that," Ms. Sgro told The Hill Times.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
The Liberals, like the Conservatives, must figure out how to form a majority government without Québec; the first of them to figure out how to do this (hint: the answer surrounds Toronto and includes Alberta and BC and involves more HoC seats for all three places) will govern Canada most often.

As I said ...

This is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/cluster-strategy-puts-tories-on-track-for-majority-poll-suggests/article1827215/

‘Cluster’ strategy puts Tories on track for majority, poll suggests

JANE TABER

Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Monday, December 6, 2010

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are headed toward a majority government without the help of Quebec, a new national poll suggests.

The Nanos end-of-year survey is significant, revealing an emerging Tory strategy in which the governing party is concentrating on winning groups of riding with focused issues. And it appears to be bearing fruit for the Prime Minister.

Forming a majority government for the Tories has for so many months appeared elusive, especially given fragile support in Quebec. They hold just 11 of the 75 federal seats in the province.

“The current configuration of national support for the Conservatives suggests that numerically a Tory majority government can be formed without significant breakthrough in the province of Quebec,” pollster Nik Nanos told The Globe. “In this paradigm, the Conservatives narrowcast messages to clusters of ridings on a diversity of issues such as crime, the long-gun registry and social issues that align with their base and which divide the opposition.”

The Nanos poll has the Tories seven points ahead of their rivals, Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals – 38.1 per cent support nationally compared to 31.2 per cent. The NDP is at 17.2 per cent; the Green Party has the support of only 3.2 per cent of Canadians and the Bloc is at 10. 2 per cent. About a quarter of respondents, or 25.4 per cent, were undecided.

Mr. Nanos’s polling suggests the ridings the Tories appear to be concentrating on are in the 905 and 416 area codes – seats now occupied by the Liberals.

He says these “key cluster” ridings had been Conservative under Brian Mulroney. In suburban ridings, Mr. Nanos believes Mr. Harper’s team is using “crime as a hot button” and in the rural Liberal and NDP ridings, they are using the long-gun registry as a wedge issue.

“This basically speaks to a strategy where the Conservatives focus on rural and small town Canada along with being competitive among suburban voters,” Mr. Nanos said.

Indeed, the Tories won the suburban riding of Vaughan, Ont., in a by-election last Monday after it had been held by the Liberals for 22 years. In that campaign, star candidate Julian Fantino – the former Toronto police chief and Ontario Provincial Police commissioner – played up the Conservative law-and-order agenda.

The poll also shows the Tories have recovered the support they lost over the summer and early fall, partly as a result of concern over the government’s decision to scrap the mandatory long form census.

The regional breakdowns are also telling. In Ontario the Tories are leading the Liberals, 42.3 per cent compared to 35.5 per cent. Mr. Harper and his team are also ahead in Atlantic Canada, usually a Liberal bastion, by 43.5 per cent compared to 36 per cent for the Grits. In Quebec, however, the Liberals are still leading the Conservatives – 26.7 per cent compared to 18.3 per cent – although the Bloc is way ahead, polling at 40.1 per cent.

The Nanos poll looked, too, at the top issues concerning Canadians. It found that voters continue to be worried about jobs, the economy and health care.

“What is interesting is the potential forward impact these issues will have on the public mind,” Mr. Nanos said. “As the Conservatives wind down their stimulus program, it will be more difficult for them to portray themselves as being pro-active on the economic front.”

The Prime Minister announced last week he would extend stimulus the deadline for infrastructure projects to be completed by another seven months. Until that point, the program had been intended to wind up in March.

The Nanos survey found that 22.3 per cent of respondents were concerned about jobs and the economy compared to 20.7 per cent who were worried about health care. The environment was the third issue of most concern although only 8 per cent of respondents mentioned it; high taxes came in fourth with 4.4 per cent of respondents saying they were worried about it.

The poll of 1,002 Canadians was conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 2. It is considered accurate within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Looks like the Tories have figured it out first and, consequently, the universe, a Pierre Trudeau noted, is unfolding as it should.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Nanos' full numbers attached - this from the company's e-mail release:

The latest Nanos poll shows that the Conservatives have recovered support lost over the summer and early fall. The Nanos national ballot stands at 38.1% for the Tories, 31.2% for the Liberals, 17.2% for the NDP, 10.2% for the BQ and 3.2% for the Green Party of Canada.

The current configuration of national support for the Conservatives suggests that numerically a Tory majority government can be formed without a significant breakthrough in the province of Quebec.

Although the Conservatives in the past have used various strategies to get to a majority, most recently the narrowcasting of issues suggests a new majority riding cluster strategy has emerged. In this paradigm, the Conservatives narrowcast messages to clusters of ridings on a diversity of issues such as crime, the long gun registry and social issues that align with their base and which divide the opposition. With a sweeping pan-Canadian mandate more difficult to attain, it would seem that the Conservatives are more focused on clusters of ridings and issues which divide the opposition to allow the Conservatives to divide the non-Harper universe ....

 

[Edward Campbell]

See this for some background on the problem.

Every so often the Good Grey Globe's Jeffrey Simpson gets it, mostly, right. He does so in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/electoral-injustice-cities-are-getting-the-shaft/article1828964/

Electoral injustice: Cities are getting the shaft

JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Voters of Greater Toronto, Calgary and British Columbia’s Lower Mainland: Beware! You’re about to get shafted again by your federal Parliament.

These areas, and other urban and suburban ones across Canada, are already being shafted by the electoral map that heavily favours rural and northern areas. Ridings there already have many fewer voters – tens of thousands, in some cases – than those in urban and suburban areas. And, of course, the Atlantic provinces and Quebec already have too many seats relative to the rest of Canada, courtesy of deals made at Confederation or later.

The latest shaft apparently comes from a very quiet agreement by the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats to shelve a bill that would have given Ontario 18 new seats, B.C. seven and Alberta five – seats to which they’re entitled under the last census.

Apportioning seats among provinces is supposed to be a technical, straightforward matter that starts with the decimal census. Based on the population of each province and territory, seats are allocated after taking into account the special deals for Atlantic Canada and Quebec. Then it’s up to non-partisan redistribution commissions (made up of political scientists, retired judges and the like) to draw the constituency boundaries within each province. There’s an appeal to the process that sometimes can wind up in a parliamentary committee.

Generally speaking, the system is established to prevent politicians from fiddling with the law and the principle of one person/one vote that underpins the law.

Politicians, however, have been known to fiddle, and they’re fiddling again. They should be stopped as fast as possible, because Parliament belongs to the people, not the political parties or the self-seeking provinces.

Before the last election, seized of the census count and the apportionment of seats among provinces that flowed from the census, the Harper government tried to pull a fast and dirty on Ontario.

With then-House leader Peter Van Loan actually from Ontario, the government concocted a convoluted explanation why Ontario shouldn’t get 18 more seats but something less. B.C. and Alberta, Conservative strongholds, could get their fair share, but not Ontario. Premier Dalton McGuinty (and others) rightly blew a gasket, and the Conservative deviousness died on the order paper.

Why did the Harperites even try to be devious, mocking the one-person/one-vote principle? Because Quebec objected, pure and simple. The province, knowing its relative strength would decline under redistribution for the unassailably logical reason that its population was not growing, concocted a plea of its own. Quebec is a “nation,” said the National Assembly, and therefore doesn’t deserve to lose seats. In typical Quebec fashion, the National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution endorsing this fiction.

This self-definition, whatever its cosmological, epistemological, atavistic, cultural or descriptive power, had nothing to do with seats in Parliament. It was just a power play, and the Harperites folded because they themselves had declared the Quebecois to be a “nation,” courtesy of a snap decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and were trying to tickle Quebec’s fancy by any available means.

That destined-to-fail flirtation was rebuffed in the last election, so the Harperites actually began to stand on principle. Ontario would get its new seats, after all, as would B.C. and Alberta. So said the Harper government, repeatedly. Case closed.

Now fear of irritating Quebec, plus renewed special pleading from the already overrepresented Atlantic provinces, has caused all major parties to push the pause button on the legislation, thereby shafting the urban areas in these provinces that, by law and right, should have more seats. The Bloc Québécois, being only interested in Quebec, obviously wants no change in the electoral map.

It’s also possible that rural and northern MPs in the provinces due more seats might silently be cheering on the special pleaders, since their areas within provinces will lose relative clout. No doubt, they’d argue that their ridings are already too big geographically.

Bottom line: Fast-growing and urban/suburban parts of Canada are about to be done yet another electoral injustice by a Parliament whose electoral composition already mocks contemporary Canada.

Notwithstanding Simpson's all too evident anti-Harper bias – but he is a columnist, not a reporter, so we expect bias – and his little fiction that the Liberal/NDP urban strongholds are being shortchanged (it is, really, the Conservative leaning suburban regions that will, almost certainly, get most of the new seats) his thesis is correct: it is time, way past time, to stop pandering to appeasing Québec. It is less and less and less consequential to much of anything in Canada and the world, and Atlantic Canada matters not at all – except for the provision of singing groups and soldiers. The future of Canada rests, almost exclusively, West of the Ottawa River.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Brian Topp, one of the Globe and Mail's political bloggers, is an NDP stalwart, but he's not a fool. Consider this, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/brian-topp/don-cherry-the-eye-opener/article1833209/page2/

My emphasis added.

Don Cherry, the eye-opener

BRIAN TOPP

Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Friday, December 10, 2010


There are easy things to say about Don Cherry’s appearance at Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s inauguration a few days ago. It was time for some “blue collar” people to run city hall – says a millionaire putting the seals of office around the neck of another millionaire. Time to get the “artsy” people out of city hall – says a public-broadcasting television comedian. Time for a fresh new start – and the “lefty pinkos” can put that in their pipe, setting the scene for four years of gracelessness, thuggishness and pointless conflict, so it would seem. Was that really a fresh new start?

But there are far, far more important things to say about this important and eye-opening event. Mayor Ford’s inauguration is a good symbol of a critically-important strategic issue that progressive-minded people would do well to think very carefully about. Our opponents have, for many years.

To begin, let us not dismiss either Mr. Cherry or Mayor Ford as clowns or fools. They are neither. Mr. Cherry and Mayor Ford are both smart, crafty and carefully-calculating players in their own worlds, and they know exactly what they’re doing. What we need to do is understand what they’re up to.

A good place to start is here, on the website of the American Enterprise Institute – one of the many murkily-governed and business-funded think tanks dedicated to spreading kleptocracy in the United States and around the world. The author is Henry Olsen and the article is a pickup from National Review Online.

This article is an interesting and thoughtful look at how the soldiers of kleptocracy view U.S. politics, with a particular focus on the recent Congressional midterms. The whole article rewards a careful read. But let’s go about two-thirds of the way down the piece, where Mr. Olsen is trying to understand why ordinary working people tend to support progressive parties:

“Ask an American working-class voter why he supports Democrats and he or she is likely to say it’s because Democrats support ‘the little guy’. ... I found exactly the same phrase used by English miners to describe their support for Labour. When I found the same phrase being used by Australian working-class voters to describe their attraction to the Australian Labor Party. I decided I needed to learn more.”

Now things get interesting. Read on:

“So I reached out to Patrick Muttart, former chief of staff to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Muttart is perhaps the world’s leading expert on working-class voters in English-speaking countries, having studied their behaviour and attitudes not only in Canada and also in Britain, Australia and America. He has found that in every country working-class voters may form the base for successful center-left governments but are crucially responsible for the rise of center-right leaders like Harper, Australia’s John Howard, and Margaret Thatcher.”

There then follows a detailed analysis of what motivates and interests working-class voters, with a focus on how to manipulate them into voting against their own economic and social best interests. Mr. Olson, quoting Mr. Muttart, notes the deep seams of optimism, fear, pride, anger at disrespect, belief in public order, patriotism, and concern about rapid change that motivate working class electorates. And he describes how conservative politicians can frame campaigns around these themes.

This is the intellectual underpinning of Stephen Harper’s “Timmy’s” campaign – and also of the Ford campaign, and of Mr. Cherry’s appearance to frame Mayor Ford’s term.

Conservatives are Tim Hortons, just like you. The Liberals and New Democrats are Starbucks – not like you. Conservatives are working class; progressives are the “elite.” Conservatives support the police and safety at home; progressives are with the crooks. Conservatives want to give you a bit of money off your taxes to help you out in uncertain times; progressives want you to pay more. Conservatives are proud of their country and will defend it; progressives hate their country and want to give in to our enemies. Etc.

Paul Martin and Michael Ignatieff were and are sitting ducks for this frame – perfect validators for it – which explains much of what has happened in federal politics in recent years. But these themes are now the common currency of conservatives at all levels of government throughout the English-speaking world.

It is Orwellian double-talk. The conservative agenda seeks to impoverish all of Tim Hortons’ clients and to transfer their savings and income to people who view Starbucks as pedestrian. The conservative agenda is about the most massive transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the elite since the 1920s. The conservative agenda leads to more crime. The conservative agenda is about subordinating our sovereignty to global corporate interests – including the sale of our key assets to foreigners – and to the foreign policy agenda of another country.

But it is also, as a piece of political engineering, smart. And, as recent electoral results demonstrate, effective.

So what is to be done? There is a great deal to be done.

A good place to start is to stop building up our opponents by mocking or demonizing them, as so many progressive people did, self-defeatingly, in the case of both Prime Minister Harper and Mayor Ford.

Next, we need to find some clear words to point out the fundamental contradiction in the conservative message – a populist message designed to beggar the populi.

And third, we need to scrub off thirty years of impenetrable, internally-focussed, liberal, academic, bureaucratic, entitlement-driven, self-absorbed “progressive” language.

Instead of all that, we need to beat the Conservatives in the race for our own base – and then reverse field on them.

They are already halfway ahead of us on the track in that race. As Barack Obama learned this November. As Torontonians are now also learning, with a little help from the CBC and its best professional comedian.

I'm pretty sure Topp is right; the neo-liberal Conservatives are demonizing the elites in the Liberals and NDP and working for the Timmies crowd – and, if they succeed, they may prove the conventional wisdom to be wrong and they may get the 'holy grail': a majority without much support from Québec.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is what Patrick Muttart, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper had to say in the article referenced by Topp and Henry Olsen's (the author) conclusions:

http://www.aei.org/article/102714

 He [Muttart] emphasized that working-class voters do not fit neatly on the traditional left-right continuum. They are fiscally conservative, wanting low rates of taxation and wanting government to live within its means, but economically populist, suspicious of trade, outsourcing, and high finance. They are culturally orthodox but morally moderate, in the sense that they don't feel their lives will change much because of how social issues play out. They are patriotic and supportive of the military, but suspicious of foreign adventures.
Most importantly, they are modest in their aspirations for themselves. They do not aspire to be "type A business owners"; they want to go to work, do what's asked of them, not have too much stress in their lives, and spend time with their families. They want structure and stability in their lives so that things are taken care of and they don't have to worry.

Drawing on Muttart's insights and my own thinking, I believe there are seven salient values or tendencies that are common to working-class voters across the decades. Call them the Seven Habits of the Working Class. They are:

Hope for the future
Fear of the present
Pride in their lives
Anger at being disrespected
Belief in public order
Patriotism
Fear of rapid change

Let me address each of them in turn.

Hope for the future: One of the striking facts about America is how readily we believe that we can prosper through hard work and our own efforts. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly believe this to be true. These polls also show there is a high correlation between the belief that one is in control of one's life and the belief that one can prosper through one's own efforts.

Working-class Americans share classic American beliefs very strongly. They value economic growth because they believe they personally benefit from it. Unlike Continental Europeans, working-class voters do not envy the rich. They believe that Bill Gates has earned his billions, and while they do not believe they can become billionaires, they believe their children can.

Fear of the present: Working-class voters may believe that they and their children can move upward, but they are as or more motivated by their fear of moving downward. They recognize that their relative lack of education means they are at more risk of being laid off in downturns. Their relative lack of earning power means they find it harder to save for retirement, afford medical care, or pay for their children's education. Their relative lack of specialized skills means they are more vulnerable to competition from unskilled immigrants and more likely to remain unemployed if they lose their job. This gnawing fear that everything they have built is at risk of falling apart is a central feature of their political identity.

Pride in their lives: Working-class voters are generally not a despondent group. Life is harder for them in many ways, but they take pride in who they are. They are not "bitter people, clinging to religion or guns"; they celebrate their lives and crave respect from the educated and wealthy classes. They flock to politicians who show genuine respect for their lives, and turn on those who display contempt or disdain.

Anger at being disrespected: This is the flip side of their pride. Working-class voters are very cognizant of their status in American life. They rarely occupy executive positions in their jobs and are consumers rather than producers of ideas. They feel keenly this relative lack of control over important features of their lives, and resent being ordered about as if they were merely pawns in someone else's grand plan. They particularly dislike having their lives belittled as unsophisticated or inferior to the lives of educated or wealthy folk.

This anger can be expressed against big business, big government, or big anything. If working-class voters feel they are being treated as mere tools, they will react with anger whether the source of the treatment is an employer, a politician, or an academic.

Belief in public order: Working-class voters rely more on the public order to provide a structure in their lives than do upper-class voters. They can't afford private security services or retreat to homes with large yards far from unruly elements. They live closer together and in closer contact with crime. Accordingly, they place a high premium on effective police and fire services and greatly respect policemen and firemen.

Patriotism: Working-class voters are highly patriotic. They love their country openly in ways that often seem odd and embarrassing to the educated class. They are likelier to express open support of and deference to the military (while simultaneously recognizing that "big military" is wasteful); their children volunteer for the military in much greater numbers than those of any other class. This is partly economic--learning a trade in the military is a better opportunity for them than for people who think they can graduate from college--but it is also genuinely patriotic.

This sentiment is particularly strong among recent immigrants. One way to show your devotion to your new country is to revere its symbols and institutions, and for the working class the military is perhaps the most accessible institution of all. Hispanics in particular enlist in the military, and it is no surprise that Republican presidential candidates who are strongly supportive of the military, like Reagan and George W. Bush, have fared best among Hispanic voters in the last 45 years.

Fear of rapid change: Working-class voters recognize that they are less equipped to handle sudden changes; consequently, they value stability highly. They fear sudden recessions and distrust sudden changes in government programs. Ronald Reagan, the conservative who has best understood the working class, put his finger on it in a prescient 1964 National Review article on why Goldwater lost: "Human nature resists change and goes over backward to avoid radical change." Upper-class educated people may embrace risk and change, but working-class voters do not.

Now consider these values in the light of the primary features of liberal progressivism. Liberal progressives inherently crave rapid, transformational change; working-class voters abhor it. This was as true in the 1960s (the Great Society) and the early Clinton years as it is today. The impatience that characterizes liberal progressivism often leads to the impression that its apostles feel contempt and disdain for those who disagree; working-class voters sense this and react against it. Liberal progressivism requires high tax rates, not only on the rich but also on the middle and working classes (overseas, this is accomplished via the VAT); working-class voters know this will choke off economic growth and increase the financial stress in their lives. Liberal progressivism typically displays less concern with public order and the institutions that provide public order; working-class voters opposed this in the 1960s and 1980s when it appeared that crime was rampant, and they remain sensitive to it to this day.

Looks like the Tory political tactics to me. I believe Harper's political strategy is to destroy the Liberal Party so that he/the Conservative Party (which will have absorbed many former Liberals) face a beefed up NDP (being reinforced with even more Liberals) and a Liberal rump.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This, I think is where the big battles of the (assumed) 2011 general election will be fought: on the Liberals’ left wing, between the  Liberals and the NDP. The article is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/grits-dismiss-ndp-tory-dtente-as-electioneering/article1851914/

Grits dismiss NDP-Tory détente as electioneering

BILL CURRY

Ottawa— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Scott Brison isn’t buying the new talk of “common ground” between the Conservative government and the NDP.

The Liberal finance critic insists the suggestions of Tory-NDP co-operation in areas like seniors policy and helping the unemployed has more to do with election timing.

“Both the NDP and the Conservatives are playing games on this,” he said. “There’s no common ground between those two parties except to avoid an election at any cost.”

Mr. Brison was reacting to comments from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and NDP finance critic Tom Mulcair, who both listed several areas of common ground that emerged from their private discussion on the 2011 budget.

Both Mr. Flaherty and Mr. Mulcair also stressed, however, that there are no assurances the NDP will vote for the next budget. The issue of corporate tax cuts is likely to be the largest hurdle to an agreement.

Casual observers of federal politics could be forgiven if the recent rhetoric flowing from Ottawa leaves them slightly confused.

Since the October, 2008, election, the Opposition Liberals have switched positions several times on the matter of whether they are aggressively attempting to defeat the government. Early on, the Liberals supported a plan to defeat the Conservatives and form a coalition government with the NDP.

Then the Liberals switched gears, abandoned the NDP and supported the January, 2009, Conservative budget.

By August of 2009, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff surprised some in his own ranks by announcing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s time “was up,” and that the Liberals would push hard to defeat the government that fall.

The NDP chose not to play along, allowing the government to survive. At the time, the NDP cited the need to approve increased employment-insurance benefits. Popular support for the Liberals tumbled, leading Mr. Ignatieff to acknowledge his approach was the wrong one and that Canadians did not want an election.

That position held until Mr. Ignatieff’s 2010 year-end interviews, in which he appears to have reverted to August, 2009, again with heightened election talk.

The big question now is what will happen to the Liberal poll numbers. Will voters once again punish Mr. Ignatieff for advocating an election or will they support his view that one is needed?

Pollster Nik Nanos says the Liberal positioning appears to be aimed at making Mr. Ignatieff look like a “strong” leader, but being strong on an election can be a hard sell with voters.

Mr. Nanos said Canadians rarely want an election, especially when they are of the view that one is unlikely to lead to much change from the status quo. Mr. Nanos said the Liberals appear to be hoping they can oppose the Conservatives in Parliament and count on either the NDP or the Bloc Québécois to ensure an election is avoided.

“We should really delineate between tough talk and the ability to deliver based on that tough talk,” he said. “I think for the Liberals, they can talk tough knowing that it’s unlikely that there will be an election. But if someone called their bluff, it would be a difficult election for them.”

Ipsos Reid pollster Darrell Bricker agrees that the Liberals have no reason to want an election.

“The Liberals are in a particularly weakened state right now,” he said. “For the Liberals, the problem that they have when they get in a situation where the NDP and the Tories get together is it starts to make the Liberals look a little irrelevant. Of course, they can position themselves as the true opposition, but the problem that the progressive side of the political agenda has is that it’s all over the map.”

Mr. Bricker says the Conservatives have a strong lock on centre-right voters, while centre-left voters are split between the Liberals, the Bloc, the NDP and the Greens.

“So if the NDP looks like it’s able to deliver more of a progressive agenda, it looks like it’s more able to deliver the goods,” he said.

It sucks to be Ignatieff.

 

[a_majoor]

There are areas where common ground might be found, and the idea of the NDP working with the CPC on a particular piece of legislation isn't strange. Consider that the CPC and NDP should officially be against subsidies for business, although for opposite ideological reasons. Given the current financial situation, it is conceivable that they might agree to eliminate subsidies in a future budget, allowing each side to claim a win for their base and actually achieving something as well:

http://american.com/archive/2010/december/dump-the-bipartisan-mush-heres-how-you-do-it-for-real/article_print

Dump the Bipartisan Mush: Here’s How You Do It for Real

By Steven F. Hayward Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Filed under: Science & Technology, Government & Politics
Here’s how serious people transcend ideological differences. And we don’t need no stinkin’ ‘no labels’ badges.

All the talk lately of “bipartisan consensus” and the smug No Labels movement brought back to mind the surely apocryphal but truthy story of the Russian visiting a U.S. Senate aide shortly after the fall of Communism in the old USSR. “Please explain two-party system,” the Russian asked, having no experience with multi-party democracy. “It’s simple,” explained the Senate staff veteran. “We have two parties in America—the stupid party and the evil party. Since I’m a Republican, I’m in the stupid party, and we stupidly battle against the evil of the evil party.”

“But sometimes the two parties get together and do something really stupid and evil. We call that ‘bipartisanship.’”

Not even Jon Stewart can nail it more accurately than that.

    Everyone says he or she is for ‘bipartisan consensus,’ but usually this represents nothing more than lowest-common-denominator compromise.

Everyone says he or she is for “bipartisan consensus,” but usually this represents nothing more than lowest-common-denominator compromise—necessary from time to time, but hardly a political philosophy. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had it right when she scorned consensus as “the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?”

I have some skin in this game. Recently I was involved in a long effort that produced “Post-Partisan Power,” a blueprint for energy innovation written in collaboration with Mark Muro of the center-liberal Brookings Institution, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the progressive-leaning Breakthrough Institute. How did these strange bedfellows come together to produce something bridging ideological lines? Well, we didn’t do it by holding hands and singing “Kumbaya,” engaging in typical horse-trading or the other low arts of compromise, or glossing over fundamental principles.

Instead, we did it in the only serious way possible: long conversations (as in day-long, several times), and genteel argument. It took a year and a half in total. Rather than debating disagreements, we argued about them at length, which is not the same thing. It was more like an advanced graduate seminar, with everyone looking for academic literature and other evidence to illuminate problems and persuade others about a particular point.

    ‘What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner “I stand for consensus”?’

Of course, the prerequisite for such a process is an essential openness by all participants to consider challenges to their points of view. I had taken note of Shellenberger and Nordhaus back in 2007, when their book Break Through was published. Here were two thinkers inside the environmental community who were willing to reconsider several fundamental assumptions about environmental thought. Increasingly, I’ve come to regard their book as the “Moynihan Report” of environmentalism. Patrick Moynihan, recall, was vilified in the 1960s for worrying about family structure, because it clashed with the redistributionist monomania of the Left at the time. Shellenberger and Nordhaus depart from Left-environmental orthodoxy on climate change in seeing the near-term suppression of fossil fuels as a hopeless strategy, and argue for conceiving the whole problem differently. Like Moynihan in the 1960s, most of the green Left has denounced them.

Something Moynihan realized in the early 1970s comes to mind here. He wrote that the thing most needful was “a simple openness to alternative definitions of a problem and a willingness to concede the possibility of events taking a variety of courses. This ought to be the preeminent mode of liberalism, and yet somehow it is not.” Swap out “environmentalism” for “liberalism” in this last sentence, and you will put your finger on the problem of climate change (and environmentalism generally) today.

    Rather than debating disagreements, we argued about them at length, which is not the same thing.

Thoughtful liberals eventually came around to recognizing that Moynihan was right in his concerns about family structure. Will environmentalists come around to recognizing that Shellenberger and Nordhaus are right today? We’ll see.

For my part, I remain unconvinced by the case for catastrophic global warming, and in the strict sense I do not believe we suffer from “market failure” in energy. But uncertainty on climate change cuts in both directions; there are some serious structural problems in the energy markets that make them vulnerable, and above all the world is going to need massive amounts of new energy sources over the next 50 years, so a program of getting ahead of the curve is worth considering.

Not all of us in our small working group are equally enthusiastic or persuaded by every point in “Post-Partisan Power,” but we’ve definitely shown how serious people go about transcending ideological differences. In fact, we’re setting in motion a sequel: “Part-Partisan Power 2,” a new round of patient deliberations about the second-order details of implementing the framework to improve its chances of success.

And we don’t need no stinkin’ No Labels badges.

Steven F. Hayward is the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
FURTHER READING: Hayward also gave “Two Cheers for the Clean Air Act,” decried “The Irrelevance of Modern Political Science,” and portrayed “Environmentalists as Battered Spouses.” He traverses “From Cancun to Kyoto,” suggests “How to Think about Oil Spills,” and ponders “The Energy Policy Morass.”

 

[a_majoor]

On again, off again election sabre rattling. Now its off again...:

http://www.nationalpost.com/plan+topple+Tories+over+budget+Liberal/4042652/story.html

No plan to topple Tories over budget: Liberal MP

Shaun Best/Reuters
NDP finance critic Thomas Mulcair says of Liberal criticism of Conservative corporate tax cuts: “The hypocrisy of the Liberals on this one is mind-boggling.”
CommentsTwitterLinkedInDiggBuzzEmail
Laura Stone, Postmedia News · Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010

OTTAWA — The federal Liberals have no plan to take down the Conservatives over the upcoming budget, but instead will wait and see if the Harper government reverses its course on such major policies as corporate tax cuts, a Grit MP said Thursday.

Halifax MP Geoff Regan brushed off suggestions the Liberals would vote against an upcoming Conservative budget and possibly trigger an election as early as February or March.

“We want to see where the government goes with the budget. Obviously our effort is to call upon the government to change its course on some major issues, like the corporate tax cuts, like the untendered $21-billion fighter jet program. And we have to watch and see what they do. But we think we’ve made our positions very clear,” Mr. Regan said.

“I know that it’s always interesting to talk about when there might or might not be an election, but I’m afraid I can’t help you come to a conclusion about when that’s going to be.”

There was speculation about an election earlier this month when Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said his party would oppose the Conservative budget if the government’s priorities didn’t change.

Instead, Mr. Regan took shots Thursday at both the Conservatives and the NDP, saying both are failing to help Canadian families.

In particular, he called on the NDP to demand the cancellation of the upcoming Conservative corporate tax breaks, which come into effect on Jan. 1.

“We think that this is irresponsible at a time of deficits to move forward with this huge $6-billion-per-year tax cut for corporations,” Mr. Regan said.

NDP MP Thomas Mulcair, the party’s finance critic, fired back at the Liberals for having “no credibility on this issue whatsoever.”

He said that by allowing past Conservative budgets to pass, the Liberals essentially voted for the tax cuts themselves.

“The hypocrisy of the Liberals on this one is mind-boggling . . . The Liberals voted for these tax cuts. They are responsible for them. For them to be calling upon the NDP to reverse them within the next 48 hours is a joke,” Mr. Mulcair said.

“We’ve said that the biggest problem in the economic policies of the Conservatives is that they destabilize the Canadian economy by giving these across-the-board tax cuts to Canada’s richest corporations,” he said, adding that it is “very unlikely” the NDP caucus would support a budget that maintained the cuts.

The federal general corporate income tax rate will be reduced from 18% to 16.5% effective Jan. 1. It will then be reduced to 15% on Jan. 1, 2012.

A spokesman for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he was not available to comment Thursday.

But Mr. Flaherty said in a recent release that the economy is the government’s No. 1 priority.

“If we want more jobs, higher wages and an improved standard of living, Canada needs to be the most attractive place for job creators to do business and invest,” he said.



Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/plan+topple+Tories+over+budget+Liberal/4042652/story.html#ixzz19f4vhXfG

 

[Journeyman]

What's sad is that so few people who vote actually read through complete articles (let alone do their own research).
http://www.nationalpost.com/plan+topple+Tories+over+budget+Liberal/4042652/story.html

Based on this article, ostensibly about a Liberal complaining about NDP/Con.....I'd vote conservative; he's sold me.
~shrug~



[ hint for all parties: there's more to campaigning than bitchin' about the others; what do YOU offer....oh, and how do you plan on paying for it)

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
The “start state” is:

Source: The Globe and Mail

My guesstimate is that we go to the polls in mid to late April or even in early to mid May to make campaigning easier. That can be engineered by letting the budget go to committee and defeating it on second reading or even waiting and defeating the budget implementation bill or just by using a convenient (maybe mid March)  "opposition day" to move no confidence.

And here is the projection for the end of 2010:

Source: The Globe and Mail

I still think a Spring 2011 election is very possible, but, based on recent news/analysis, perhaps a bit less probable than just two months ago when we started this thread. The Tories are projected to be up by seven seats and the combined Lib/NDP seat count is down from 126 to 120 - far too few to tempt the GG to approve a coalition, unless it has formal BQ support which would be the kiss of death for both the Liberals and NDP.

 

[Dissident]

Am I wrong to view with scepticism a tally that give the Conservatives less seat than they currently have?

 

[Edward Campbell]

Am I wrong to view with scepticism a tally that give the Conservatives less seat than they currently have?

No. I think the polls, while probably "fair and honest" can only measure current intentions: election campaigns have a habit of focusing voters' attention on things that matter to them - right now economic issues regarding which most voters trust the Conservatives far, far more than they trust the Liberals and NDP.

The reported/apparent Conservative strategy of focusing on 25 or so key ridings where they might exploit the ongoing Liberal/NDP battle - the real story in my opinion - to 'come up the middle' and end up with something very close to a razor thin majority, even if they lose a few seats in QC, has real promise, I think, to produce some significant gains. the Conservative need a net gain of 11 or 12 (say 17 wins (from those 25) coupled with five or six losses) to get a slim majority.

My estimate guess hope is:

BQ: ........................ 52           
Conservatives: ... 156
Liberals: ................ 72
NDP: ...................... 25
Others/Inds: .........  3

 

[dapaterson]

The challenge is that polling is wholesale, and politics is retail - it's the down and dirty work of convincing the undecided to vote your way, ensuring your supporters do come out, and doing everything legal in your power to deter supporters of your main opponent from voting for them (or at all).  (Robert Heinlein's short story "A Bathroom of Her Own" has some great pointers, though they are not entirely legal).

Given that all parties are sounding increasingly conciliatory, I'm becoming convinced that we will see an election in 2011 - since Canadian elections seem to happen only when no one wants it or is ready for it.  (And Tory claims of imminent elections are largely a ploy to keep their base motivated and writing cheques, not a real indication of national preparedness).

It would also provide great entertainment should the result of a running of the rascals be more or less status quo; I can't see any party keeping their leader for more than a year after such an event; the Liberals will degenerate into old-style backstabbing and self-immolation (and somewhere, Jean Chretien will laugh at his memories of the same, while John Turner shudders); Jack will discover that a fancy 'stache can only take you so far, and Stephen Harper will admit that he is the Moses of the Conservative Party - destined to bring them from the wilderness, but never quite to the promised land of a majority government.

 

[ModlrMike]

I think the Torries have to hold the Lib/NDP feet to the fire on the coalition issue. Last time both leaders categorically ruled out a coalition, then tried to form one right after the vote. Making them state their positions early and often will burn it into the minds of the electorate, and perhaps give them pause next time, and might gibe the GG more ammunition to deny them their wish (ie: you said you didn't want one, I'm not going to give you one).


...but I wouldn't put money on it.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think the Torries have to hold the Lib/NDP feet to the fire on the coalition issue. Last time both leaders categorically ruled out a coalition, then tried to form one right after the vote. Making them state their positions early and often will burn it into the minds of the electorate, and perhaps give them pause next time, and might gibe the GG more ammunition to deny them their wish (ie: you said you didn't want one, I'm not going to give you one).


...but I wouldn't put money on it.

There is nothing wrong, constitutionally, with a coalition. If the some opposition parties get more seats, combined, than does the first party then, after the first party loses a vote of confidence, the GG should give the opposition coalition a chance. But: There is something HUGELY wrong, politically, with a coalition that involves the BQ; Canadians will not, I think, accept such a thing and they will severely punish all those (except the BQ) involved.

 

[ModlrMike]

There is nothing wrong with a coalition, I agree. However to take a militant stance against a coalition before the vote, and sign on after the vote is completely beyond the pale. The Lib/NDP alliance have been accusing the Torries of lying or having a hidden agenda for years, yet they clearly demonstrated their own malfeasance and skulduggery after the last vote. Had everything been done above board, there wouldn't be any argument from me.

 

[GAP]

Election in 2011? Count on it
Article Link
The time is right for Harper to trigger an election, and immigrant votes will bring him victory
By EZRA LEVANT, QMI Agency Last Updated: January 2, 2011

Of course there will be a federal election this year.

The last one was in October of 2008. An election this spring would be about two-and-a-half years since the last one — which, historically, is a long term for a minority government. More recently, it’s the same period that elapsed between the 2006 and 2008 elections, and longer than the term of Paul Martin’s minority from 2004 to 2006.

So there won’t likely be a backlash if Prime Minister Stephen Harper takes the initiative to go to the polls for the bland reason of renewing his mandate, as he did last time. And anyone who says otherwise will surely be reminded of Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s renewed sabre-rattling about forcing an election himself.

Opinion polls have been steady for months — the Conservatives have held a lead that fluctuates from three to 10 points.

But that national number hides more meaningful local developments. The breakthrough byelection win of the Conservatives in the Toronto suburb of Vaughan shows that some seats formerly regarded as strongholds for the Liberals are now at risk.

The winner of that byelection, former police chief Julian Fantino, not only bolsters the Conservatives’ reputation as the tough-on-crime party, but it also represents the party’s inroads to ethnic communities who once defaulted to the Liberals.

If having Fantino, a national Italian-Canadian role model, as a Toronto-area lieutenant for the party causes 10% of Italian Canadians to consider voting Conservative, that could be enough to tip a few close ridings into the Tory column.

Conservative ethnic outreach continues at full speed, especially in ridings like Brampton West, also in the Toronto area, where a large Sikh community will be presented with credible, well-organized Conservative candidates who are Sikh. If both Liberal and Conservative candidates are Sikh, which party would win a largely Sikh riding?

Vancouver’s Chinese community has already given us such a test. The riding of Richmond, B.C., is majority Chinese-Canadian, and both the Liberals and Conservatives fielded Chinese-Canadian candidates in 2008. In that contest, Tory Alice Wong beat former Liberal cabinet minister Raymond Chan by nearly 20 points.

A glance at Harper’s Senate appointments shows how this approach to building Conservative minority role models has been fortified, with Indo-Canadian appointees like Vim Kochhar and Salma Ataullahjan, Jamaican-Canadian Don Meredith, Korean-Canadian Yonah Martin, Jews like Linda Frum, Irving Gerstein and Judith Seidman, etc.

Of course, those senators are more than just ethnic symbols. But their symbolism is not lost on communities who once never considered voting for anyone but the Liberals.

Canada’s political press is based in Ottawa and naturally focuses on Parliament and polls, and big national news stories. But many election battles are fought at a neighbourhood level and, if just a half-dozen ridings flip from Liberal to Conservative, Harper will win his elusive majority government. Don’t count it out.

But if Harper slouches back to power with just another minority, isn’t a win still a win? Part of governing requires Parliament’s co-operation. But much doesn’t — from appointing judges to deciding foreign policy. And from a strategic point of view, how many elections in a row can the Liberal Party continue to lose?

If the Conservatives do get a majority, look for them to reintroduce Bill C-12. That bill would grant 30 new seats to the regions of Canada that have had the most population growth in the past decade — 18 to Ontario, seven to B.C. and five to Alberta. The opposition parties have opposed it, for fear of offending Quebec, whose population is stagnant.

But note the regions that are affected: Precisely those neighbourhoods in Canada teeming with new immigrants.

It’s obvious why the Bloc Quebecois opposes Bill C-12 — they want maximum control over Canada’s Parliament.

But it’s increasingly obvious why the Liberals oppose C-12, too. Do they really want seven more Alice Wongs or 18 more Julian Fantinos in Parliament?
end

 

[a_majoor]

The Liberal "Brand" is in trouble:

http://chasingapplepie.blogspot.com/2011/01/liberal-brand-suffers-severe-damage.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChasingApplePie+%28Chasing+Apple+Pie%29

Liberal Brand Suffers Severe Damage

A new poll just out has suggested that the Liberal party is suffering severe damage to it's brand. Very few respondents in the poll had few positive things to say about the party.

Based on first mentions, it is clear that the Liberal Party brand is severely damaged and the negativity associated with the party extends beyond Michael Ignatieff’s leadership.

These results suggest that the Sponsorship Scandal continues to hurt the Liberal brand and the residual effect is a lasting association with corruption, arrogance, and dishonesty.

Most troubling for the Liberal Party is that very few respondents mentioned positive phrases or words about the Liberal Party. Instead, comments described the party as having weak leadership, being dishonest and corrupt, and divided.

That is not good if Iffy wants to defeat the government and take us into in an election this spring. On the other hand the same poll also shows the Conservatives and the NDP are in much better shape.

A new Abacus Data National Poll finds that relatively speaking, the Conservative and NDP brands are in a better position heading into a possible spring federal election than the Liberal brand.

Respondents were asked to identify what first came to their minds when they think about each major national party.  The results are displayed in word clouds found below or in the detailed report found here.

“Stephen Harper and Jack Layton dominate their respective brands,” said Abacus Data CEO, Dr. David Coletto.  “The popularity of each party is heavily influenced by how Canadians view the Conservative and NDP leaders.”

While high recognition rates can be a positive factor, dominance by a single leader can also produce problems.
“The good news for the Conservative Party is that many Canadians associate the party with the economic recovery and low taxes,” said Coletto.  “Despite the fact that Canadians continue to worry about the economy and their jobs, the opposition has not been able to dislodge the Conservative advantage on the economy.”

The opposition Liberal Party had the bleakest results.  Very few Canadians mentioned anything positive about the party, with most comments describing the party as lacking good leadership, being corrupt or dishonest.

“Canadians seem to still identify the Liberal party by its past wrongs, perhaps as a result of a lack of direction, internal division, and weaker leadership over the past few years,” said Coletto.  “Weak leadership and internal division is the Liberal brand as they enter 2011.”

Finally, the NDP continues to be a conflicted brand.  The NDP and its leader Jack Layton are well regarded by Canadians but only one in five said would vote for it in Abacus Data’s poll released in early December.

“The NDP is very much a function of Jack Layton,” said Coletto.  “The NDP is seen by Canadians as a caring party that defends the interests of working people but its policies are considered unrealistic my many.”

I think the Liberals should think hard and long before they defeat the government  If they want to go into an election fine but they'll  also suffer the consequences. They badly lost the trust of Canadians and have a long way to go gain it back again and it's not just changing leaders.  It goes way deeper than that.

Probably the best thing for Liberals maybe is an election result with a Conservative majority and NDP as official opposition.  They would then have at least four years to figure out who they are,what they stand for and rebuild from the bottom up. Maybe just maybe there too wouldn't be so much muck raking and making up faux scandals that they would actually work at developing some credible policy and act like an official opposition and government in waiting.  Then maybe they could earn back the public's trust again. Look how long it took Conservatives. It took years before we actually figured things out and got our act together. Thank God we finally did.  The country is better off for it.  It will take Liberals at least that long if not more.

This related from WK
Far and Wide: Steve V. calls for a cultural change in the Liberal Party, bottom to top.  He says that’s the only thing that’ll make it relevant.  He’s right, of course.  It will also never happen.  Carry on as you were.