Reality Check

So here it is: Members of the NDP are celebrating tonight. They celebrate because they gained seats, and I suppose they deserve some congratulations. Here's the reality: they have nothing to celebrate, because Stephen Harper has more seats than he came into this election with. That means that the minority of Canadians who believe in moving this country backwards have scored another victory. So here it is: why is it that those of us who are progressive are so stupid? Why haven't we learned from the trials and tribulations faced by the political right during the 1990's? Jean Chrétien won majorities throughout the 1990's in the face of a divided political right. Those majorities led to more rights for women, as well as for a number of minority groups. Canada became a more inclusive place over those years. Now, the Tories are benefiting from the fact that the political right is united while the left is not.

It's time for progressive voices in Canada to stand up to Jack Layton and even more so to Elizabeth May. I haven't done the math (but let me assure you all that I will), but I am willing to bet that in riding after riding across Canada, the Green vote combined with the Liberal vote would have beaten a number of Conservative candidates across Canada. Enough is enough! We have got to stop this nonsense. Let's be real here: there was nearly no daylight between the Green and Liberal platforms on every key issue, so every time someone voted Green instead of Liberal, they split the progressive vote, and handed seats to Conservatives across Canada. We simply cannot do this anymore.

Now, let me be clear: it is no secret that I am a Liberal, and I am not going to sit here and suggest that as Liberals, we aren't accountable for our defeat tonight. We bear a great deal of responsibility for the beating we sustained tonight. Here's the reality: this election wasn't lost tonight, last week, or last month. This election was lost long before Stephen Harper dropped the writ. When Stéphane Dion was elected Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, we all saw Stephen Harper's attack ads. For the first time in Canadian history, an incumbent governing party launched attack ads against another party when there was not even an election campaign. The national strategists in the Liberal party failed to learn from the Swift Boat attacks made against John Kerry. Full of snobbery, they decided that we were better than American voters, smarter than American voters, and they decided that no response was needed to these baseless attacks, because the public would be outraged. For the public to be outraged, the lie had to be exposed, and it wasn't. We made the fundamental error of allowing our opponents to define our Leader instead of defining him ourselves. The moment that happened, the Liberal Party was on the defensive, and you cannot win an election when you are on the defensive. To make matters worse, the Party didn't think about the most basic aspect of selling a vision: branding. Nobody really knew what the Liberal brand was this time, and having spoken to other leading Liberals, these are the basic complaints that were heard.

Let me say that I supported Stéphane Dion's bid for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. I believe that he would have made an amazing Prime Minister. I'm sad to say that as of tonight, it would appear that M. Dion will become part of a very small group: Liberal leaders who didn't become Prime Minister of Canada. I know that there are voices in the Liberal Party who want M. Dion to stay, and in my heart of hearts, I would love to see him have another shot at beating Mr. Harper. I would love to hope that we can recover from the tactical errors we made. For M. Dion to come out of the upcoming leadership review unscathed, he will need to have a minimum of 75% support when that review comes around. The internecine warfare that will be inflicted on the Party if M. Dion stays on will serve only to deepen the wounds that already exist. I don't doubt that M. Dion could survive a review vote, but it's not enough to survive; he needs a slam dunk that I doubt the Party will give him. I have always been a big fan of Stéphane Dion. I've listened to old Tory slogans, and I have to say this: back in 1996, when Stephen Harper was getting ready to leave politics for a cushy job at a right-wing think tank, it was Stéphane Dion who was actually standing up for Canada. The reality now is that the truth won't matter, because it's just too late. I am a big fan of M. Dion, and I wish he could have been more successful, but he picked a bunch of political losers to run his campaign, and it showed. It's time for a fresh start, for tough questions, and for a campaign team (the strategists, not the candidates) that knows how to throw a punch or two, and bring progressive voters home.