Country Over Party

Gerry Caplan writes that the Liberals and the New Democrats are going to have to do what is unthinkable -- work together. It's possible that either party might win a majority. But, if that doesn't happen:

Some kind of long-term rapprochement between the NDP and 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. If we take seriously the assertion that the Conservatives have already undermined the values that we and most Canadians hold dear, and that another term will entrench their work and make it irreversible, we have no choice but to place Canada before party.

At the moment, Caplan acknowledges that either party will not even consider his proposal:

I understand fully that this proposal has no chance of buy-in from either party before election day 2015. Indeed, both Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau have explicitly repudiated the idea of working together, and were I in their shoes right now I’d do the same. Both need to insist that it alone can defeat the Harperites and that all anti-Conservatives must unite behind one party. If this strategic voting strategy works (most likely for the Liberals), future co-operation is off the table. But if it doesn’t, members of both Opposition parties will have no ethical or political choice but to seek some form of collaboration. The alternative – leaving the country by default to the Conservative Party – is simply unthinkable.

Harper's recent switch from the economy to security -- and what he is willing to do in the name of national security -- underscores just how serious the situation is. And, because he is committed to incrementalism, a lot of Canadians haven't acknowledged what the prime minister has done to the country.

But Harper knows what's he's about -- just as Adolph Hitler knew what he was about. And surely Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Mulcair know what he's about. For that reason, each man must, in the end, choose country over party.

Coalition Time?

                                                 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca

After the latest EKOS poll, there has been a lot of talk about a Liberal-NDP coalition. Frank Graves claims that's what the majority of Canadian voters want. But, Chantal Hebert writes, that's not what the two respective party leaders want:

This fall, their mutual obsession with each other has tended to blind them to other big-picture considerations with posturing and positioning regularly taking precedence over the fight against a common Conservative foe.

Think of Justin Trudeau’s opposition to Canada’s combat role in the international coalition against Islamic State extremists. It ran counter to the advice of some of the party’s brightest foreign policy minds and it was poorly articulated but it did offer the Liberal left flank some cover from the NDP.

Or think of Mulcair’s out-of-the-blue musings about a resuscitated federal gun registry. He may have hoped to score points against Trudeau but he mostly ended up bringing long-standing NDP divisions back to the surface.

Think finally of the reciprocal suspicions that attended their handling of the delicate matter of the alleged sexual misconduct of two male Liberal MPs against two of their female NDP colleagues.

The days are long gone when Liberals, under Louis St. Laurent, thought of Dippers as "Liberals in a hurry." And Stephen Harper knows that. In fact, he's counting on the new Dipper-Lib rivalry to keep him in power.

And, unless Mulcair and Trudeau can learn to talk to each other,  Mr. Harper will get his way.

Co-operatism Vs Corporatism

Paul Adams writes that it will probably take another election defeat before the Liberals and the NDP decide there is good reason for them to work together. Each party has its champion of cooperation:

Like Nathan Cullen in the NDP race last year, [Joyce] Murray has presented a credible progressive version of her party’s traditions while also arguing for party cooperation. And she’s attracted significant support — even though leadership races are when party supporters are at their most partisan.

Of course, we all know she won’t actually win. 

The old ways die hard. And co-operation does not appear on either party's radar screen. That said,

there is a very slight possibility that there will be yet another opening to the idea before the 2015 election. If the Conservatives were to start polling quite a bit stronger — say nearer the 40 per cent mark — and the Liberal and the NDP were deadlocked in the mid-20 per cent range for long enough, there might be internal and external pressures for Trudeau and Mulcair to temper their intransigence about cooperation.

Regardless of polls, the first step in a progressive restoration is for the Liberals and the NDP to stop firing at each other:

A good starting point would be to look at the agreement signed by Jack Layton and Stéphane Dion when they tried to dislodge the Harper Conservatives in 2008. That would at least get the parties working together instead of against each other.

The Liberals and the Dippers don't have to re-invent the wheel. But they do need to realize that, rather than one party co-opting the other -- which was what happened when the Reform Party captured the old Progressive Conservatives -- they have to come to some detente.

Stephen Harper is betting that they won't. And, so far, his bet has paid off.

Moving Towards Merger

Paul Adams argues at ipolitics that whoever wins the Liberal leadership race must consider some kind of entente with the New Democrats. The Liberals' old guard has floated the idea:

For a starter, there was Jean Chrétien, the most successful modern Liberal prime minister. There was his experienced strategic sidekick, Eddie Goldenberg. Oh yes, and then there was the most prominent Liberal MP left standing after the 2011 election. Someone named Bob Rae. 

But when Rae said he was open to considering that option, the party's backroom operatives -- the folks who engineered Michael Ignatieff's ascension -- told Rae to keep his mouth shut. However, writes Adams, Liberals out in the country have not fallen in line:

According to an Ipsos Reid poll just a few months ago, Liberal supporters favour a merger with the NDP by a margin of almost two-to-one.

What Canadian progressives understand is that the math has always been against Stephen Harper. They know that Conservative support will never rise much beyond 35%; and, therefore, Harper is vulnerable -- but only if progressives can get their act together.

In the last half of the last century, Conservatives won power because they had the foresight to merge with the Progressive Party. They understood that Canadians have a natural bias toward the left. Stephen Harper has sought to turn Canadians slowly to the right -- but always relentlessly to the right.

Nathan Cullen's candidacy for the NDP leadership proved that there is an appetite for cooperation within his party. What the Liberals need is someone who can work out the details of that cooperation. After all, it was  cooperation which built the country.