Thursday, April 12, 2007
What Kind Of Strategists are Stéphane Dion and Elizabeth May?
Obviously not very good ones.
It seems that the Liberals are not going to run a candidate in Central Nova, where Elizabeth May plans to run in the next election.
Now let’s look at this from the Liberal side for a moment, shall we?
Now arguably, there are three “progressive” parties fighting for the same voters in the next election: the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc. The Greens, to date, have been insignificant. Now what is the proper electoral strategy regarding insignificant opponents? You ignore them: acknowledging them or attacking them simply gives them media attention and credibility. But what Dion has done with this move in one fell swoop is given the Greens more credibility. So all Dion has succeed in doing is increasing his competition from 2 to 3. The Conservatives must like that.
As well, there goes the “308-seat strategy” that the Liberals talked about just after the leadership race.
Come to think of it, I can’t see Nova Scotia Liberals being too happy about this move either; and either sitting out the Central Nova vote or helping the Conservatives or New Democrats.
So what about the Greens?
In return, sources say Ms. May will promise not to run a Green candidate against the Liberal leader and will essentially endorse Mr. Dion for prime minister.
Now let’s think this through logically, shall we? To become Prime Minister, you need to have your party have a plurality of seats. Since Dion is a Liberal, those seats are going to have to go Liberal. So basically by essentially endorsing Dion for PM, May is saying to all of the Green candidates: ‘you don’t matter. What matters is that a Liberal gets elected. Oh and me!’
So yeah, as a Green candidate, I’d might be miffed about being sold out for a seat.
Secondly, by agreeing to deals with the Liberals, May is admitting that the Greens are not viable as an independent party. I don’t see Greens being happy with that either.
So what has happened here is that a cauldron of vote-splitting and confusion has been spilled out. And that is mostly going to benefit the Conservatives.
As for Central Nova: well, I think that the Liberals have just given the NDP a possible pickup.
# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 7:52 PM 
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