Rebranding Iggy

Liberals don't often ask me for political advice, which is really too bad, since I seem to know at least as much about winning elections as anyone around their leader does. I would very much like to see Stephen Harper get his ass kicked, and if the Liberals could convince me that they aren't total whores, they might prove to be an acceptable alternative.

The rap on Michael Ignatieff during his first eight months as leader was that he was a pussy, terrified of saying or doing anything that might force an election. However, beginning in September, he lost his mind, went all-out to go to the polls and watched his national support collapse.

In part, his polling went south because the stunt looked craven and was as badly executed as it possibly could be. Turning on a dime and opposing the measures you supported mere months ago doesn't tend to sit right with voters, who, after all, aren't that bright and might not understand your nuance.

Secondly, his appeals went in the wrong direction: to voters who never supported Harper in the first place. Unfortunately, a plurality of the country voted Tory in the last two elections.

There's an article in yesterday's The Hill, which is interesting in so far as it's so wrong.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's new chief of staff Peter Donolo has in the last six months as a pollster said the Liberals should try to poach votes from the NDP to win, but the leader's perceived lack of left-of-centre credentials could throw a wrench in this plan, says one leading pollster.

"The challenge for Michael Ignatieff is his career path, especially in the United States," said pollster Nik Nanos, referring to the Liberal leader's past support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which he has since recanted. "For many New Democrats some of his musings on foreign policy are counter to what they believe, in regards to his support of American foreign policy on a number of key issues related to the war on terror."

There is a direct correlation between NDP and Liberal Party support in that when support for the NDP goes up, Liberal support goes down, and visa versa. Strategically, the best way for the Liberals to become more competitive is to position Mr. Ignatieff as the leader of the "non-Harper world," said Mr. Nanos, although he added it would not be an easy task.

"Theoretically it sounds good that the Liberals should try to appeal to the NDP, but the thing is they're going to have to remake Michael Ignatieff in order to be reasonably acceptable to the NDP. That's going to be a significant job," he said.

It's also not going to work. If that's what Mr. Donolo is going to stake Iggy's future on, he'd be better off coming home to Toronto.

Harper didn't win because of a Liberal-NDP split, and there isn't an exit poll in the world that suggests that he did. The Conservatives won because they were seen as an acceptable governing alternative to a Liberal Party made soft-headed and corrupt from being in power too long. The fact that Harper could get his candidates to shut the fuck up about abortion and gay marriage for five weeks was also greatly helpful.

The only problem is that the Conservatives really aren't an accept governing alternative, as their $55 billion budget deficit so aptly demonstrates. The Harper regime hasn't managed to be as fiscally conservative as even the Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. The numbers don't lie, folks. Even before the financial crisis of last year, the Tories had already pissed away a $13 billion budget surplus on nothing.

There are Conservative voters out there who would vote for the Liberals in a heartbeat if Ignatieff starts looking serious about the budget. Running to the left, in search of NDP voters, will keep those former Harper supporters in the Conservative camp, and Iggy can forget about winning power on his own. He'll essentially give Harper another minority, and the only way to dislodge it will be a Grit-Dipper-Traitor coalition that turns the stomachs of the vast majority of English Canada.

Moreover, there's nothing in Ignatieff's history - and he has the longest paper trail of any candidate in Canadian history - that indicates that he's a social democrat. Competing with the NDP for that vote would only serve to reinforce the already widely-held opinion that he's an opportunistic hack. Worse, he might drive the right wing of the Liberal Party into the arms of the Conservatives in the process.

Most people who aren't brain-damaged or drunk agree that the economy is going to the only issue in the next campaign. Running to the left just demonstrates that you aren't serious about it and it becomes impossible to win, barring a Harper implosion. And Stephen Harper's far too disciplined to count on that.

Besides, Stephane Dion tried running to his own left just thirteen months ago. That gave the Grits their worst electoral result since Confederation. Donolo's a smart guy, but I have no idea what he's thinking.

I'm right and Donolo's wrong. Go right, young man.

Let's address tactics now, shall we?

I normally agree with the proposition that going hard negative is usually the smart thing to do, if for no other reason that it keeps undecideds at home and turns a campaign into an exercise in base turnout. The only problem with that is that the Tories have a more active and better organized base than you do. You need to grow the electorate, not shrink it if you're not going to be completely hopeless.

The Conservatives have spent the last two months handing you scandal after scandal and Liberal support has deflated. Things were pretty good in 2004-06, so we could be endlessly entertained with the Sponsorship Scandal. That's not as true now, and the polls show it.

If you absolutely have to address the government's missteps, say nothing more than "This is exactly what Canadians have come to expect from the Harper Conservatives" and leave it at that. Once you ignore the prime minister, you minimize him. If hit, hit back, but otherwise pretend he doesn't exist.

There's going to be another round of "Just visiting" ads coming, you can count on that. But you can't benefit from pointing out the cravenness of Tory tactics when your own senior staff are acting like idiots on the Internet. If you let Alf Apps and others make statements that demonstrably aren't helping you, they're going to hurt you.

James Carville is usually wrong about everything, which is why he lost so many more races than he won. But he was right in '92 when he made the campaign about the economy. Bill Clinton really didn't mention the first President Bush much at all. That's because he didn't need to.

People know all about H1N1 and the "Cheque Republic." The problem is that they don't care. By the way, if you let your people continue to equate either with the Liberal Sponsorship Scandal, all they'll accomplish is to remind people of the Liberal Sponsorship Scandal.

But hey, what do I know?