In the midst of Kathleen Wynne’s fear pitch to New Democrats two days before the election, I received an NDP robocall imploring me to keep the faith.
The message quoted something Jack Layton had said in the context of his own attempts to slay the strategic voting beast, and asked for my support because NDP reps are the city’s “strongest allies on social justice.”
A bit late in the game, really. With a potential Liberal sweep chilling their hearts, NDP organizers were returning momentarily to core messaging. Unfortunately for three key downtown ridings, this was a fail.
As appealing as she is, Andrea Horwath ran a textbook NDP campaign – the new revised text, that is.
She kept it all small, her proposals and explanations tight, limited and taxpayer-conscious. There were no big-picture offerings and no broad inspirational appeals to the public good. True to the current NDP fashion, she retailed her personality: optimistic, combative, trustworthy.
But now that the party is sidelined for four years while we have the Wynne majority experience, it’s time to assess the real cost of market-researched minimalism.
Backers of the Horwath strategy will point out that the three wins in Windsor West, Oshawa and Sudbury demonstrate the party’s resilience and ability to break new ground.
They will also remind us that the painful losses in Trinity-Spadina and Davenport were not as out of the blue as they appeared, given the narrow winning margins in 2011, although it’s more difficult to make that case in Beaches-East York.
True, we don’t know exactly how many NDP voters actually went over to the dark side, but if you’ve talked to New Democrats lately, you can’t miss the confusion and dismay.
The way many figure, the party offered few compelling reasons why an NDP victory would be so much different from a Lib one. Honestly, it’s hard to think of many elections in the recent past where this complaint could have been made.
The Grits just played their left card so brilliantly. I mean, wasn’t that Wynne, leader of a party that has made massive cuts in social spending and chopped hospital budgets to the bone, out there explaining – with some intelligence, I might add – why austerity is not the way to grow an economy?
The NDP used its precious airtime to take on Liberal corruption few pinned on Wynne, and to offer up affordability fixes so minimal it was embarrassing: cutting the HST on hydro bills would save a measly $10 per month in many homes.
Look, tying business tax deductions to hiring new employees, as Horwath proposed, is a darn fine idea. So are capping Hydro CEO salaries, raising the general corporate tax rate by 1 per cent, school meals, more nurses to cut ER wait times, tuition freezes and clean trains.
But people don’t knock on doors endlessly and write cheques because there are useful items in the party platform. They do it because they think there’s a grander purpose that has something to do with the values of a shared society.
The problem with narrowcasting issues all the time is that the party forgoes its ability to offer breakthrough structural proposals that really do point to a new tomorrow. Like, for example, the new pension plan that Wynne made her centrepiece and Horwath ignored.
Interesting that the ONDP didn’t push a Quebec-style $7-a-day childcare system, or the immediate cessation of nuclear refurbishment efforts, since a nuke phase-out is the only way a true green energy system can take root.
And what about a new minimum wage that really would change up the economy instead of the limp compromise the Horwath team concocted against the advice of the labour movement? Where were the promises of a massive expansion?
Yes, the gas plant mess is shameful, but so is the over-drugging and death of elders in assisted care homes, a consequence of Liberal-government-mandated staff ratios and an issue Horwath deemed unworthy of her full indignation. And dare we say climate change?
The least you could say about the bruising the NDP brand received is that the party brain trust gave fair warning about the shifting mindset.
In a key session of the 2012 Ontario party convention in Hamilton, organizers showcased the electoral advice of Matt Hebb, strategist of the oh so short-lived 2009 NDP victory in Nova Scotia.
He said there was no point aiming messages at party supporters (you can count on them anyway) or the general public (a wasted effort).
Instead, campaigning should be directed to the narrow wedge of voters who might just break with their old allegiances to vote NDP. It’s on this constituency that resources should be focused and policy priorities tailored.
But Hebb knew this would be unpopular in a convention hall full of the heart and soul of what makes the ONDP, at the base, such a special organization. “We have a value set, so this [strategy] is uncomfortable,” Hebb acknowledged. It might be more than uncomfortable. In the long run, it might well prove debilitating.
Ellie Kirzner is a contributing editor at NOW Magazine.
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