Commentary from Larry Solway
There is scant comfort in being able to say "I told you so." In our Straight Goods hand-wringing over the future of Social Democracy, Desmond Morton observes that both the Institute for Social Research and the Institute for Research on Public Policy declare that potential left-wing supporters vote in their self-interest. Many left-thinking voters who were always the heart of NDP support voted for their bank accounts. They professed their concern for health and education and housing, but voted for tax cuts. They comforted themselves with the delusion that they were voting Liberal to keep the Alliance out.
Before the last federal election and the massacre of Social Democracy I wrote in Straight Goods:
"What we say in 'public' reflects not what we truly think but how we would like to be perceived. No one wants to be seen as a Scrooge, a misanthrope, or patently selfish. So when pollsters ask what we think is the most important issue facing Canadians, we give them the answer that's righteous, caring, and makes us feel good and makes other people feel good about you: Health Care! In fact the rest of the moral high ground answers are always righteous and comfortably cuddly. Tax cuts, if we believe the answers to the polls, are way down the list where the really caring people think they should be - number seven or eight."
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"He would scoff and say that our whole party thinks we have a monopoly on caring. He was right." |
That column elicited indignant responses suggesting that I had dumped all over the caring, the righteous, and the concerned.
In my ill-starred run for the Legislature in 1999 I debated the very bright up-and-coming young Liberal lawyer Michael Bryant, now the sitting member for St. Paul's. I would insist that only the NDP had the will to solve the rental housing crisis by funding the construction of new rental units. He would scoff and say that our whole party thinks we have a monopoly on caring. He was right.
I'm fed up with sanctimonious preaching. I'm fed up with the faithful plowing the same furrow over and over again. I'm tired of the smug self-satisfaction that comes with losing at the ballot box. Your guy gets nailed and you comfort yourself by saying people are selfish and that only you walk the walk of the righteous. Phooey!
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"I'm fed up with the political wisdom that leads nowhere - like the campaign to attack the greed of the 'wealthy' who only want tax cuts and refuse to spend money on social concern." |
I'm fed up with the political wisdom that leads nowhere - like the campaign to attack the greed of the "wealthy" who only want tax cuts and refuse to spend money on social concern. I'm tired of losing because we refuse to accept political strategy that works without compromising our ideals. Of course tax cuts for the affluent are pure greed, but there are thousands of "greedy" people out there who are neither wealthy nor selfish. Did everyone who voted for Gordon Campbell's promise of lower taxes abandon concern and caring? Maybe they did.
In the U.S. there is a groundswell of pro-wealthy sentiment. Led by Senator Phil Gramm they point to the wealthy as the newest "victims." What, they ask, is wrong with a rich man wanting to keep more of his money? Gone is the notion that the graduated income tax system was supposed to equalize the gap between rich and poor. Gone is the notion that in a caring society it is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." It all reads like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
The NDP's well-meaning piety and orthodoxy made its members believe being right is better than being in power. We still hark back to the days when Coldwell and Lewis and Douglas were the conscience of Parliament and shamed the government into universal health care and unemployment insurance.
I look back at the last sputtering days of David Lewis when he attacked corporate welfare. It was inspired stuff. It didn't win, but it once again established our position as the enemy of Big Business.
We are still reading from the same page. It's time we stopped. It's time we learned, not to abandon our principles, but to do an "end run" around our opposition. We waste far too much time attacking tax cuts and the uncaring rich. In doing it we have (and Desmond Morton's piece says it) alienated thousands of people who want, not to overthrow wealth, but to share it. We should not still wonder why overtime-bloated CAW workers didn't vote for us. They were making money and they wanted to keep it. The Hampton campaign that bashed everyone earning over $80,000 a year did nothing for us.
The end run has to be to take ownership of wedge issues. We waste energy and alienate our constituents with bashing that sounds like whining. It's a mug's game. We have to find solid, positive ground for what we believe.
We must renew our belief that government is the last best hope of all people, including the wannabe wealthy. We have to champion the cause of reality: better education (smaller class sizes and better funding) better health care (insist on community health care), better hope for urban centres (money spent to improve transit), not a mindless attack on greedy developers but a clear statement that a true city has to be a critical mass that will support a modern and efficient urban infrastructure. We have to show that rental buildings must be shared and that what developers can't do government must. Our appeal must not be characteristically charitable and "caring" by focusing on "affordable" but letting people know that the entire future of rental housing at prices working people can afford has to be guided by public policy and public participation.
Alas, I fear we have gone too far in our journey of self-love and moral justification. How else would you excuse the B.C. election where we were unable to reconcile our differences with the Greens? And why were we disgraced in Muskoka-Parry Sound when we ignored the request of Green candidate Richard Thomas to get together and deal with our differences?
We have not only lost our young support, we have lost the other groups who must be part of what we believe.
We must also take one last longing farewell look at our association with organized labour. How many years has it been since the British Labour Party dissolved its official ties to the Trade Union Congress and allowed itself to flourish as a true alternative and not a handmaiden to one special interest?
Simply - we can't continue to cuddle up to our closely held beliefs in justice and expect to be given the seal of approval. They'll approve of us in public polls, but in the polling booth they kill us.
What about you? Are you fed up with being politically correct and powerless? Has sanctimony lost its appeal? Is Solway an unrepentant neo-con?
Tell Straight Goods and see what others are saying...
Then Take the Straight Goods poll on Why has the NDP lost touch with voters?
Posted: May 29, 2001
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