Is 'strategic voting' for Clinton actually strategic?

Electoral map as of Sept.29th via The Economist

Is strategic voting for Hillary Clinton actually strategic?

I have written before about why I feel that leftists should "not buy into mainstream narratives about voting" and should reject "lesser of evil" narratives in all cases. (And this article did also, in part, touch on the question above).

But, as the election in the United States nears, more-and-more commentators and activists faced by the possibility of a Trump presidency are calling, yet again, for voting for a Democrat, Hillary Clinton, "strategically" in order to allegedly stop him. This includes commentators that I greatly respect like Shaun King, who has penned what is perhaps the best article calling for voting to stop Trump I have read to date, even though he is a columnist for a New York newspaper in a state where doing so is totally unnecessary, a point to which I will return.

If you are a person who actually thinks Clinton winning would be a good thing for the world and the United States, or if you are delusional enough to believe that, somehow, this time electing an avowed neo-liberal and imperialist Democrat to the highest office in the land will bring a better result than all the other times, then you really need read no further.

The dismal, reactionary and violent records of the Democrats, Obama and Clinton are there for all to see and we have looked at them in articles on this blog like There is no socialist case for supporting Hillary Clinton, An American Horror Story -- Clinton vs Trump and Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism. Those who try to claim she will be a force fighting for human rights and women's rights internationally might want to read Michael Howard's Whitewashing Hillary: When Lena Dunham and Her Celebrity Ilk Become Dangerous which very effectively demolishes any such inane assertions.

But if you are a leftist or radical who knows that Clinton is terrible but feel that there are, ultimately, 'only two choices' for President and that Trump must be defeated -- even setting aside for the moment whether this is the correct approach morally -- you need to examine whether this is the best approach tactically from a left-wing POV instead of advocating voting for Stein, Gloria La Riva, or others, for building a new party or for simply not voting at all and conscientiously rejecting the whole sham.

For, if you are advocating a 'strategic vote' for Clinton across-the-board without reservation as to where the voter lives, it means that you are advocating for voting for her when in most cases it will make no difference at all.

Having been bombarded by decades of liberal and Democratic Party propaganda to the contrary -- as well as the falsehood that Nader's voters were responsible for George Bush getting elected in 2000 -- it is hard for many to wrap their minds around this as it is assumed that the choice really is Clinton vs. Trump everywhere. But the US President is not directly elected by the popular vote, they are elected by how people vote on a state-by-state basis.

This makes a very, very large difference to where and when 'strategic' 'lesser-of-evil' voting for Clinton actually matters at all and whether the arguments of its advocates make any sense at all.

According to the latest polls and the electoral map put together by The Economist for example, there are only 12 states that are seriously "in play" and a closer examination shows that some of these are more "in play" than others. Meanwhile, the polling website FiveThirtyEight has fewer states being "in play".

But, let us be conservative and go with former breakdown. That means that while in 12 states voting for Clinton and against Trump might actually matter, in 38 states it will not.

This includes New York, home of the Daily News that Shaun King writes for, for example, which both websites list as basically certain to vote for and deliver its 29 electoral college votes to Clinton. According to the FiveThirtyEight her chances of winning New York are 99.2%. She is 99.6% likely to carry the biggest prize of all, California.

On the flip-side, Trump is basically certain to win states like Texas and Oklahoma.

In none of these states, or any of the others currently not seriously in play, does the 'strategic voting' position hold up at all. In these states, to be clear, advocating voting for Hillary Clinton is simply that, advocating voting for Hillary Clinton. It will have no impact on the presidential race's outcome and simply means voting for a candidate you apparently don't really support or believe in.

To date I have yet to hear a coherent argument as to the efficacy of getting behind the Democratic candidate or a reactionary imperialist like Clinton to "stop Trump" in states like these where voting for her will do nothing to accomplish this!

Even if you sincerely believe that Trump is an existential threat, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that you cannot call for 'strategic voting' in the handful of states where it will matter while calling for rejecting both candidates and their politics in the 38 plus states where it won't.

I think we need to stop pretending. When activists and commentators make blanket calls to vote for politicians like Clinton as the 'lesser-of-evils' even when such votes will not have an impact on the outcome, they enable and empower a narrative that has directly inhibited and prevented the emergence of a left-wing alternative to the Democrats.

They play into the false dichotomy the Democrats depend on to browbeat and terrify people into voting for their terrible candidates election cycle after election cycle.

This helps with nothing other than maintaining the status quo.

See also: Rejecting the lesser evil -- Why you should not buy into mainstream narratives about voting

See also: Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

Rejecting the lesser evil -- Why you should not buy into mainstream narratives about voting

As the upstart and surprising Bernie Sanders campaign appears, sadly, to have lost to corporate Democrat Hillary Clinton (who I have noted in the past in anything but a left candidate), the calls for leftists and progressives in the United States to rally around her Presidential candidacy to "stop Trump" are getting louder and louder.

As a Canadian, of course, my rallying to her cause would be of little importance even were I so inclined - which I am not - but even here in this country one finds people calling for a sort of moral endorsement anyway presumably as our good vibes or something will somehow help to get some of our reluctant leftist neighbours on board.

But the American Presidential election aside, Canadians are more than familiar with the "strategic voting" and "lesser-of-evils" arguments as they have polluted our politics on all levels of government for decades. Arguments around the necessity of voting -- and of voting for a party or candidate who, moreover, can supposedly "win" -- have been used by countless candidates for or advocates of the Liberal Party and, to a lesser but still very significant degree, the NDP.

Every election leftists are told that the "danger" of the election or re-election of (insert the name of the threat here) to our democracy, society, polity, people, etc., is so great that there is "no choice" but to hold one's nose and do the adult or socially responsible thing and go vote. Even if you are voting for something or someone you do not believe in.

Every election we are met with same sterile, empty arguments to defend these exhortations to the ballot box.

I think it is time we look at some of these arguments for "lesser-of-evil" voting -- or voting at all -- more closely for what they are worth. Which is nothing much.

1) If you vote for a "fringe" candidate or a candidate who "cannot win" you are wasting your precious vote!

The grandparent of all of these arguments is this one. We will return to the question of the morality and undemocratic aspect of telling people that voting for what they believe in is wrong, while voting for something they do not really believe in is somehow right, but even on a technical level this specific argument is in many cases actually quite absurd.

This is due to the way our electoral systems work and the uneven distributions of support parties or candidates have across various geographical boundaries.

Simply put, in many areas the "lesser-of-evil" candidate or party either cannot win or, alternately, is basically guaranteed to win.

For example, if you are in a state, say Texas, where in the coming election Trump ends up 20 points ahead in the lead-up to voting day, you are no more "throwing away" your vote by voting for Green Party leader Jill Stein than you are by voting for Hillary Clinton.

The reverse is equally true. In a state where Clinton leads by a significant margin there is no "tactical" need to vote for her even if one thinks that necessary where it matters.

In the Canadian system, there are ultimately always only a small number of ridings that actually end up being a real battle where a "lesser-of-evil" candidate can truly knock out an "evil" one, in our case presumably the Conservative. Most ridings -- in fact far more than you might commonly think -- in a national election (and many provincial ones) will be ridings where a Conservative, Liberal or New Democrat is virtually certain to win, or where the race is between the Liberals and NDP and the Conservatives have no chance.

In none of these ridings or states does the "wasted vote" argument stand up at all. By not voting or by voting with your "heart" you will not effect the outcome in anyway. In fact, in some cases, as in many Canadian ridings in the last federal election, voting "strategically" can even lead to bizarre outcomes such as the defeat of NDP incumbents to help "Stop Harper"!

In  other words, people are being most often called upon to sacrifice principles and beliefs in many cases when this will make absolutely no difference whatsoever other than to (a point to which we will return) give your endorsement to a candidate that you did not want.

But what of those minority of cases where a small number of votes might actually (and not just rhetorically) make the difference?

We will get back to those shortly.

2) If you don't vote or "waste your vote" your voice is not heard/does not matter/you have "no right to complain"

From a leftist perspective this is a particularly bizarre argument to have leveled at you for one very simple reason -- our voice is already being left out, does not matter and is not being heard!

And this is also why you certainly do have every right to complain whether you want to vote or not.

People such as myself basically have no say already in that none of these parties or candidates who can "win" represent our views. For people living in poverty, the working-class, and racialized and marginalized communities it is not at all apparent to me how their "voice" will be heard by voting for parties who often barely or simply tokenistically claim to represent or fight for their interests and who, once in power, generally act directly against these interests.

And, ironically, it is these very arguments we are confronting here that we hear election-after-election-after-election-after-election that keep ensuring that we have no voice. They do so as, if we always end up voting and working for these "lesser-of-evil" parties and candidates we are directly preventing the emergence of alternatives that would be worth supporting and that, one day at least, might win or effect change.

As to the claim that if you do not vote "you cannot complain", I think it is time to turn that rhetorical flourish on its head.

If you keep showing up to vote for one or another flavour of the same bullshit, if you cast a ballot endorsing parties or candidates you fundamentally disagree with or who act in ways inimical to your interests, why, by enabling this, should you have anymore right to complain?

Your participation and vote acts as a reinforcement to whatever you back and to the process as a whole as does implying that it is a necessary act.

Given that you directly are participating in creating the mess in the first place, how is this somehow more morally praiseworthy than those who by rejecting voting or rejecting voting for the "lesser-of-evil" refused to do this?

3) Not voting "undermines democracy"

Apparently, for some, democracy is about the act of voting, which is a convenient liberal idea.

Democracy, of course, is about far more than that and withdrawing one's vote or participation in the mainstream narrative is a completely democratic act.

What is increasingly inimical to democracy is the narrowing of the discourse and the political options over the era of neo-liberalism. The major parties in Canada and the United States, including the once social democratic NDP, now only differ from each other on economic issues by a small degree. On foreign policy issues this is also true.

This does not mean the parties are the same. They are not at all. On important issues like criminal justice, abortion, LGBT rights and others there are real divergences that do matter, as these issues matter.

What it does mean, however, is that when it comes to basic issues around inequality, economic injustice,  poverty, the power of corporations and the fundamental nature of capitalism itself, the parties offer up "solutions" and "alternatives" that are all framed within the ideological construct of neo-liberalism and its handmaiden austerity.

Even minor attempts to break this mold -- such as the Liberal stimulus plan in Canada right now -- only do so in a very limited way that does not challenge the underpinnings of austerity itself in that they do not reverse the essential trends in taxation, privatization or social spending that led us to where we are today. They also persist in framing their "stimulus" as temporary and in lauding a return to the "normal" fiscal regime and constraints as the ultimate goal.

Part of what made Bernie Sanders' campaign so exciting for many, in spite of its flaws, was that he is the only major political figure in North America in a generation who pushed back against this, and out of nowhere this electrified millions of Americans who felt disenfranchised and forgotten by Wall St. Democrats like Clinton.

The narrowing of the possible, as when Hillary Clinton ludicrously portrays universal health care -- something that has been achieved in every other advanced developed nation in the world other than the United States -- as somehow an Utopian and unrealistic goal, is the real and actual undermining of what is left of our democracy.

And it is part of the reason people do not bother to "show up".

That they do not necessarily articulate their indifference to the process in political terms does not mean it is not a political action. Only elitists think that political acts are always accompanied by a manifesto of some type.

If we want to expand democracy, we need to reject rather than embrace a mainstream politics that is anything but democratic in the possibilities it allows, the choices it offers and the access to power it grants.

How is voting for something you do not actually believe in or want "democratic"?

4) But what about Trump?

"Do you want Trump to win?"

Get used to hearing this facile cry should you dare to suggest you might stay home or vote for a real left-wing candidate like Jill Stein in the US.

We have heard this one before of course. Many times. Whether Harper or Bush or countless other examples from Rob Ford in Toronto to whomever. And it sounds convincing.

The logic is that if you "throw away" your vote or do not vote this is de facto the same as voting for whatever evil person it is that you should be voting for someone like Clinton or Trudeau to oppose.

The problem with the logic lies in what I call the Ralph Nader fallacy. The totally false contention, spouted by countless liberals and Democrats everywhere, that it was Ralph Nader who lost the election for Al Gore in 2000 thereby allowing George Bush to come to power and enabling all the "evil" that flowed out of that.

But it is not true. Al Gore lost because of Al Gore. He lost because he could not persuade those who voted for Nader to vote for him and he could not persuade tens-of-millions who stayed home to bother. He lost because he was so uninspiring he could not even carry his own home state of Tennessee which he lost by a far wider margin than can be explained by Nader's vote there, and that would have given him the Presidency.

In fact, in only two states did Nader have a percentage of the vote that might have made a difference. Florida and New Hampshire. New Hampshire going to Gore would not have effected the result. Gore winning Florida, of course, would have.

But in the end Gore lost Florida, as we all know, due to the actions of the Supreme Court.

In every other state in the US voting for Nader had no impact on the ultimate result at all. It is hard for me to accept the notion that Nader is responsible for the decisions of the US Supreme Court.

Far more absurd is the presumption that those who voted for Nader would have either voted or would have all voted for Gore and thereby handed him the election. That is simply that. A presumption.

It is good propaganda but also fundamentally total bullshit.

The slightly over 1% of the voters in Florida who voted for Nader did not "elect" Bush or play spoilers. They simply did not feel it was worth voting for Gore.

This one and rather exceptional example, that is rendered facetious by the many other states that Gore could have won but did not and that had nothing to do with Nader, has been used to browbeat and terrify progressive and left voters in both the United States and Canada ever since.

But its presumptions are not its only flaw.

So are its more aggressive assertions. Which are, in this case, that Nader voters should be held accountable for the actions and consequences of the Bush Presidency despite having voted for someone else.

This may have seemed compelling in the wake of the war in Iraq, but it seems far less compelling after the bloody, imperialist, drone-loving administration of "progressive" Obama that has achieved relatively little domestically and that has rained down death internationally.

Obama's Secretary of State was, of course, Hillary Clinton and she is an unrepentant imperialist and military hawk. She supported, enabled and directly participated in the decisions that led to things like the bloody coup in Honduras. She is a stalwart supporter of Israel and supported grotesque initiatives like the lowering of the minimum wage in Haiti and now the imperialist austerity assault on Puerto Rico.

As I have outlined in the past, there is simply no leftist case for supporting Clinton for the Presidency other than that she is "better" than Donald Trump.

While this may be true, this does not absolve those who vote for and support Clinton of their direct responsibility of what she then does as President. Not indirect, not by allegedly "allowing" someone to win, but by actually having voted for the person who then does what they do.

If Nader voters are allegedly culpable for the actions of Bush, how much more so are Obama voters for the actions of Obama who they actually voted for? If you are going to try to force those on the left who choose not to support a candidate like Gore or Clinton to own the actions (or presumed actions in the case of Trump) of those they were or could be defeated by, then you had better own the actions of those who you are supporting with your vote.

You had better own the austerity, pandering to Wall St., false narratives, dubious past record, violent imperialism, drone strike murders, killing of Honduran activists, lack of real progress and much more that you enabled by voting for it!

That blood and viciousness is actually on your hands, all cries of  supposedly having to be "realistic" aside.

It may be that Trump represents a "once in a generation" threat that makes a more compelling case for a "tactical" vote, though I do not agree with that. Even if one does, as Seattle Socialist Kshama Sawant pointed out in her appeal to Sanders to eschew the Democratic Party, "If electing a Republican is really Bernie’s main concern, there is no reason he could not at least run in the 40+ states where it’s absolutely clear the Democratic or Republican candidate will win, while not putting his name on the 5-10 closely contested “swing states.”"

The same is true of the rest of us.

Do not make voting for a terrible reactionary like Hillary Clinton, for a farce like Trudeau or a sham like the NDP some great example of or pretense of virtue. Nor the act of voting itself for that matter.

In the end, most often, the supposedly tactical vote is the crutch we fall back on to explain why we did not do more to create something we should vote for. And this is why the mainstream narratives about voting are not just a dead end for the left but will reinforce our irrelevance and culture of defeat.

See also: There is no socialist case for supporting Hillary Clinton

See also: Rejecting a Mulcair or electing a Sanders or a Corbyn is not enough

Shades of Grey -- A Left Chapter look at strategy, tactics and endorsements in the 2015 election

With just under two weeks to go until election day, anti-capitalist leftists are in something of a quandary.

There is, simply put, no anti-capitalist party that has any chance of electing even a single MP in the upcoming election. Even worse, while the NDP has made it perfectly clear that it accepts capitalism as an economic system not just in the short-term but in perpetuity, it has also run the most craven, reactionary, bankrupt and meaningless campaign in its history.

From its terrible "small business" tax cut plan, to its disastrous tactically, absurdly reactionary and backward "balanced budget" pledge, to its leader's praising of Margaret Thatcher, to its plan to increase police funding, to its arbitrary blocking and banning of certain candidates while allowing the candidacies of others to proceed, and on and on and on, the NDP has run a terrible, right-wing campaign even by its own standards and even within its own self-imposed limitations.

While the notion that the Greens are somehow "conservatives with composters" is an absurd NDP hack myth (in fact, by today's standards they have a very progressive platform -- more so than the NDP's) and while Elizabeth May has been the most principled and interesting progressive leader all year (standing up for the repeal of Bill C-51 long before Mulcair for example), the Greens are also, ultimately, at best mildly social democratic.

The Liberals are the Liberals. While it is simply asinine to claim, especially now and especially after a campaign like this one, that the Liberals and Conservatives are "the same", as some dim-witted partisans of the NDP frequently do, they are an inherently Bay St. party and represent simply the socially, and to a very small degree economically, more progressive wing of the bourgeois capitalist elite.

But make no mistake, the Liberals are very different from the Conservatives. On fundamentally important social, justice and foreign policy issues the differences are profound. Again, while some NDP hacks will attempt to point to Ontario as an example of how the Liberals govern like Conservatives, after allegedly running to the "left", due to Wynne's wrong-headed moves to privatize Hydro, they disgracefully leave out the many other profoundly reactionary plans the Conservatives had in store for the province  had they won as well as the vast gulf that separates the parties on social issues.

It is, especially in light of just how reactionary and dangerous the Harper Conservatives are, totally and shamefully wrong to try to paint the Liberals as identical to them. It is not simply delusional. It is stupid and harmful.

Never before has there been less of a difference between the Liberals and the NDP ideologically. Never before has there been more of a difference between them both and the staggeringly right-wing foe they face.

It is not, ultimately that the Liberals have changed that much. But the NDP certainly has. To see it as being anymore likely to run a left government than the Liberals strikes me as both utopian and flying in the face of all evidence and logic.

This leads us to the reality of just how bad the Harper government is. We all know it. It has done great harm over the last four years.

If re-elected it will do a great deal more harm.

So, apologies to Lenin, what is to be done?

To me this needs to be broken down into three categories.

Endorsements of Individual Candidates

There are a handful of candidates who, in my opinion, deserve to be supported irrespective of other considerations to come.

Elizabeth May is needed in Ottawa. Full stop. She is easily the most interesting of the three bourgeois progressive leaders, has been very principled and is, also, the "strategic" choice in her riding as the incumbent. Why would anyone on the left want to see her voice no longer present in parliament?

Dan Harris deserves support in Scarborough Southwest due to his opponent -- the odious former Toronto police chief  Bill Blair. A staunch defender of carding and one of the architects of the G-20 Toronto human rights debacle and outrage, his defeat would be a repudiation of this history. While it is true that, disgracefully, the NDP courted Blair as a potential candidate, the fact remains that only NDP incumbent Harris can defeat Blair and here is hoping that he does.

Jacob Kearey-Moreland, who was disgracefully barred from running for the NDP for the most absurd and Orwellian reasons, deserves support in Simcoe North if only to send a message that the undemocratic practices of the mainstream parties internally are wrong. He also has a terrific set of new and interesting ideas that should be heard and considered.

Vote Strategically

For all of the reasons outlined above in the introduction, if your primary electoral goal is, honestly, to Stop Harper, then there is no logical or moral alternative to strategic voting.

If you genuinely believe that the differences between the tweedle-dees and tweedle-dums of the progressive parties are so significant that you must vote for one of them in any riding no matter what, that is fine. But do not then claim to be trying to stop Harper as you are not.

We all know there are ridings where one of the mainstream progressive parties cannot win.

If stopping Harper is what you want to do, and it is a perfectly understandable and reasonable objective for a leftist of any stripe, then by now you likely know exactly who is the most likely candidate to win between the Liberals, NDP and Greens where you live and you should vote accordingly.

In the many ridings where the races are between two of these progressive parties, vote however you want.

Vote Communist or Conscientiously Abstain

Certainly in any riding where the Conservatives are not going to win I would advocate for a vote for the Communist Party candidate if there is one or a vote for another anti-capitalist candidate or an abstention if there is not.

While I am not a Leninist, the Communist Party has run a terrific campaign with very limited resources and has done so on an excellent platform. Their candidates are dedicated and articulate anti-capitalists and supporting them would send a very clear, very unequivocal message of discontent and opposition to the mainstream capitalist discourse.

They deserve serious consideration.

If you have no Communist Party candidate, if there is another anti-capitalist candidate or an independent worthy of consideration, then by all means vote for them.

But it is also perfectly reasonable to conscientiously abstain from the whole process.

Despite absurd and reductionist arguments to the contrary, if you do not feel represented at the polls, and if you do not want to reward the craven emptiness of the mainstream parties with your vote, not voting is a totally logical response.

It is a rejection of the entire process. Of course, I do not suggest a passive abstention. Let people know exactly why you are staying home.

And be sure to let the candidates of the mainstream progressive parties know as well.

As to ridings where the Conservatives can win, then you have to make a choice. In my riding, for example, the only candidate who can defeat the Conservatives is a Liberal. The NDP and Greens have no chance at all. I personally cannot vote for the Liberals. So it is a choice we then have to personally make in that case and it is not necessarily an easy one.

No matter how, ultimately, you chose to cast -- or not cast -- your ballot, never has the need of a new, actually leftist electoral alternative alliance of anti-capitalists been more clear.

Despite all the obstacles, let us hope that we find a way to work to create one in the aftermath of 2015.

See also: Do we really want to Stop Harper? The year ahead in progressive partisanship

The NDP muses about a coalition...and this should be no surprise to anyone

On Wednesday NDP MP and former leadership hopeful Nathan Cullen talked forcefully about what Tom Mulcair has also previously mused about on occasion -- forming a coalition government with the Liberals in the event of a minority parliament after the election in order to oust the Harper government.

As noted in the Toronto Star:

NDP MP Nathan Cullen (Skeena–Bulkley Valley) said that while winning a majority remains his party’s goal, ultimately the number-one priority is toppling the Tories.
“The Liberal voters that I know are as fed up with Stephen Harper as anybody,” Cullen told The Canadian Press in an interview on Wednesday.
“But Justin Trudeau will do himself a great deal of damage with progressive voters if he wants to contemplate more years of this Harper government,” Cullen told the wire service.

This should hardly be a shock from Cullen who based his pitch for the top party job in 2012, at least in part, around exactly this principle and idea. Again as the Star put it at the time:

...he [Cullen] has weathered the leadership battle better than many expected and has championed an idea — cooperation with the Liberals and Greens — that only a few months ago was considered taboo.
It is his pragmatic desire to win, rather than to cast his lot with one flank or the other of the NDP, that has driven him this far.
“There are some who believe that it’s principles or power but you can’t have both. I detest that philosophy,” he says.
Asked about what many NDP supporters have long considered the party’s role in the governing of this country, he replies: “The conscience of the Parliament? Thank you, but no thank you.”

Just in case this hardline repudiation of the historic role of the party -- along with the entirely fictitious and facile notion that people who are committed to an ideologically principled leftist political movement somehow do not think that such a movement can ever win or take power -- was not clear enough Cullen went on to offer this deep insight into political theory and what was wrong with socialist continuity within the NDP "“In my generation, socialism means a different thing,”...To him, he said, it means communism, and he is no communist."

Indeed.

Given this, and given the pronounced right shift under Mulcair, why anyone is surprised to hear Cullen call for a possible coalition is a little difficult to understand.

Despite -- and indeed, in some ways, even because of -- the NDP's lead in the polls, these comments from Cullen and Mulcair make perfect sense. They are intended to appeal to strategic voters (and I have argued previously that reframing the strategic voting narrative is incredibly important for the NDP tactically in the lead up to October), to imprint the NDP as the anti-Harper choice in the minds of Canadians and to put the Liberals on the defensive on this front given that Trudeau has foolishly dug in his heels rejecting the idea -- likely out of fears of alienating right-wing Liberal voters.

They also work to soften up NDP diehards and partisans to the reality that there is a very, very good chance that after voting day we will end up with an NDP-Liberal government of some type. While the hacks pretend to think that the NDP are the only "progressive" party and that the Liberals and Tories "are the same", no one -- and certainly not their leaders -- actually believes this and the thirst among progressive, left-leaning and even most centrist voters to see Harper shown the door in a minority situation will be almost certainly impossible for either the NDP or Liberals to deny -- especially as there is so much less that separates them ideologically than at any other time in our political history.

The Liberals and Conservatives may be "the same" but everyone seems to know that Harper has to go!

While Trudeau continues to throw cold water on the whole notion, though this is much less wise than it once was on his part, were he to in the end enter into any formal arrangement with the Conservatives that kept Harper in power he would be committing political suicide for both himself and what is left of his party.

I think he is well aware of this.

In the jockeying for position and advantage between the bourgeois progressive parties this is simply another predictable and even politically smart maneuver by the NDP that has very little downside for its leadership. The party's left-wing and anti-capitalist supporters are trapped by the logic that they have used to continue to support the party despite its complete repudiation of anything even remotely like a radical or anti-capitalist platform and the NDP leadership knows they have nowhere electorally to go.

They can be, and are, taken entirely for granted, meaning that there is no left flank for Mulcair and his clique to worry about. This is why the NDP can set its sights completely on Liberal, Green and centrist voters which is what its strategy is and which is what it is doing here rather explicitly.

Regardless of whether it would be principled for the NDP to take power through some arrangement with what many of its faithful see as an "old-line" party of Bay St., it is, after all, pragmatic.

See also: The NDP and the strategic voting narrative 

See also: Do we really want to Stop Harper? The year ahead in progressive partisanship

April: "Fred Checkers", Elizabeth May, Vintage Toronto & more -- The month on The Left Chapter in review

From "Fred Checkers and the state of democracy in the NDP"

April was a busy month with 33 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter.

Here are the top five posts, in terms of hits, for the month of April:





1) Fred Checkers and the state of democracy in the NDP

It has long been apparent (as I have written about at some length before) that the drift away from any meaningful internal democracy within the NDP is a very pronounced one. The party is highly centralized, member resolutions are only symbolic and are totally ignored by the leadership and its clique come election time (frankly, it is not even clear to me why they bother with resolutions at their conventions at all anymore), the party will disregard its own constitution at will and invalidate internal elections or nominations it does not like (or seemingly stack them as the ONDP seems to have in the case of the disgraceful Adam Giambrone nomination) and the NDP will sometimes prevent members from even running for a nomination in the first place!

Read More!

2) Elizabeth May needs to be at the federal leader's debate 

In 1997 the leader of a seemingly failing party, that had received only 6.88% of the vote in 1993, as well as the leader of a decimated party that had been reduced to simply 2 seats, squared off in nationally televised debates against not only the Prime Minister of the day and his Reform Party opposition opponent, but also the leader of a Quebec based nationalist party that could not, and had no intention of trying to take, power within Canada.

Read More!

3) 10 Vintage Toronto Postcard Streetscapes (and one bonus one of Port Credit!)

I am very fond of both vintage postcards and streetscape photography generally so I was thrilled to stumble upon a collection of Toronto postcards in a South Etobicoke antique store (called Treasure Hunt and located just east of Islington and Lake Shore) that were both.

Read More! 

4) Sorry NDP "Field Director" James Pratt...but Tom Mulcair is NOT the only leader "opposing" Bill C-51

Progressive politics in Canada appears to be heading to a new low.

Recently the NDP released a campaign video, narrated and presented by their "Field Director" James Pratt, in which he actually claims that Tom Mulcair is the "only leader who is sticking to his principles and working to expose Bill C-51".

But that is simply not true. It is ludicrously false in fact.

Read More! 

5) Is Harper's Last Day Coming?

There is a website selling buttons that celebrate, in advance of course, "Harper's Last Day" which they claim will be coming October 19, 2015. The buttons are available in "ironic blue" or in the colours of the three mainstream progressive parties, the Greens, Liberals and the NDP.

While to most on the left they express a no doubt deeply desired outcome, they also embody the contradictions that face Canadian "progressives" in the upcoming election.

Read More!

I also wanted to take a proud dad moment to congratulate my 13 year old son, Nathaniel, for his first blog post, which actually was sixth overall and was virtually tied with the number five above! It looks at one of his favourite strategy games and you can read it here: Victoria 2's Communist Flags

As none of the food or Leftist Throwback Thursday blogs made the top five (though these two came very close), we also include links to the top two of those:

1968's Japanese Cooking Cookery Cards with Sushi, Tempura, & more: Vintage Cookbook TBT

Nixon Drinks Canada Dry (with a special appearance by Phil Ochs!) - Leftist Throwback Thursday

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

Check out our review for the month of March!: March: Mulcair, Tory, Bill C-51 & more - The month on The Left Chapter in review

The NDP and the strategic voting narrative

Given the nature of our electoral system in Canada the shadow of "strategic voting" hangs over many provincial elections and basically all federal contests since 1988, including the upcoming one. Voters, genuinely and rightly scared of the possibility of Harper being reelected to a second majority term, will often begin to think in terms of which party is best poised to defeat his government.

There is little doubt that in the event of a minority parliament the Liberals and the New Democrats (along, one would assume, with the Greens) would work together in a more or less formal way to prevent another Harper administration. No amount of partisan silliness from those inclined towards one-or-the-other of these parties will change the fact that Canadians know this to be true and that it factors into their political thinking.

In an ipolitics.ca piece about how Justin Trudeau might govern in a minority situation, Paul Adams outlined why, despite some assertions to the contrary, if necessary it is obvious that Trudeau would be far, far more likely to work with the NDP as opposed to with Harper:

Right now, it seems very unlikely Trudeau could win a majority — so let’s look at the two most likely Liberal minority government scenarios, each of which is likely to produce a different style of government. 

The first scenario is what would happen if the current polls were to hold through election day. The Conservatives would end up with the largest number of seats, but not enough for a majority. In this scenario, the pressure on the opposition parties — all of whom are campaigning on getting rid of Harper — to get together and dump him would be enormous. Whatever Trudeau’s pronouncements before the election on coalescing with the NDP, he would pay a huge political price if he were seen to be propping up the Harper Conservatives. 

In this case, Trudeau would have to make some sort of arrangement with the NDP to take power. And that arrangement would have a progressive cast — on taxes and pensions, perhaps. Take a look at the agreement the Liberals crafted with the NDP in their ill-fated 2008 bid to oust Harper. It was sculpted to address the economic crisis of the time, but it gives us a hint of what a future Lib-NDP pact might look like. (The 2008 bid failed, by the way, not because its progressive policies were unpopular, but because of the frail leadership of Stéphane Dion and its reliance on parliamentary support from the Bloc Québécois.) 

The other scenario sees the Liberals win more seats than the Conservatives, which would allow them to take power without an agreement with any other party. In this situation, Trudeau almost certainly would try to govern with an eye to calling another election before long and making his bid for a majority.

The same, I think it is very safe to say, is true of Tom Mulcair. It is basically impossible, despite the attempts of Liberal partisans to point, somewhat misleadingly, to the 2004 letter that Jack Layton signed with then opposition leader Harper, to see a scenario in which he would prop up a Harper government instead of seeking to work with the Liberals and Greens or, should the NDP win more seats than any other party, doing what Adams suggests Trudeau would do in that circumstance.

These political realities are why so many progressive voters intentions end up being predicated, for-better-or-worse, on the idea that they should seek to "Stop Harper" or vote with an eye to making Election Day "Harper's Last Day".

What is less clear is how and why the NDP and its partisans have allowed the strategic voting narrative to again revert to being seen, essentially, as one that somehow naturally means voting Liberal or as one that would primarily benefit the Liberals.

In the latter case, it should be perfectly clear that any sincere strategic voting campaign would benefit the NDP far more than any other party for the rather obvious reason that they hold significantly more seats in parliament than either the Liberals or Greens. 59 more seats than the Liberals in fact.

It would be simply ludicrous to call for "strategic voting" against incumbents!

Thus, a genuine strategic voting campaign of whatever type would have people voting for a New Democrat in, at a minimum, 95 seats as its starting point. Were such a campaign to succeed, in other words, the NDP would be virtually guaranteed to again win significantly more seats than either the Liberals or Greens.

In the past, the fact that Liberals had far more incumbents in parliament (whether as opposition or while in government) formed the basis of their ability to morph strategic voting and getting people to "hold their nose" and vote for the "lesser-of-evils" into de facto calls to vote Liberal. The logic of the appeal being that they were the clear alternative to the Conservatives (or, for a time, the Reform Party) not so much for ideological reasons as for the reason that they could win in far more ridings.

While no Liberal leader ever did, or would, call for actual strategic voting, (as no leader of a major political party outside of a formal electoral alliance would ever  advocate voting against some their own candidates and nor should they be expected to), they and their partisans were well aware that such calls would be primarily of benefit to them.

On its face, this should now be true for the New Democrats. Yet it is clearly not. Strategic voting still seems to be framed in our discourse as meaning, in most cases, as voting for or benefiting the Liberals.

One might expect New Democrat partisans to, while obviously not technically backing actual strategic voting, seek to make the narrative as one that made Canadians naturally think that it meant voting for the NDP as the Liberals did for themselves in the past.

For the most part, however, New Democrat partisans and commentators oppose strategic voting not with a gentle nudge-and-a-wink but with a ferocity that seems totally self-destructive.

As a personal example, when I wrote a piece recently that not so much favoured strategic voting (as I am actually completely opposed to it) but rather pointed out that it is a necessary tactic if your primary political goal is the defeat of Harper above all other considerations, it was not Liberals who were angry about it, it was overwhelmingly New Democrats.

This would be totally counter-intuitive were it not for the fact that strategic voting remains, in their view, despite the existing reality of parliament, as basically still a call to vote Liberal and as long as they continue to see it as such, and allow it to be framed in the broader consciousness as such, that is what it will be.

It is somewhat understandable why they feel this way. After the 2011 election, and with the death of Jack Layton, the polls slowly but surely shifted, despite the NDP's almost over-the-top efforts to present themselves as mature and "ready to govern", back in the Liberal's favour and their new seeming saviour of a leader, Trudeau, did all that he could to reassert the Liberal brand as the one real "alternative".

Despite the objective reality of what actual strategic voting would mean, again he has and will try to frame voting to "Stop Harper" as meaning "vote Liberal".

However, in fact, believing this to be what it means not only aids in obfuscating the actual composition of parliament but it also capitulates to this view and may actually help to facilitate a Liberal renaissance.

Old political narratives, it seems, die very hard. While New Democrats should be framing strategic voting as not something to be denounced but as in essence meaning a vote for them, it is as if a bizarre combination of truly blind partisanship and an inferiority complex is holding them back. Like they have even themselves never accepted their rise as the new political reality. As if they do not realize that "strategic voting" would mean they start at a base of 95 seats!

If the NDP themselves do not think that they are the "natural" alternative to Harper, as a low key, past Liberal style embrace of strategic voting would imply, why would anyone else?

New Democrats should seek to shift the strategic voting narrative so that it reflects the actually existing present parliamentary situation as opposed to denouncing (and thereby also alienating) its proponents as Liberal "dupes" or with some total nonsense about the Liberals and Tories being the "same" that, frankly, absolutely no one outside of the cult believes anymore.

Otherwise they are accepting the way strategic voting was framed in past elections. If they do not want outcomes like those of 1988  or 1993 they need to stop acting as if the political paradigms of those elections remain true today.

Is Harper's Last Day Coming?

There is a website selling buttons that celebrate, in advance of course, "Harper's Last Day" which they claim will be coming October 19, 2015. The buttons are available in "ironic blue" or in the colours of the three mainstream progressive parties, the Greens, Liberals and the NDP.

While to most on the left they express a no doubt deeply desired outcome, they also embody the contradictions that face Canadian "progressives" in the upcoming election.

This for the simple reason that if you are wearing one of those that are orange, red or green you are espousing two political goals that are not necessarily at all compatible.

While I have written about this before, it is important enough, and persistent enough, that it needs to be returned to. This piece, I should also note, is absolutely not meant as either being an argument for or against the idea of "strategic voting" (though again, I have looked at that idea in the past as well).

Simply put, if your primary goal is to ensure that October 19, 2015 is, in fact, "Harper's Last Day" you cannot achieve this by being a blanket partisan of any of the mainstream parties. By "blanket" I mean a partisan who is calling for a vote for one of these parties in every single riding in the country.

For example, if you are a Liberal or New Democrat living in downtown Toronto's Trinity-Spadina you can wear your red or orange version with no contradiction of any kind. In Elizabeth May's riding you could sport the green one with confidence that it will, indeed, aid in the downfall of Harper.

But in many ridings one, or in some cases two, of these colours will not help in the ending of the Harper regime for the simple reason that one or two of the political parties with which they are associated cannot win in these ridings.

The militants of the parties (especially in the cases of the Liberals and NDP) -- their MPs, candidates, partisans and employees, etc, -- will go to great lengths to either deny this or claim there are other considerations that override it. But it remains a fact.

When they do the latter it is framed as a matter of basic principle. This can be accepted or not. There are those that will assert that their specific brand of progressive is so different from any of the others that it is impossible for them to countenance a strategic vote. The most common of these assertions are when New Democrats claim the Liberals are basically "the same" as Tories or when Liberals portray New Democrats as somehow dangerous radicals.

Both of these narratives are, if taken literally, specious and more facile every year, but they contain elements of truths past and (somewhat less so) present to allow them to continue to resonate in some minds.

However when the party partisans do the former it is purely noxious, bourgeois, petty nonsense. No serious person can claim that if only everyone who was against Harper voted for their specific party then that party could win everywhere.  This is a ludicrous assertion.

Regions, classes, professions and individuals have actual reasons, historic and in the here-and-now, for supporting the parties they do, right or wrong.

While surprising things can happen, as with the Orange Crush in 2011, it is clearly absurd to assert that a party, any party, can be competitive, let alone win, in every riding in Canada. Going into the election we all know there are some ridings that are simply not going to be "winnable" by some parties under virtually any circumstances. With a week or two to go to Election Day, depending on when the electorate's intentions begin to truly solidify, it will be very clear who the races are between in virtually all the ridings in the country.

Claiming that any riding can be won cannot be regarded as a real analysis and is, frankly, intellectually dishonest.

Ultimately, politically aware progressive voters have to make a decision. Is making Election Day 2015 "Harper's Last Day" legitimately what you are seeking or do you have a different set of partisan political goals?

There is no "correct" answer to this, but there is an incorrect one -- you cannot hold both objectives at a national level and in every riding at the same time.

There may be many reasons to oppose strategic voting calls of one type or another -- but ensuring the defeat of Stephen Harper is absolutely not one of them.

Do we really want to Stop Harper? The year ahead in progressive partisanship

One has to watch, with a certain level of bemusement, the reaction to Gerry Caplan's seemingly surprising piece calling for a potential alliance between the Liberals and the NDP. It has been predictably met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects of New Democratic partisanship.

Given the fact that most, if not all, leftists claim they want to "Stop Harper" as the primary objective of 2015 politically I think this deserves closer inspection.

Caplan, I think correctly, feels that there is no chance of a formal coalition between the two parties. His article implies a support for strategic voting while not directly calling for it. Given that he is a stalwart New Democrat,  this makes more sense then it may at first appear, in that the NDP has significantly more incumbents now than do the Liberals. In fact if, regardless of if you think this will happen, people voted strategically it would benefit the NDP more versus the Liberals given the situation overall polling wise and politically now. In fact it might save many NDP incumbents outside of Quebec. It is pretty hard to claim you are voting strategically against an incumbent. 

I actually think, if New Democrat partisans were not so blind, that that was one of the points of what Caplan was saying whether he realized it or not.

Setting that aside for a moment, taken at face value Caplan's political objective is perfectly logical.

His objective is to prevent the Harper Tories, no matter what, from forming the next government of Canada. If, and note I say if, that is your primary political objective, then there is, in fact, under our present political system no meaningful alternative to what Caplan advocates to achieve this objective.

An acceptance of strategic voting is the only way to "Stop Harper" if your primary goal is to do this. You cannot, either morally or logically, claim that your goal is to Stop Harper while advocating for voting for one of the NDP, Liberals or Greens in every riding in the country

Period. 

For example in my riding, Etobicoke Lakeshore, if your goal is actually to "Stop Harper", voting NDP or Green will not do this. They cannot win in the riding any more than the Socialist Party of Ontario (SPO) that I am a member of and have supported could if it were running a candidate. To suggest otherwise is absurd given the riding's history. This means, in reality, the functional difference of voting for the NDP or Greens or voting for the SPO here (were it running) in stopping Harper is zero.

So, if you are advocating for voting one of the NDP, Liberals or Greens in every riding in Canada your primary objective is not stopping Harper. 

Which is fine as long as that is admitted. 

Obviously the election of a Liberal, Green or NDP majority government would "Stop Harper", but we all know that there are many ridings in the country where the candidate of one of these three parties (or more than one) cannot win. So if you are advocating for voting for them then you believe that the objective of supporting that party and its candidate no matter what trumps the need to Stop Harper for whatever reason.

In other words, you believe that there are enough political, ideological and moral differences between one of these parties and the other two that this precludes you from calling for a strategic vote or alliance and means that you advocate voting for the candidates of this party even in situations where they have no chance of winning. (If you live in a riding where the battle is, say, between the Liberals and the NDP then you personally do not have to make this choice, but what you publicly advocate for others to do matters still.)

If you really, and honestly believe this, then by all means advocate for a universal, in all situations vote for that party, but then you cannot claim that this is the way to "Stop Harper". Because it is not and it is intellectually and ethically dishonest to claim it is.

In reality it is hard to buy into the idea that there is much of a difference fundamentally between these parties anymore and one has to think they are all much closer to each other ideologically than they are to Harper's Tories. In  addition they are also much closer to each other ideologically than they are to any actual anti-capitalist or socialist ideas or thinking, (and yes we must include the NDP in that).

So the argument against a strategic alliance increasingly requires "intellectual" contortions of partisan imbecility that are more and more Orwellian as each year passes.

However, having said that, I think it remains impossible to advocate for strategic voting as a leftist. 

The time is long past for anti-capitalists, socialists, communists and others to work together to build a new anti-capitalist political force in Canada and to reject the defeatist and faulty logic of strategic voting as well as to reject these three parties. Many, myself included, have said this for years now.

The logic of "strategic voting" means there will always be a "greater threat" to use to justify holding one's nose and voting for "the lesser of evils" and there will never, as a result, be a chance for a Canadian Left Front or major anti-capitalist political party as long as we embrace the logic of this and refuse to build one as we are always worried of the immediate potential consequences of this.

In other words, this idea, once it becomes a primary political goal, can never be overcome as, for example, even if we do oust Harper this year, in 2019 there will be another election and another threat from the right that is just as great and, again, this will be used to say that we have to, yet again, hold our noses and vote for one of these bankrupt wings of "progressivism".

Leftists have to, at some point, advocate for setting aside differences as well as rejecting the cynical nature of neo-liberal "mainstream" politics altogether. 

One can do this by rejecting voting and waiting for the revolution or by supposing that mass social movements, on their own, can force changes, but I think that anti-capitalist forces need an electoral vehicle and that the absence of one is having a fundamentally negative impact on Canadian politics, society and on the real life, real world poverty and oppression that millions of Canadians live in and face daily. 

When we abandon fighting against capitalism and rejecting it politically, we also abandon them. 

This is not an intellectual exercise, in other words. There are very real, and very negative consequences for real people in there not being a voice that fights for their interests and for transformative political change. 

Are leftists to seriously support voting Liberal, even though we on a certain level want to see Harper lose and even acknowledging  (as only, frankly, a dimwit would not) that they are definitely a better alternative for the country to Harper?  Voting for them, even if done to Stop Harper, endorses their cynical, bourgeois, phony progressive bullshit and how can we advocate doing that?

Voting NDP endorses Mulcair's and the party's profound cynicism and opportunism and the party's retreat from anything close to an anti-capitalist vision. The Greens, while they have some acceptable candidates and positions, also are a capitalist party and, therefore, are simply a recycled version of capitalism with a blue bin,.

So if your objective is to Stop Harper than by all means vote accordingly. If you are politically represented by one of the three mainstream progressive capitalist parties in a way that makes the other two simply not an option, then by all means vote for them and advocate for voting for them in every riding.

Otherwise I think one has to consider a vote for the Communist Party or a rejection of all the parties. The Communist Party is the only party whose commitment to ending capitalism is clear and their platform is one that speaks strongly for workers and working people. While I think that one can and should question their allegiance to Leninism and their notions of democratic centralism, one has to think it is more important in the immediate context for anti-capitalists to set aside differences in the here-and-now and get moving on building a new vision of an anti-capitalist mass movement and a post-capitalist society.

If one is in a riding without a Communist candidate or any other anti-capitalist candidate, leftists still, in my opinion, have to oppose the "mainstream" neo-liberal narrative and its terrible and devastating, destructive impact on the real lives of real people, and we have to advocate for a conscientious rejection of capitalist politics in Canada today by vocally exposing all of the three "mainstream" progressive parties.

While many will disagree with this and will feel that, as always, we have to focus on the cynical retreat that is the normality of supporting "the lesser of evils", as long as we continue to accept the logic of retreat we will never build a political force that can really change Canada and fight capitalism, austerity, inequality, poverty and injustice.

Without this force, stopping Harper means far less then it may at first appear.