Love Me, Love Me, Love Me--I'm a Liberal!

 

Ruby Dhalla

Last Saturday I joined the Liberal Party to vote for Ruby Dhalla. 

This is not a cynical move. 

Some Conservative commentators are urging people to join the Liberal Party to vote for the candidate they think least likely to beat Poilievre. I cannot do that. The end cannot justify the means. 

Besides, rumour has it that many Democrats backed Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries, thinking he was a joke candidate, and their weakest possible opponent. The “weak” candidate you vote for might end up Prime Minister.

I want to vote for her because I think Dhalla might be the Liberals’ best hope. And I want the best for the Liberals. I have at times voted Liberal in the past. She is attractive, charismatic, and well-spoken. She is reasonably qualified as a past MP, but unique among contenders in genuinely having no connection with the current unpopular regime. She represents a new start; if she cannot win this time, no one can. She is best positioned to rebuild the party anew. 

Most importantly, she is running on a new platform, to move the Liberals back to the centre. The platforms offered by the other contenders are identical and more of the same.

The politicos will object that I am sabotaging the right.  By moving to the centre, the Liberals will take votes away from the Conservatives. I think this logic wrong. For the recent past, since Reform and the PCs merged, Canada has had four viable parties on the left, the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and BQ. It has had one or two (if your count the PPC, who have never won a seat) on the right. 

And who has usually won elections? Has the left ceased to be viable? Just the opposite: Canada has been rushing to the left.

It all has to do with the “Overton window”; what counts is what issues actually get discussed, and what views get heard. Four voices for the left and only one for the right drowns out the right and pulls the country to the left. 

Dhalla might surprise in the leadership vote. Any Canadian could join the Liberal Party without charge and vote on the new leader. The Liberal Party has been running to the left of the average Canadian, and Dhalla is now the only centrist option. 

Chandra Arya was also running for the centre, but was disqualified. Rumour was that he was raising more campaign donations than frontrunner Mark Carney. Despite the insurmountable obstacle that he spoke no French and showed no intention of learning it. His support should now all flow to Dhalla. And there is perhaps an ethnic vote too that he and now she can tap into: although Arya was Hindu, and Dhalla Sikh, they are both Indo-Canadian. Sikhs in Canda are highly politically organized.

I’d wager she places a surprise third on the first ballot. 

And even if she does not win, positions herself as ready to take over after the Liberals’ inevitable defeat.