Never overstay your welcome
A week from now, we may have one party leader left standing, premier-elect Andrea Horwath.
Kathleen Wynne will almost certainly follow convention and resign on election night. Doug Ford may try to defy convention and struggle to hang on. Like Trump, he may believe that the Ford Nation Party will be able to defend him against the party establishment. He is wrong, but his departure may inflict more wounds on an already badly wounded party. Blowing a 20point lead is not an achievement any leader can survive.
There are several lessons for all the parties. For the Liberals, it is that they should have listened to the party elders who tried until the end of the year to persuade the premier that she should consider retiring. She was perfectly within her rights to say that she was determined to finish her priority goals in a second term.
She may also have believed the reasons for the nudge may have been her gender and her being openly gay. It would be understandable if she reacted strongly in defence of the right of women like her to reach high office and be supported in good times and bad — as the party would have done for a man. In that, she would have been right, and she might have been wise to have friends say so publicly on her behalf.
Sadly, she was wrong in terms of reelecting a Liberal government.
I am not sure that sexism or homophobia are high on the list of even hidden motives for the disillusionment that many progressive voters feel toward her. It was surely more “normal” voter anger that she was not fighting adequately for them and their families. She was carrying on her back the burden of some very bad policy decisions over 15 years, as well. But the depth and imperviousness of the anger at her has been real and known for nearly two years. At some point, an apology is not enough. A leader bringing down their party needs to pass the baton.
For the Tories, if they are defeated, the silver lining may be a return to a more genuinely progressive conservative party for the first time in a generation. Red Tories, young and old, sitting out what may be another hard-right leader’s losing campaign have, like the traditional leaders of the U.S. GOP, begun to muse about how to “take back our party.” A woman of that tradition as PC leader would almost certainly have delivered them a victory this time, and could do so in the future.
New Democrats should thank their elders for blocking the stillborn coup attempts against Andrea Horwath following her last disappointing campaign. Politics is a craft, it takes thousands of hours of practice to become good, learning the lessons of hundreds of early gaffes to become a pro. Horwath is an incomparably better campaigner in this election than she has ever been before. She oozed the confidence of a leader comfortable in her skin in recent weeks, with none of her earlier moments of hesitation.
Wynne stayed too long, even if she was unfairly savaged for issues far beyond her control. Ford was not ready for the NHL, perhaps will never be.
A lesson for all three parties is that they each must rethink their leadership selection process. It is surely madness to allow anyone who can buy enough votes to build a majority, made up of people who may have no stake in the party or any investment in the wisdom of its leadership choice, to determine who gets the job. If, as in the case of Ford’s dubious victory, there is also more than a whiff of foul play, it is even more foolish.
Democratically elected delegates chosen by ridings remain the wisest balance of partisan needs when choosing a leader. You still broaden the base with new members, but you don’t lose control of who wins to outsiders — some of whom may be Facebook fictions. Surely the parties can devise a modern form of a digital delegated convention.