Questions for the Green Party’s Election Campaign: A Green Dialogue

Just a couple of quick comments.http://www.350.org .www.greenparty350.ca(link does not work) then we could likely capitalize on this slogan. And if nothing else, we educate an entire nation about the importance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

#1, Leadership Debate. With all respect to Darryl, I have to disagree with the assertion that the participation of our Leader in televised debates in an upcoming election would be a foregone conclusion, based on what happened last time around. I see things differently. Last time, there was a public outcry when the media consortium announced that EM would not be participating, and after said outcry, she was allowed in, and the format of the debate was changed to accommodate the number of leaders at the table (even though the same number had "debated" in a different format in the past, when the Reform Party was still around).

And what were the consequences? While many believed the debate’s format made for good television, there were many others out there who believed the format didn’t provide for the "knock-out" blow everyone was looking for (against whom such a blow would strike didn’t really matter), and others who believed that it was simply a pile-on Harper session. Either way, one single two hour debate with five leaders didn’t leave a lot of time for serious policy discussion, but much was made of the leader’s approach to verbal combat. Does anyone actually remember what any of the leaders had to say?

But besides that argument, clearly the debate did not assist the party in making any inroads at all with regards to our number 1 priority, that being having someone elected. This time around, the media will say to the Party, "Sorry, guys, you’re just not a serious party. We gave you a break last time, allowed you into the debate, but you didn’t elect anyone. Really, you’re on the same level as the Marxist-Lenninists, the Canadian Action Party and Family Coalition Party. Sorry, but you’ve had your chance. Only serious contenders this time."

Will there be an outcry? Yes, for sure there will be. But it will be muted this time around. Last time, people wanted to know more about the Greens, and they thought the media was being unfair by discriminating against an up-and-coming party. This time around, many of those who championed the Green’s inclusion will see that we had our chance and blew it. Recall that many of those who wanted to see us involved were particularly ticked off at Jack Layton’s deal with Harper to exclude EM, while Dion sat on the sidelines. Don’t for a moment think that the Liberals will take a neutral stance this time around, given our success in scuppering the outcome in a number of formerly-Liberal held ridings (including Sudbury). And don’t expect NDP supporters who also believe in free-speech and election reform to chime in our behalf this time, the way they did last time, because we had our chance and did not capitalize.

I do not believe that our Party is on the same wave-length as the FCP or CAP, the Communists or the Marxists, but I also do not believe that we deserve, based on the number of votes we received alone, to expect to share the limelight with the other Parties who have actually elected MP’s. Would it be good for Canada if our Leader was there? Absolutely, especially considering that she’ll be treated as a bit of a media after-thought this time around, and not even as the curiosity she was in the last election. This time, she’s a known quantity, and in the media’s eyes, a stale one at that, especially given that the Liberals have a dynamic new and untested leader. This election will be portrayed in the media as a Clash of the Titans, and even Jack Layton will have a hard time muscling his way in.

What is the Green Party to do? Whether or not we are in the debates, the fact is that we can not rely on the mainstream media to get our message out. Somehow, the NDP manages to elect a good number of MP’s, and by and large, they share the same predicament as us. The truth is, they are well-organized, and have a lot of people on the ground in certain ridings. They can blitz houses and talk to people, they put up signs everywhere, they call and call and call, they force the media to pay grudging attention to their presence, if not to their policies. But presence is what matters, it’s what gets them elected, often in protest.

We Greens are relatively thin on the ground in most parts of the country. Just as the NDP pools its resources for fighting in strategic ridings which they’ve predetermined to be "winnable", we Greens need to think strategically as well. Using the internet to get our message out is all well and good, but elections are won locally, with feet on the ground, signs in the ground, slickly produced handouts in mailboxes, and mouths chattering away against the "other guys".

Are we ready to play that game?

#2, Strategic Voting. Ya, that’s a problem. I share Mark’s concerns regarding the number of non-returning candidates. We have to face the fact that our Party suffered greatly from our own ambiguous messaging about strategic voting, and the fact that people just weren’t prepared to vote their conscious if it meant jeopardizing the defeat of a Conservative. Here in Sudbury with a Liberal incumbent, a strong NDP contender, and Conservative Party with little history in the community, it wasn’t such a problem, and people probably for the most part felt it was ok to vote Green, or switched to Green because they no longer wanted to support a long-serving Liberal who, according to community perception, hadn’t done much for her town, especially lately.

Clearly, we can’t stray off-message on this one. And this time, the stakes likely won’t be as high, as polls will project that Ignatieff and the Liberals will likely form the next government anyway. And say what you want about Ignatieff; the truth is he’s no Stephen Harper. Although lately, Stephen Harper hasn’t exactly been himself either, but I digress.

So we have to be very clear about Strategic Voting: don’t do it. Vote for what you believe in. That must be our message.

Except....in those ridings where there emerge a clear race between the Greens as a legitimate alternative to replace a Conservative, likely in those ridings with weak Liberal and NDP associations in place. Look at the success the NDP experienced in Edmonton-Strathcona against Conservative incumbent Rahim Jaffer. There, it was a straight fight between the Cons and NDP, with the other parties only making a bit of a show. We need to find similar ridings (maybe they’re in Alberta too) where it could be an "us or them" situation created; put in place a strong local candidate, and we’ll have created a very interesting local election dynamic. And then we’ll be able to urge NDP and Liberal voters to vote strategically. That’s the recipe for success. We almost accomplished it in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound in the last Ontario provincial election.

#3, Slogans. Yes, slogans can matter, although I agree with Darryl that they don’t have to matter all that much, and usually that’s because a luke-warm slogan used by a party in power doesn’t often have much of an impact. Cast your mind back to recent elections and tell me any of the slogans used...can you remember any which resonated with anyone at all?

Well, actually yes. One was clearly a slogan, the other more of a policy plank.

In the recent BC election, the NDP’s slogan clearly defined what the NDP was all about: "Axe the Tax". I’m sure that the NDP stood for other things, but they chose instead to fight an election over a single issue, which resonated with a large number of voters. Of course, they asked voters to look beyond the slogan, but the slogan itself defined the primary battleground on which the NDP chose to make its stand.

And the NDP were defeated.

In the last Federal election, the Liberals chose to fight on the basis of something called "the Green Shift", and although not a slogan, clearly it was a distillation of Liberal policy into something easily repeatable by the media, and embodied the Liberal’s primary battleground. Unfortunately for the Liberals, the "Green Shift" was easily caricatured by the other Parties as a "Carbon Tax" and "Tax on Everything". Voters could not bring themselves to vote for a new tax.

And the Liberals were defeated.

The problem with slogans is that even when they are successful and resonate positively with voters (as, I would suggest, "Axe the Tax" did with the NDP), they may also resonate negatively (as happened with the Liberals, who clearly tried to abandon their own slogan/jargon part way through the election). So a "successful" slogan can be a double-edged sword, especially for parties with more than one or two issues.

Which brings us to our Party. Really, we don’t have a lot to lose by finding a successful slogan, something which resonates with the public. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to lose seats as a result.

And I agree with Mark that our current slogan does not resonate. It says very little at all about us. It will not help us get elected. Maybe we don’t need a nifty slogan. But I think we would be wise to come up with one.

And I’ll even go so far as to offer my own suggestion. Here it is:

"350".

Can you imagine our Party running on this slogan? Just a number. Are you intrigued? Would voters be intrigued? Would they think that the Green Party has lost its mind? What the hell does this mean?

I’ll be the first to admit that this slogan does not embody all that our Party stands for. But what slogan does? Clearly, the NDP’s "Axe the Tax" didn’t; that was a narrow element. "350" works in a similar way (although I’d argue that "350" is a lot more telling and defining about what our Party stands for than "Axe the Tax" was for the BC NDP). Yes, with this slogan our campaign would potentially lose perspective and focus on other policy planks we truly believe in, such as voting reform.

But if there is to be a message out there this year, in the year of Obama and Copenhagen, that the Greens can offer Canadians which the other Parties can not and will not, surely it is about an issue we OWN. Heck, the public largely views us as a one issue party anyway. They won’t take our economic policies seriously unless they make a point of looking into them for themselves. Surely the media will not be championing our financial strengths. So why not play up to what they already perceive our strength to be? Especially after Gordon Campbell fended off a challenge to his own perceived record on the environment.

"350" is intriguing, and telling. If you don’t know what it is, what it stands for, I strongly encourage you to find out more about it. I’ll give you one link (although there are many, and I do not necessarily endorse this link):

If we directed interested queries to our own website page, say something like

I suspect that the media would be very dismissive of such a slogan. So what? They’re not going to take us seriously anyway. But to be dismissive, they’ll have to explain what it means. And that will fire-up the imagination of media consumers. They’ll know that the Green Party is fighting this election on the environment, plain and simple. And frankly, I think that’s a good thing.

Let’s not encumber ourselves by trying to be all things to all people. Let’s instead choose our own ground to live or die on. And on the environment, we’ll have chosen some very good ground for a fight.

#4, Strategy. I won’t say as much about this, because I think if you’ve taken the time to read my comments above, you’ll already understand that I’m advocating a very focussed strategy for the upcoming election. What will have transpired before the election need not impact our strategy during the election, however. We can completely change gears, and I think that it would be wise of us to do so. Let’s not fight this coming battle on the basis of protecting canoe routes, staving off nuclear development, legalizing pot, or addressing the democratic deficit. We need to play to our strength: the environment, plain and simple.

It is possible for us to suddenly switch to a strategy with a laser-like focus on the environment overnight. But there needs to be buy-in at the top levels to do so.

I do not think that the public will have much appetite to hear our Leader discuss the need for voting reform or how the Greens will help address poverty issues. While those are important things to me and voters alike, such discussions will get no air. Leave them to the internet if you want.

Hammer home the environment, each and every time. Harper, Ignatieff and Layton are all against doing much of anything on this issue. The election of Green MP’s to the House in a minority government situation can clearly have a positive impact on the environment. That’s it. Make that the complete and utter focus of our campaign. It will resonate, with or without the "350" slogan. Maybe "It’s the Environment, Stupid" would work just as well (with a public gift of "Global warming for dummies" provided to the other Party Leaders, courtesy of Ms. May thrown it). The slogan, while it could be of assistance in defining the strategy, is not as important as a commitment to the strategy.

And to complement this, let’s put all of our resource eggs into just a few baskets, with a clear goal of electing a few MP’s. And for the record, Sudbury is not one of those "winnable" ridings we need to champion.

#5, 308. Yes, it’s unfortunate that we’ve lost, or will lose, a number of good people who otherwise could have helped us out. Here in Sudbury, we are bleeding away support at all levels as a result of events which have transpired in the past several months, including the adoption of policy which supports the legalization of prostitution, and because of the new Candidate election rules which really have stripped EDA’s of one of their primary grass-roots roles. We’ve lost some good people on our Executive, and we’ve lost other party members. All had their reasons for leaving. And I think we need to do something about that. And about all of the other members nationally we’ve not been able to maintain.

But with regards to an election, a narrowly focussed campaign could potentially reap many new members, especially if our poll numbers begin to climb during the campaign. While I continue to advocate focussing our resources in only a few winnable ridings, I believe that local campaigns which can support themselves even in unwinnable ridings such as Sudbury, need to do all that they can to show the flag with the goal of building support and increasing our numbers, even though we know we can’t win. The goal here is long-term, though, as we need to build support on the ground over decades. And it starts with getting out into schools and other areas where we can engage youth. And it involves forcing our way into local media, keeping our candidate’s face front and centre at all times.

In those areas where we are thin on the ground in terms of organization, well, we’ll have to do what we can, and hope that the national campaign can pull our numbers up. And we’ll need to better prepare ourselves next time. I would like to ask, though, what has happened in the interim in those areas which did not have EDA’s in place before the last election? How well have we been doing to build on successes there? As a result of identified support in the last election, do we now have new EDA’s in place to capitalize on building on our successes in the last election? And if we don’t, or only in a few areas, why haven’t we been doing so? Really, this needed to be a priority.

Here in Sudbury, we’ll have our candidate (whomever it will be) front and centre in the eyes of the local media as much as we possibly can. We’ll know who our candidate is after our June 11th nomination meeting; we have two strong contenders for the position. We’ll do our part in the next election to keep the Green Party on the minds of voters. Let’s also get into their hearts and focus on being champions of the environment, leaving no room for doubt what is important to our Party, and what our primary focus in Parliament would be.

And those are my quick comments on Mark’s excellent blogpost.

"Sudbury" Steve May

Sorry Steve, but I had to jump in here to make sure that everyone reading this is on the same page.  The way Bill used, "community organizing and public education" is not the way that I think you've interpreted it(if I'm wrong then I apologize profusely).  Bill means a process involving a community survey, networking with different groups, identifying supporters, building grassroots support, identifying community leaders, obtaining endorsements, waging a campaign BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER an election, and yes EDUCATING a community in order to shift public opinion(again correct me if I'm wrong). Then the conditions will be set for actually electing a Green MP. This is what has been going on in Guelph for several years and why they're one of the most successful EDAs in the country.

In your response you suggest that it was stated that the Green Party turn itself into a "community advocacy" organization.  I believe you mean this in the sense of an NGO or activist group.  But, this is not what is meant by "community advocacy."

Bill did a previous blog on this topic. GO THERE RIGHT NOW AND READ THIS SO WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME PAGE:

http://www.greenparty.ca/en/blogs/1099/2009-02-02/pdf-power-point-slides...

There you'll find some slides on community organizing and how it can be used not only to influence politics(the "organizing" part), but also to SHAPE the composition of the electorate(the "public education" part). 

Then to further undersand the context read this blog from right after the last election:

http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/8529

I see in the discussion developing here a thread very much like what has happened before.
Sorry again for my tone, and I hope we can all learn from this.

And I think the point is that by community organizing we actually in the end elect MPs.  Any thoughts?

NOW HERE'S MY TWO CENTS:

We have to realize that what the Green Party is trying to do it quite radical for the environmental movement. For many many years the Green Movement has seen itself as outside politics and in the role of activist or advocate to tell the Government (or colloquially "the man") what to do.  The Green Party signals a major shift in thinking in that some environmentally minded people have actually decided that it's a good idea to have political power and to exercise it.

I've seen this personally in my undergraduate programme; people who have just spent four years studying ecology/environmentalism but don't translate that into a vote for the Green Party(or for some even voting at all!!).  There's still this idea that green(not Green) people should be activists, pressure the government, or simply live the green lifestyle.  It is 100% not obvious to most that in order to achieve sustainability you need to become involved in the political process. We need to make this point clear to an entire generation that has missed the message.

Thanks Matthew. It is always gratifying to see someone actually paying attention---. ;-)