Nothing clarifies the mind like getting your ass kicked. I am seeing more passion about the Liberal Party now than I have seen in years. Forums, websites, Facebook, email: All are alive with grassroots Liberals wanting to participate in the rebuilding of this great party.
Right now, that energy is unfocused. I am seeing lots of ideas, some good, some okay, some bad. Much of this discussion is tlaking about the big picture, what the Party as a whole has to do. And that is a good conversation to have, but it can’t stop there.
There are two trends, both potentially damaging to the Party, that I am see in the rebuilding discussion that I think need to be addressed before they take over the process: Policy and Top-down Thinking.
Policy
The LPC did not lose the election because of a failure in policy. The Harper Conservatives did not win because of a triumph of policy. The NDP certainly did not make the gains they did though any sort of policy magic bullet. Policy simply does not win, or lose, elections.
Policy is a tool used to motivate volunteers at the local level, and then provide volunteers and candidates with a vehicle for voter engagement. Policy gives campaigners standing on door steps something to talk to the voter about, and it gives that voter the opportunity to make a judgement on whether or not the candidate is worthy of their vote. That decision, however, isn’t based on whether we are against fighter jets or prisons, or if we are for a learning passport or national childcare. It is based on a human value judgement of the actual individual at the door.
It wasn’t policy that started the Orange Crush in Quebec. It was personality. Quebecers saw Jack Layton in the debates, liked him, and voted for him. And it wasn’t policy that allowed the NDP to take advantage of the momentum shift in the rest of the country. It was the people on the ground, in the ridings, working for local campaigns who took advantage of the momentum to sway votes locally.
If there is a single cause that can be blamed for the huge defeat the Liberals suffered in this election (there isn’t a single cause, but it is a useful fiction), it is that we didn’t run a good ground war.
If we are going to rebuild this party, we need to stop talking policy, and start volunteering at the riding level. We must all get actively involved in our Riding Associations. We must volunteer to serve on the executives and the various committees led by that executive. We need to talk to our friends and neighbours about joining us in this effort, getting them signed up as members, and getting them signed up for Victory Fund.
We don’t need a hundred people sitting at home talking about the next big idea that will win us an election. We a hundred people making phone calls. We don’t need thousands of people clambering to develop electoral strategy, we need thousands of people knocking on doors. We don’t need to develop a new national message right now, we need people maintain our social media interactions and our websites locally. We don’t need everyone in the party analysing the data from the election, we need everyone to volunteer to make sure it gets entered.
The rebuilding of the LPC is going to start at your local riding association, because if this isn’t a bottom-up revolution, then it will never succeed.
Top-down Thinking
It is very tempting to want to make grand pronouncements on Facebook or whatever about what is need to rebuild the party. It is tempting to demand to have a national dialogue, and for everyone, whether member or not, to participate in this discussion. It is tempting to say that the National Board of Directors must listen to each individual voice in the party.
But it just isn’t realistic. The structures the party has in place, Electoral District Associations (EDA), Provincial/Territory Associations (PTA), Council of Presidents (CoP) and the National Board of Directors (NBoD) exist because you simply can’t manage a discussion effectively that involves more than a few dozen people. These structures and internal organizations have some problems, don’t get me wrong, but in order to make changes to these structures we must first work within them.
The best way for you to join the conversation on how to rebuild the Party is at your Riding Association. Re-build your local organization. Join the Party. Join the Victory Fund. Host meetings on rebuilding the Party locally. Engage your friends and neighbours.
Once you have done that, then look to your PTA. Run for a position on you PTA, Support someone who you think shares your vision for the Party in running for the PTA. Go to your next Provincial Convention as a delegate. Demand that your PTA provide ways to participate in that convention on the Internet and at local gatherings. Volunteer to make calls or door knock for Province-wide fundraising and membership drives.
The reality of any large organization is that any individual is going to have the biggest influence at their local level. If all of us work to create the best Liberal Party that we can locally, then we can’t help but to have rebuilt the entire party. Nothing could ever stop this Party if all of our local organizations were fully engaged and active.
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The National Conversation is going to happen. We have a convention in December, and I’m sure its entire focus is going to be on how to rebuild this party. But if all we focus on is the national conversation, if we don’t work to rebuild our brand riding by riding by riding, then we will fail.
