Hebert:
“If NDP and Liberal leaders Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff had taken the advice of their elder statesmen and looked for a way to pool forces earlier this year, the result of their joint efforts would likely be doing better in the polls than their separate parties.
Instead, the end of 2010 finds the two main national opposition parties on opposite ends of a teeter-totter. They are each ensuring that the other does not go up very high or for very long.”
A great friend in Ottawa asked me this morning if I am “an elder statesman.” I’m elder, I said, but not much of a statesman.
But Chantal’s observation is the truth, nonetheless: if the people in Ottawa had listened to Chretien and Broadbent, they’d be in much better shape by now.
Anyway. Whatever; we tried, we failed. Stephen Harper must be a very happy man, indeed.
UPDATE: And now Paul Wells has commented on Hebert’s comments. It’s a groundswell! Anyway, as one of those “currently [and happily – ed.] largely discredited,” I urge you to read Wells’ column, and not just because I agree with it. My take, of which I’m living proof: things in politics are usually not as complicated as they are made out to be. It’s so simple, in fact, it barely merits saying: uniting warring progressives makes them stronger. Also simple: your main opponent – you know, the guy who united warring conservatives to successfully win power – will do everything he can to prevent such a progressive union. Like Wells says: “[Harper] needs to scare Michael Ignatieff off the structural-realignment dime if he is to hold power. Fortunately for him, the prime minister’s task is not particularly difficult.”
Anyway, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. It took the Right three election cycles (1993, 1997 and 2000) to get together, and win. It’ll take at least three more election cycles, over almost as many years (2006, 2008 and maybe 2011 or 2012), for the Left to realize, what Pogo famously observed so long ago:
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