mr grieves said:
Liberals would, of course, be criticized for spending too much or too little in the next election even if they were governing with a majority. So, it's not just that the "end result" of concessions, being "hammered" by left and right alike, aren't desirable--they could've avoided that by not holding an election!--but that there'd be some benefit to "governing as they see fit" and a sense that being forced into concessions has produced suboptimal results.
You're missing my point a little there. Sure "We want more Right Wing policies" and "We want more Left Wing policies" would be the Conservative and NDP lines regardless but at least in a majority government, the record the Liberals would be defending would be their own. As is they're facing those criticisms despite at least attempting to govern by some form of compromise and the siding with the Conservatives are front and centre in the NDP's appeals to the NDP/Liberal swing voters and vice-versa with the Conservative/Liberal swing voters.
If you think the key to appealing to voters is Centrist politics, and if you don't then like I said you wouldn't be a Liberal, then you're going to want a Centrist record to run on rather than a half-Left, half-Right record you were pushed into.
Nik said:
Isn't that what's happening? Turns out there aren't enough voters who would vote for Liberals whose main interest is in seeing a Liberal majority?
Well, A) we'll see on Monday(or next week, anyway) if the Liberals get that majority and B) we'll never really know if the Liberals would have eventually won a Majority absent an election being called right now. It may be that people who otherwise would have voted Liberal have been deeply offended by an election being called or it may just be that opinion polls before an election don't mean much and that when faced with actually going to the polls, people tend to revert to their natural political inclinations rather than just "Do I like how the Liberals handled the pandemic?" winning out.
Either way, I think it's safe to say that "Well, the Liberals would win a majority but only if they never called an election" is not seen as particularly valuable political currency.
mr grieves said:
Right! The first part of your either/or is what I'm getting at. the cudgel-wielders are partisans who vote how they vote and use whatever argument's at hand, but lots of people eligible to vote probably are "dangerously naive"--and either reluctant to participate in an election they perceive to be needlessly called or willing even to punish a party for doing such a thing. If you know that's a definite possibility, that that's how voters may well respond to the election you call, what do we call a party that goes ahead and calls the election anyway? "Dangerously naive" sounds pretty good, but is, alas, taken.
Well, wrong works and it certainly wouldn't be the first time a party with a minority government had been wrong about which way the winds were blowing but I think it's kind of ridiculous to think that a political organization like the Liberal party wouldn't, in their own internal polling, have asked the obvious follow up of "Would calling an election during the pandemic offend you so much that you change your vote?" after asking people what they thought of their performance and still liked their chances. That the election was called is a pretty good sign that the Liberals did their internals and still liked their chances.
If the Liberals are in a weaker position after this election, which is still a legitimately big "if" right now, I'm sure there will be all manner of post-mortems trying to explain why and, sure, a crucial percentage point or two might be lost because of people who don't generally understand how political parties work. That said, I don't think we need to humour that demographic by similarly being pollyanna-ish about why elections get called and when.
mr grieves said:
I can't tell if the bolded bit is a prediction or a statement about how such elections are run.
If the former: I'm not predicting anything, of course. But I just wonder why it isn't being used here, because it does seem like some new wrinkle to add to electoral politics that, as an American, doesn't come naturally to me. An election in the middle of a set for standard term ought to be precipitated by some compelling need to get the consent of the voting public.
Admittedly, I'm not an expert in American politics but considering how things like gerrymandering, voting rights and, say, trying to overthrow election results go down south it seems like "How come that political party is doing what they think is in their best interests regardless of the potential consequences or democratic legitimacy?" would actually be fairly recognizable. If the US government had the ability to call a snap election do you really not think it would be used by the Democrats when they thought it benefitted them the most and the same with Republicans?
If the Liberals fail to get their desired Majority, which seems like a pretty good bet right now, then absolutely some people will say that the lack of a really popular or dynamic policy platform that won the day with voters will be a reason why but I think expecting a really dynamic policy platform from a Centrist party might not ever be realistic. The Liberals appeal is always going to be based on a sort of middle of the road, stay the course philosophy and they may just have overestimated that appeal to a deeply polarized electorate.
mr grieves said:
For example, I recall Theresa May had a pretty terrible election result when she called an election without reaching a clear "I wanna do X" crisis point, whereas BoJo did a lot better when explicitly seeking a "Brexit, now or never -- let's just get it done" mandate and/or having an electorate polarized around the terrifying, and more-probable-than-last-time, prospect of a PM Jeremy Corbyn.
I mean, I'm not an expert in UK politics either but I'd say that May's bad result wasn't based so much on lacking a clear vision for policies as it was the fact that she was a PM who was just chosen by her party to succeed a resigning David Cameron, hadn't won a general election and, to put it bluntly, was not a very good candidate. Seeking a mandate in that situation, I think, was more about her trying to have some sort of weight to throw around in her own party when she knew that the brexit hardliners in her party would never vote for her own vision of a softer brexit and she needed to have a Majority that didn't need them. Losing seats there probably had more to do with that schism in her party between the Brexit hardliners and her own pro-remain Conservative faction than it did anything else. Her "I wanna do X" was pretty clearly "Negotiate a soft brexit" and that proved to be a very tough sell to a party that made up the bulk of Brexit voters.
mr grieves said:
If the latter and some basic fact about the how these elections are run and understood: I get that my "well, why y'all voting now if there's no major thing you're voting on?" might sound naive, but how far is it really from the behavior of your average edible voter?
Sure, I mean, I could argue that a government's performance during these unprecedented times is actually a fairly major thing to seek a mandate over but regardless, there's no denying that if the Liberals don't win a majority or even end up with a weaker position post-election there will be people saying they majorly fouled up by calling the election and the proof will be in the pudding.
That said, I still think you have to work from a position of the Liberals just being wrong about their polling rather than thinking that they couldn't have foreseen people being frustrated about an election call.
