Winning Isn't Everything. Or is it?

Carole James will be dropping by the CUPE BC Convention on Friday afternoon to gather a few standing ovations and (hopefully) outline the long-awaited NDP platform for the May 17 election. At a press conference on Monday, James said that "the NDP is running to win", despite reports from 'party insiders' that the best anyone is really hoping for is around 30 seats.

James has also said that NDP candidates or volunteers "aren't under orders" to talk about anything but winning. Jenny Kwan's pre-campaign literature includes phrases like "send Gordon Campbell's Liberals a message they can't ignore". That doesn't read like the Liberals' bombastic "A New Era for British Columbia" of four years ago.

Because I started out as a New Democrat in Alberta, I'm still a little fuzzy around this idea of 'winning' elections. In 1997, we said that we won because we got Pam Barrett and Raj Pannu into the Legislature after electing zero MLAs four years earlier. I know that in BC electing 2 MLA's in 2001 was not a 'win', but hasn't the party gathered enough success to declare a victory even though the drop of a writ is a few days away? There was every opportunity for the NDP to cash in their collective chips after 2001, but the party took a good look in the mirror and steered a moderate progressive course with the election of James. Meanwhile, Joy McPhail and Jenny Kwan turned in heroic performances in the legislature, exposing the Campbell "Liberals" as little more than Howe Street's shock troops, with no intention of steering BC towards the middle like they told voters in the 2001 campaign.

The results? Poll numbers that may not look that impressive on the surface (46 to 39 for the Liberals), but are close to the popular vote when the NDP pulled off its dramatic comeback of 1996. Even if Carole James doesn't lead New Democrats to government, there's an important victory for all British Columbians in having an official Opposition again, and there's four years for the NDP to build a cohesive caucus and allow James to build her profile as a Premier in waiting. In the long run, that may be better than rushing to feed a rebuilt and tentative governing party to CanWest Global and the Vancouver Board of Trade.

That's not to say that New Democrats shouldn't be pulling out all the stops to form a government on May 17. Gordon Campbell didn't get it when he was told to resign from a number of quarters after his drunk driving conviction, and he's not going to get it if his government gets a significant kick in the mandate either. In 1991, British Columbians looked to send a message to a polarizing and arrogant Social Credit government. That message was loud enough to inadvertently put Mike Harcourt in the Premier's Office. Carole James could end up the same way if New Democrats simply focus on delivering a credible message to voters, winning as many seats as possible and letting the arithmetic do the rest.