Strategically Yours, Don.

Over at Revolutionary Moderation, Don is well into mulling over strategic voting, and the concept of trading votes. For those of you scoring at home, Don and I go way back. Far back enough that I have a collection of favourite Don-isms, the most appropriate for this occasion being "The fights are so fierce because the stakes are so small." RevMod Don is waaaaaay more politically astute than anybody I know, but I can't believe anyone in Fort Harper, er, Alberta would work themselves up over strategic voting.

Strategic voting ranks with Patriotism as a last refuge of a scoundrel. The only masters it serves are polarization and the politics of fear. The more New Democrats think out loud about voting Liberal because they're scared of the big, scary, Conservatives, the more momentum the CPC picks up. There are still a disturbing number of people in Canada who cast their ballots on the basis of who they think is going to win. Paul Martin would have had a much more stable coalition last June if he hadn't gone running around the Lower Mainland in the last week of the campaign screaming about how the sky was falling. His antics pushed a lot of soft NDP votes to 3rd place Liberals and allowed Conservatives to come up the middle. How do you think we were saddled with two Grewals?

Of course, Don's experience in Edmonton Centre is different, given that Anne McClellan is once again dangling perilously over the electoral cliff. This page says let 'er drop. If Paul Martin was serious about shoring up the traditional Liberal base, he wouldn't be flogging the carcass of Mike Harris' political career as his Harper metaphor, he'd be getting in the right-wing faces of Jean Charest, Gordon Campbell AND Ralph Klein. These three less- than-wise men are all either on their way down or on their way out, but at least they're still around and could give the illusion of a little Trudeau-style federalist piss n' vinegar in good ol' Paulie Pockets. Sure, voters in Edmonton Centre and elsewhere in Alberta (Canada's Red State) will vomit on it and give the CPC two more seats, but voters in Ontario are more amenable to how the stuff tastes, and they can deliver way more seats to the Liberals.

As for trading votes: Dude....secret ballot....