Liberals Should Beware Emulating US Primaries

During the Liberal leadership debate over the weekend, several candidates, including Justin Trudeau and Joyce Murray came out in favour of what they're calling "open nominations."  The idea being that the Liberal candidate in each riding will be picked by the members of that riding association, and the national leader will not intervene.

This is an appealing idea for some obvious reasons and clearly popular among rank and file Liberal party members as a means to weaken the tight grip of the national leadership on the party.  I fear this takes the Liberal party toward US style party-primary elections.  I have two major problems with this, based on what I've seen watching US politics:

• Small, local elections are the easiest ones to buy or rig.  They get almost zero media coverage, and in that environment, sheer name recognition will usually carry the day.  Rather than being meaningful representations of true voter desires, the person whose name they recognize from ads or direct mail will usually win.  
• The people who win can be widely divergent from the National party's positions, and in particular the Leader's positions.  This sounds much better than it works in practice.  The US Parties, and the Democratic Party in particular are often incoherent and poorly coordinated affairs.  Voters frequently are confused over what the parties stand for, and the reason is at least partly because the Democratic party has elected officials who call themselves "conservative" and others "moderate" and a few that admit to being "liberal."  Some are pro-gun control, others against.  Some pro-choice, others pro-life. At some point a Big Tent becomes so big as to be just a circus, with the leader reduced to ringleader.

The fallout of this is that it has the perverse effect of decreasing democratic accountability by leaving voters without clear choices in government.  Right now the parties are fairly easy to distinguish, and to understand what they stand for.  The road the Liberals are going down leads to a leader unable to respond to members who openly flout the leader, and the loss of party discipline.  After, all if the leader can't deny a member the party's nomination in the next election, the biggest means of enforcing party discipline is lost.

I am all for giving ordinary members stronger input into the party's positions and ideology.  Having a set of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson style gadflies who delight in spiting the leadership to side with other parties as splashy shows of independence is not an effective way to do that.  Parties need coherence in order to remain meaningful organizations that actually stand for something.  Reducing the Liberal Party to a 338 member confederacy may leave it an incoherent mess, and easy prey for the other parties that do not follow suit in immunizing their riding nominees from national control.

Joyce Murray for Liberal Leader

While I see some positives in Justin Trudeau, I will be voting for Joyce Murray.  Trudeau has taken the "safe" route for frontrunners in avoiding releasing very much policy and some of what he has said seems to put him on track to be something other than what Canada needs.  Murray believes in a vision of a sustainable society, including real action on Climate change, the overriding and growing crisis of our era.

Further she has taken a bold and courageous stand in supporting cooperation with the Greens and NDP rather than continuing to play the zero-sum game which allows the Conservatives to win elections despite strong opposition of a majority of Canadians.

I'm aware that Trudeau is overwhelmingly favoured to win and if he does, well I can hope that a strong show of support for Murray influences the direction he takes.  Politicians usually go where they think votes and donations are, and I have donated to Murray and will vote for her.

Removing Harper's lot from the levers of power will be the overriding priority in 2015, but who replaces them will matter a great deal.  I know my own vote for the Liberals in 2015 is not a done deal, and will depend a great deal on where the new leader takes the party for that race.  A cowardly Conservative-lite campaign is not what Canada needs.