More beige than beige #nlpoli

The Premier had a carefully rehearsed message when reporters asked him on Thursday why he had appointed everyone in cabinet back to their old portfolios despite an election that had reduced his party to a minority government.

A cabinet of "experience, consistency, and stability,"  Dwight Ball called them.

He used the word "experienced" a couple of times and emphasised the word "stable" as he finished the answer to one question.  You can find a bit of Ball's scrum with reporters at about the 42 minute mark of CBC's Here and Now broadcast. NTV's story got the "stability" message loud and clear.

The election result was a shock to many people.  People can debate what it meant that voters didn't endorse any one party to have a majority in the legislature.

Ball has a political problem even if he is in heavy denial about it but all the talk about experience and stability wasn't about dealing with a political problem.  Voters aren't panicked by the minority government.

Ball was dealing with a financial problem.  His plans depend heavily on the ability to borrow a couple of billions dollars to make his budget work.  Ball will have a much harder time borrowing money if the bond-rating agencies take a dim view of his government's ability to manage public finances in the wake of the election.

The Politics of Beige #nlpoli

The trend is impossible to miss.

Utterly undeniable.

Since early 2016,  through poll after poll,  voters in Newfoundland and Labrador have chosen "None of the Above"  when asked what party they would vote for in an upcoming election.

Click to enlarge

Support for the New Democrats has been shrinking steadily like an orange left in the sun.

And the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives, the only parties actually capable of presenting an alternative government to voters in an election have been ranging consistently between 20 and 30 percent.

There's no sign of that trend changing.

Pushing buttons: technology and campaigns

While most candidates in the St. John’s municipal election have embraced some form of technology to support their campaign, the level of usage and the sophistication varies widely.

On one end of the spectrum you’ve got Ward Three candidate Bruce Tilley and his Web 0.5 beta site that looks like it was left over from the days when the Internet ran on vacuum tubes.

There’s no one who has fully embraced Web Campaign 2.0, but some are pretty close.

Like Shannie Duff and Simon Lono. Both have the social media add-ons like Twitter and they update them frequently. Both are also using videos through youtube to help spread their views. 

Those are just two;  their are others like Sheilagh O’Leary or Debbie Hanlon who are making maximum use of the facebook space to keep their network of dedicated supporters informed an up-to-date.

Others have got the look down, but the content is lacking, like any of the mayoral contenders or Keith Coombs.

Doc O’Keefe has a really expensive electronic brochure but then again that’s what you get when you hire an advertising agency. It’s all non-threatening designer beige and even the photos of the candidate are retouched packages of pure crud. 

Human beings simply do not look like this.  Borg have healthier skin tones.   There’s a calculated effort here to be inoffensive but the effect is so calculated and so miserably executed that it comes off being offensive and obnoxious.

 Ron Ellsworth’s site looks good, but there are some inconsistencies in the content that mar the overall package.  He has a section called “My approach” and the sub-headings are about “Our” this and that.  There are plenty of these jarring internal contradictions in Ellsworth’s campaign.  Think a plan where the first action item is to develop a plan. Altogether, these suggest Ellsworth hasn’t got his political shit together or his campaign team is so inexperienced or otherwise incapable that they can’t get a bit of focus to the message.

Take Twitter as another example. Ron’s got it, but one suspects he’s got it because someone told him that’s what campaigns need to look good.   But Twitter is the sort of thing that hyper-caffeinated hamster people with crackberries use to keep people notified of the bathroom habits or random firings of the few synapses left in their brains.  Some of them are so wired they are proof  a monkey can sometimes luck out and type a coherent sentence with just their thumbs.

Okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

But when a guy uses Twitter like a stone tablet in cuneiform – google it, people on your iPhone -  you know that  Ellsworth can talk about engaging people but he has no idea how to actually do it. 

But if you want to get a taste for raw energy and the sort of straight-up presentation the Web 2.0 technology can deliver, check out Lono’s virtual door-to-doors. 

Specifically have a look at the one on community, taxes and services.  It should raise a few hackles but it speaks very loudly and very deliberately to a raft of voters in the west end of St. John’s.  Curb-side recycling is funny but the humour is an entree to a simple message about the need to just get on with better waste management.

The two that are getting the most attention are two you might expect to, though.  Bally Hally speaks directly to an election issue and one that will face the next council.  Lono makes his position clear. Lono’s call for a municipal auditor general seems to have struck a nerve with people too, if the number of visitors is any indication.

There are plenty of ways to use technology in political campaigns. You can see the full spectrum in the St. John’s municipal race.

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Dippers go home #nlpoli

The latest quarterly poll from Narrative Research shows that a gaggle of folks who were likely New Democratic Party supporters returned to the fold in the past quarter and are now happy to identify as New Democrats once more.

So while this is good news for Alison Coffin and the NDP,  it really puts everything back in the space the parties occupied before February 2019.  That's when things were decidedly beige.

You can see this in the chart at right by looking at the orange line (NDP party support) and the green line (undecided, no choice, refused to answer, will not vote).  What you also see there is that generally polling from other firms has picked up the same basic pattern.

Of course, I think my boss is the greatest guy in the universe

City solicitor Ron Penney is in the Telegram today insisting, among other things that Andy Wells is more qualified than anyone to head the board regulating the province's offshore industry.

We'll deal with the serious shortcomings of Penney's analysis over the weekend.

In the meantime, at left is a photograph of the group that negotiated the Atlantic Accord (1985) along with the provincial and federal ministers involved. The crowd standing are a mix of federal and provincial officials. Seated, left to right, are: Bill Marshall (provincial energy minister), Brian Peckford, Brian Mulroney and Pat Carney (Marshall's federal counterpart).

Ron Penney is the second from the right, standing. Andy Wells other chief advisor on oil and gas matters - besides Penney - is the fellow in the beige suit standing with his hand on Brian Peckford's chair. That's Cabot Martin, for those who don't recognize him.

The best quote of the entire piece comes right at the end:

"This is an important public policy debate. It's important that people have the views of somebody who is knowledgeable about this issue."

The first sentence is absolutely correct. That's why the debate has been raging for a year now. It's also why we'll deal with the substance of Penney's views in a later (and sadly longer) post.

If Penney's assessment of his current boss' sterling qualifications had merit, Penney wouldn't need to swell himself with the gratuitous self-massage of the second sentence.