We're going to lose the next election. Unless...

This morning a friend sent me a link -- “in case you missed it” --  to a story in The Guardian reporting on the Italian response to Boris Johnson’s on-the-face-of-it ridiculous claim that, if the Italians didn’t give in to Britain’s Brexit demands, the British would stop importing Italian prosecco.
I’d read it.
But (and here’s the point of the anecdote) it had been linked to on my Facebook feed at least 5 times, because it’s that kind of story: silly given the serious implications of Brexit and kind of catchy at the same time.
I’m going to suggest Boris knew perfectly well it would be silly and catchy and rather humorous when he made the comment. He probably also knew he’d be open to the zinger that naturally followed when the Italian minister responded. And it didn’t matter: he’d made the headlines again, and his grinning mugshot had been beamed to almost every mobile in his own country.
That’s a pretty good return for a charismatic populist politician who is quite serious about wanting to be prime minister someday soon.
Because the whole point of the exchange was to grab headlines and re-enforce his brand; it had next-to-nothing to do with sales of wine, no matter how delightful the variety.
We saw a much more toxic version of the same strategy during the recent American election, when Donald Trump made enough sensational statements each day for months to stay in the headlines for yet another day, until in the end the entire election was really not about policy but about Donald Trump’s outrageous charisma versus Hillary Clinton’s unlovable competence plus supposed guilt for crap she hadn’t done.
I’m confident we could also point to politicians in Hungary, Austria, France, The Netherlands... etc.

It may seem a stretch, but I’m going to add Christy Clark’s outing during the last election to the list. While the NDP campaign was mostly Adrian Dix earnestly talking policy, the BCLiberal campaign was almost entirely about Christy, in a hardhat, talking about how LNG was going to pave the streets with gold.
Substance versus mirage, in other words, and it didn’t matter that we all knew it, especially after the whisper campaign that Adrian was somehow guilty of fraud took off.

We cannot let her get away with that again, but she will unless we change our ways, electorally.

A lot of my fellow NDPers blame Dix for not going negative on the BCLiberals and Clark in particular last time out. They think that if we do that this time out we’ll win. To which I say, “Maybe, but unlikely.” You can’t fight charisma with fact, and that’s a fact.

We need to hit them where it hurts: deny the BCLiberals Christy the Campaigner, which is really their only brand at the moment.
-- So no more attacking “Christy”: if attack is called for, attack the BCLiberals. We don’t mention the Premier, unless it’s unavoidable, and then she’s “Ms Clark”.
-- We start referring to the leader of the NDP as “John” or “John Horgan”, and build the campaign around the friendliest, most approachable guy on the campaign trail.
--  The campaign needs to let John be John. He can be very funny, and has a sharp wit: exactly what it takes to steal headlines from Ms Clark, who appears to lack a sense of the ridiculous. Just ask Boris what it takes to steal headlines, if you don’t believe me.
-- We take away their headlines by making sure we always have our own. That will probably require that we showcase some of the brilliant talent of the NDP team, speaking about their areas of interest and expertise. During the campaign, Photo ops R Us.
-- We don’t dwell on the BCLiberal shortcomings as a government; rather, we promote a vision of a future that includes an unsubsidized, ecologically-neutral LNG industry that pays for the natural gas and electricity it uses... it includes schools that don’t fall down in an earthquake potentially killing all the students... it includes a transit system in Vancouver that doesn’t rely on bridges which lead to inevitable gridlock... it includes a political system that isn’t for sale, so no more big money to bribe politicians and their parties... it includes small alternate energy projects spread over the province, rather than expensive dams and flooding that we’ll be paying for on our hydro bills for the next 70 years because the power cannot be sold profitably... it includes doing away with MSP premiums... it includes affordable housing, and taking back our province from foreign and money-laundering real-estate interests... Et cetera.
Of course (and here we’re back at Twitter and Facebook and exposure for our ideas) all this and much more is already being promoted by John. So we’re already way ahead of the last campaign.

One last point: It is unnecessary -- maybe even counter-productive -- to explain the financing of these projects during the election: too much information just gives the BCLiberals and their acolytes of the press something to pick at. I know they’ll try to make a meal of this, but the Trump and Brexit campaigns were remarkable for their lack of financial detail, and nobody seemed deterred. I admit that, at the time, my old-time political instincts thought this lack of financial accountability would be a deal-breaker.
How wrong that was!
Remember that the Trudeau Liberals pulled this off to perfection, so I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong here.

Let’s win in May, OK? BC desperately needs us to.