Angry in the Great White North

Stephane Dion is mixing his metaphors. I don't think it is a question of his command of English. I think it is because he is envisioning the particular sort of battle he wants to fight in the next general election, but is accidently describing the sort of electoral battle Stephane Dion is going to be fighting, and the two are not the same:

Stephane Dion signalled yesterday that he will take a left-leaning platform of social programs into the next election, as he vowed to run a campaign that will create a "collision" between Liberal and Conservative visions of Canada.

Little more than a month after he dodged an election by ordering Liberal MPs to abstain on a series of confidence votes in the House of Commons - arguing that Canadians did not want another trip to the polls - Mr. Dion told his troops to be ready for a 2008 campaign as soon as Stephen Harper's Conservatives mark their second anniversary in power on Feb. 6.

The word "collision" is in quotes, so I'm assuming Stephane Dion actually used that word.

It's the right word, but for the wrong reason.

A collision happens when two objects attempt to occupy the same space at the same moment in time. Seems obvious, I know, but to anyone who has ever had to program a collision detection routine for a computer, it is actually a mantra you have to keep repeating to yourself.

The Liberal platform of heavy social spending is not on a collision course with a Conservative platform. The two parties are in conflict because they both are trying to take control of the same set of resources, that is, votes. In other words, the two platforms occupy different political spaces, but are trying to wrest control of votes from each other.

That's normal election stuff. The challenge is to convince voters that one platform is better than the other, indeed because they are different. Because the platforms are not colliding, the core vote for each party is safe from the other. A true blue conservative has no temptation to vote for the Liberals.

The collision is between the Liberals and the NDP. We only have a slim idea of the details of the Liberal platform, but it seems to be making a strong move into the political space occupied currently by the NDP.

Same space.

Same time.

Collision.

For Canadian voters already leaning to vote for the Liberals, the collision is a problem.

Liberals who are used to voting for a moderately centrist Liberal platform will be listening as Stephane Dion argues that his Liberal platform is one that traditional NDP voters can accept. That is not going to be a comforting thought for these Liberals, who will wonder if the Liberals under Stephane Dion are abandoning the right-wing of their party.

But then it has already been noted that there seems to be a move to sheer off the right-side of the Liberal Party. Now it seems like Stephane Dion is happy to let them go.

For people comfortable voting with the NDP, well, why bother voting for the NDP-pretender in the form of the Liberals under Stephane Dion? That means Stephane Dion is going to expend a lot of energy trying to establish the Liberals in this new area in the political spectrum, energy that is going to have to expended because that area is already held by the NDP.

As I said, the collision creates new problems.

But more than that, by shifting in this direction, Stephane Dion will be fighting a different battle than the one he is describing. He is threatening Jack Layton, which means the NDP will be targeting the Liberals in a big way. Layton will have no choice. And if Stephane Dion is being attacked aggressively by the NDP, he'll have to spend time (and money) responding. In other words, the left will engage in a classic two-way fight for the core left-of-centre vote trying to convince left-wing voters how their similar platforms are somehow different in quality, while the Conservatives remain on the sidelines, focusing on new voters instead of protecting core voters.

Indeed, that has already started:

So, Mr. Dion spent time attacking NDP Leader Jack Layton for asking Canadians in the past campaign to lend him their vote: "What did they get? Stephen Harper. Many Canadians will demand their vote back - with interest," Mr. Dion said. But he spent more time attacking what he called the "narrow, selfish" vision of the Conservatives and lauding the "generous, sincere vision" of his own party.

But to prevent a Conservative victory is not a reason to vote Liberal, or to put it another way, it is equally a reason to vote NDP. Jack Layton will make the same argument as Stephane Dion is making. And he can make it with a better command of English.

In fact, this move into a collision course with the NDP has not done anything to pull swing voters away from the Conservatives, but it has put the core Liberal vote at risk. But the opportunity that comes with this risk is that the core vote of the NDP is now threatened and could go to the Liberals and their NDP-look-a-like platform. The question is whether Stephane Dion and the Liberals can survive a collision with the NDP and end up with enough votes to make up for the abandoned right-of-centre vote and actually beat Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.

In the next election, there will be a four-way conflict for votes -- the Conservatives versus the Liberals versus the NDP and in Quebec, versus the Bloc Quebecois.

The Green Party might figure in a few ridings, but that's all. Except in Central Nova, of course.

But when it comes to collisions, there will only be one major collision -- the Liberals and the NDP.

I guess Canadian politics are moving towards a tipping point.