In the most recent round of by-elections, the second-most interesting story (after the apparent collapse of the Liberal vote outside of the bastion of Toronto) was that the Green Party had drawn equal to, or even beat, the NDP in three of the four ridings:

The byelection results were disappointing for the NDP, but good news for the Green Party. In the riding of Toronto Centre, the NDP won 13.9 per cent of the vote and the Green Party 13.4 per cent. And in the riding of Willowdale, Ont., the NDP won 5.8 per cent of the vote and the Green Party ended up with 4.8 per cent. In the B.C. riding of Vancouver Quadra, NDP won 14.4 per cent of the vote and the Green Party 13.5 per cent.

Not surprisingly, then, we now see Green Party leader Elizabeth May trying to sounds like NDP leader Jack Layton:

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is criticizing a planned visit by the prime minister to Nova Scotia this weekend.

Stephen Harper will attend a $200-a-plate dinner in Central Nova riding on Saturday. May says the only people who will have access to the prime minister will be those who can afford to attend.

The Green leader says an unemployed TrentonWorks worker can't afford $200 to see Harper.

May voiced her concerns in a letter this week to Central Nova MP Peter MacKay.

What?  Nothing about the environment?  Saving the whales?  Spotted owls?  Dogs named Kyoto?  To be fair, the Green Party is trying to establish itself as more than a one-issue party.  Not that I believe that they'll ever succeed (because they are a one-issue party and always will be), but there it is.  But it is interesting that of all the directions to branch out beyond grousing about the environment, Elizabeth May would choose to play the economic class card.  It sounds like something right out of Das Kapital.

Is that significant?  I think so, because it suggests to me that the Green Party is targeting NDP voters, having seen evidence in the last by-elections of an opportunity to pull them over.  So she starts to sound like an NDP hack prattling on about rich versus poor.

But she's not very good at it.  While Jack Layton has some credibility here (built up from years of moaning about the inequities of capitalism experienced by the working classes despite never having had any personal experience in this way, of course), Elizabeth May comes off as phoney to me when she tries to do the same thing.

It's like she doesn't believe what she's saying, or doesn't really care.  It seems so calculated.

As it turns out, it was also miscalculated:

The prime minister’s communications director is mocking the Green party leader for a news release in which she attacked Stephen Harper for planning to attend a $200-a-plate fundraiser for Peter MacKay in Stellarton on Saturday.

"An unemployed TrentonWorks employee cannot afford a $200-a-plate dinner," Elizabeth May said in the release.

There are two problems with that, Mr. Harper’s office said.

First, Mr. Harper isn’t attending the event. Secondly, Ms. May was scheduled to hold a $100-a-plate fundraiser the same evening.

"Last I checked, Ms. May is not the scheduler for the prime minister, so I don’t know where she got this information," Mr. Harper’s director of communications, Sandra Buckler, said in an e-mail.

"On the very same night, according to her website, Ms. May is having a $100-a-plate fundraiser. Feel free to confirm with her."

The Green Party released a follow-up statement, and has essentially slinked away from the whole issue.

The Green Party might well be targeting the NDP in the next election.  This might have been a trial balloon of sorts.  Unfortunately for them, it turned out to be a lead balloon.  But if Stephane Dion continues to hide from the Conservatives and from facing the voters in taxpayer-funded comfort in Stornaway, Elizabeth May will have over a year to master the moves from the Jack Layton "Workers of the world unite!" playbook.

The problem for the Green Party is that the best the NDP was ever able to achieve, electorally speaking, was 43 seats in 1993.  Now it has 30.  There are too many capitalists in Canada.  And too many of the socialists are still loyal to the NDP.  Maybe Elizabeth May has a plan to morph into a Liberal once the fake-NDP plan runs out of gas.

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