Good article on NDP meltdown
Smyth: Awkward, arrogant Dix gave Liberals victory
Brian Topp, the NDP guru who steered the party’s disastrous election crash-and-burn Tuesday night, is the same guy who guided the late Jack Layton’s federal breakthrough in 2011.
That’s why Adrian Dix imported Topp from Toronto to serve as NDP campaign manager. Dix wanted him to work a little Layton-style magic right here in B.C.
Just one problem: Adrian Dix is no Jack Layton. While Layton was friendly and engaging on the campaign trail, Dix was about as warm and fuzzy as a porcupine in an ice bath.
Dix’s dour and distant persona is a reason the Liberals were secretly pleased he won the NDP leadership. And even when he opened a large lead in the polls, the Liberals still believed Dix was their ace in the hole.
The Liberals knew Christy Clark would outshine Dix once the campaign began — especially under the unforgiving glare of television lights.
“I’m not running against perfection,” Clark declared. “I’m running against Adrian Dix.”
True that. The Liberals knew voters would not take a close look at Dix until the campaign started. They were confident voters wouldn’t like what they saw when they did. And they were right.
Dix was awkward, nervous and slump-shouldered during the TV debate. And he handed the Liberals a campaign gift when he explained his notorious memo-to-file transgression as a mistake committed when “I was 35 years old.”
The Liberals turned the cringe-worthy excuse into a YouTube commercial. Then the NDP officially complained that the Libs broke copyright rules by using the debate clip, drawing even more attention and online hits to the ad!
Blunder upon blunder. And it didn’t end there.
For example: The Liberals were dumbfounded by Dix’s early decision to campaign in Liberal fortresses like the Okanagan and the Fraser Valley.
“Why the hell is he going into our stronghold ridings?” a Liberal war-room worker confided.
“We can’t believe he’s not fighting in the suburban swing seats he really needs to win — in Coquitlam and Surrey and Maple Ridge.”
The reason Dix did it? Hubris. Brazen over-confidence. He believed the pollsters and his own press clippings, thought he could run the table and win a massive landslide victory.
It was all a fantasy. While Dix tilted at windmills on the home turf of unbeatable Liberal cabinet ministers, the NDP were setting themselves up for a disastrous fall in the suburbs of Metro Vancouver.
The NDP got creamed in the ’burbs Tuesday night. And one of the reasons for that was yet another crucial campaign miscue.
For over a year, Dix insisted he was “neutral” on the proposed $5-billion Kinder-Morgan pipeline. His energy critic, John Horgan, praised the company’s track record and said it was a “myth” the NDP opposed the oil industry.
Then, out of nowhere, Dix threw the company under the bus, and declared he was against the project.
His moderate, business-friendly mask was slipping. And I believe hard-working, middle-class, suburban voters took note and fled to the Liberals.
Ironically, Dix’s pipeline flip-flop may have helped him only in posh, upper-class ridings like Vancouver-Point Grey, where wealthy and educated voters can pooh-pooh tacky, dirty things like pipelines.
In Point Grey, NDP candidate David Eby wore out his knuckles knocking on doors and managed to beat Christy Clark. She will now simply run in a byelection after some co-operative Liberal — Ralph Sultan? — steps aside.
Dix, I’m afraid, won’t have such a soft landing. He is a flawed leader who ran a seriously flawed election campaign. He did worse than Carole James, the previously flawed leader he replaced. And he is not going to get any more popular in the future.
His biggest mistake? Arrogantly refusing to say where he stood on a long list of critical issues: the labour code, private schools, the carbon tax, fracking, bridge tolls, ferry subsidies, transit funding, raw-log exports, deficits.
Did he really think he could get away with his elect-me-now-I’ll-explain-later kiss-off to voters?
Apparently he did. And it will cost him.
I said in Tuesday’s column that Dix might hang around as Opposition leader. Cancel that. I’m already hearing caucus grumbling.
Get the marmalade ready. He’s toast.
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msmyth@theprovince.com