NDP and U.S. Dems Share Election Challenges

The U.S. Democrats and the B.C. New Democrats face the same uphill battle in their looming elections.

George W. Bush's Republicans and Gordon Campbell's Liberals each have served but a single term. And over the past century, single-term governments have been defeated just four times in the United States, and only twice in British Columbia.

(A single-term government is a president or premier who wins office in a presidential or provincial general election, and loses it in the following contest. This definition excludes, among others, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Bill Vander Zalm, Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark.)

In 1912, Republican president William Howard Taft was sent packing by Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Twenty years later, incumbent president Herbert Hoover, a Republican, lost to newcomer Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat. Jimmy Carter, a Democrat elected in 1976, was trounced four years later by GOP nominee Ronald Reagan. And in 1992, George H.W. Bush fell after a single term to Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

The two B.C. governments denied successive terms in the 20th century were the Conservative administration of Simon Fraser Tolmie, elected in 1928 and defeated in 1933 by Duff Pattullo's Liberals, and Dave Barrett's NDP government, victorious in 1972 but vanquished in 1975 by Bill Bennett's Social Credit party.

Does this provide any insight into the looming elections in the U.S. and B.C.? Possibly. Two factors appear to be key. The first is economic recession. The second is division in the ranks of the governing party and/or the presence of a third party.

Recession can be heavy anchor

Five of the six defeated single-term governments suffered defeat during or shortly after an economic downturn.

Hoover and Tolmie fell victim, along with many other incumbents of the time, to the Great Depression of the early 1930s. Barrett and Carter lost when economic slumps accompanied OPEC oil shocks. Remember "It's the economy, stupid"? Bush was turfed from office during the recession that gave rise to that famous slogan by his adversaries.

None of these incumbents was directly responsible for creating the depressed economic conditions which bedevilled their administrations. But their failure to stimulate a speedy recovery fostered voter perceptions of incompetence or mismanagement, and down they went.

Beware splits in the ranks

Four of the six losing first-term leaders and their governments -- Taft, Tolmie, Carter and Bush Sr. -- were victims of party disunity. A fifth, that of B.C.'s Barrett, suffered the reverse phenomonen: the unification of opponents under a single banner, as prominent Liberals and Conservatives joined Bill Bennett's Social Credit party on the eve of the 1975 general election.

William Howard Taft saw his GOP base split in 1912 by former president Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive (Bull Moose) Party banner. Neither won; the Democrat did.

Simon Fraser Tolmie's Conservatives not only were divided before the 1933 B.C. general election, they disintegrated. Many Tory MLAs refused to seek re-election, while those who did ran either with the Non Partisan Independent Group or the Unionist Party of British Columbia, or as Independents. The Conservative dissolution (along with the appearance of a new party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of today's NDP) enabled the Liberals, who had been turfed from office in 1928 with 40 percent of the popular vote, to capture a massive legislative majority five years later with just 41.7 percent.

On his way to defeat, Jimmy Carter saw his support sapped of enthusiasm by rousing attacks from fellow Democrat Edward Kennedy.

Similarly, George H. W. Bush was savaged during his party's primaries by a prominent conservative pundit, Patrick Buchanan, who, like Kennedy, lost the nomination but made a high-profile address at the party's national convention. Held in Houston, the GOP gathering was seen by many observers to emphasize the extreme right-wing elements in the Republican party, with Bush not in control.

The same election featured the third-party candidacy of an eccentric billionaire, Ross Perot. Running under the Reform banner, Perot railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement and captured a phenomenal 19.7 million votes, nearly one in every five ballots, thereby enabling Democrat Clinton to win the White House with just 43 percent of the popular vote. The elder Bush took a paltry 37.4 percent, the worst showing by an incumbent president in the 20th century.

Relevance today

So, will these two factors, economic recession and a split in the governing party's vote, help decide either the U.S presidential election in November, or B.C.'s general election in May?

The United States suffered recession in 2001, and economic growth over the past three years has been far from robust. Critics have talked of a 'jobless recovery' (some economists have dubbed it a 'job-loss recovery' to describe the shift of manufacturing jobs overseas) and the Democrats charge that Bush Jr. is the first president since Hoover to preside over a decline in the total number of American jobs during his term in office.

Under Bush the Younger, the triple combination of an anemic economy, Republican tax cuts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have transformed the federal government's fiscal surpluses from the late 1990s into successive deficits of nearly half-a-trillion-dollars per year. Add a rising U.S. trade deficit, and you get the decline of the once-mighty U.S. greenback. One consequence is that oil, internationally priced in U.S. dollars, has climbed past $50 per barrel. Some economists fear that rising energy costs, together with anticipated interest-rate hikes, may choke future expansion.

Escape from recession?

But the important point may be that tepid economic growth is not a recession. To date, Democratic challenger Kerry has been unable to generate voter enthusiasm with his critique of U.S. job losses, even in such vital and hard-hit states as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Similarly, concerns over 'out-sourcing,' American jobs abroad seems not to have loudly resonated with the broader electorate.

As for a split amongst supporters, this is a problem which, as it did in 2000, bedevils the Democrats rather than the Republicans. It's doubtful Ralph Nader this time will garner anywhere near the 2.9 million votes he took four years ago, but he may deny Kerry victory in key state races, helping Bush to win.

British Columbia, too, suffered recession in 2001. And, like Bush's Republican administration, Gordon Campbell's government managed to transform an inherited fiscal surplus into a series of record-breaking deficits: $1.3 billion in fiscal 2001-02, a shocking $3.2 billion in 2002-03, and $1.3 billion in 2003-04.

Another similarity: part of B.C.'s fiscal shortfalls may be attributed to the sizeable tax cuts enacted by the Campbell government early in its mandate. Unlike their GOP cousins, however, the B.C. Liberals quickly reversed course by introducing tax hikes totaling more than one billion dollars annually in a bid to narrow the deficit.

As with the U.S., B.C.'s economy since the 2001 recession has grown at a rate which, in historic terms, is unimpressive. Again, however, the key point is that modest expansion is not an economic downturn. And the B.C. Liberals enjoy a significant advantage over the Bush administration in that British Columbia actually has added, not lost, new jobs over recent years.

The Green factor

Finally, it's the NDP who face a third-party challenge. Green Party candidates may well enable at least a few incumbent B.C. Liberal MLAs, who otherwise might be expected to lose, to retain their legislative seats. Right-of-centre alternatives to the B.C. Liberals, as evidenced by the recent bumbled Unity-Conservative merger, seem doomed to insignificance.

All in all, the centre-left in the U.S. face an easier task than their B.C. counterparts. George W. Bush won the White House in 2000 by a narrow 271-266 margin in the Electoral College, and actually received half-a-million fewer popular votes than his Democrat opponent Al Gore. In contrast, Gordon Campbell's B.C. Liberals won a massive 77-2 majority in the Legislative Assembly in 2001, and captured more than twice as many popular votes as the NDP.

True, both the Democrats and New Democrats can point with hope to unique factors this time around: polls show George W. Bush to be vulnerable to growing public concern over Iraq; Gordon Campbell is profoundly unpopular with a majority of B.C. voters, especially women.

But if either party is to win, they'll have to buck history to do it.

Will McMartin writes a regular column on politics for The Tyee.