In political campaigns, it can't be easy to be the status quo. When things are going well, it stands to reason people will be reluctant to switch parties and go with the new guy, but there's also very little exciting that can be done if you're the people in power. You can't promise too much change, because the question becomes why you are not currently implementing that change. Once you've been in power long enough it also becomes somewhat inappropriate to continue to focus on the failures of your predecessors.
I bring this up due to a banner ad produced by the Saskatchewan Party, which rails agains the "same old NDP" and their perceived failings. The problem with this ad is that we actually aren't talking about the same NDP, at least by most metrics. The current leader, Cam Broten, was not elected as part of any NDP-lead legislatures, having first gained a seat when the Saskatchewan Party won their first election in 2007. Of the nine members of the legislature, a mere four were elected when the NDP was actually running the province, meaning the majority of the opposition party is not the same old NDP. While an argument can be made that they were still involved in the party and still have the same core beliefs, this is not the party whose government fell in 2007.
The NDP has been guilty of the same tactic, they railed against the Grant Devine government in the same way, trying to use the momentum that lead to their 1991 election win long after memories of that era had faded from the people's collective consciousness and his Progressive Conservative party ceased to exist. If the roles were reversed, it is likely that I could have done the exact same column with the names reversed, because it's a heavily used tactic even long after it becomes irrelevant or confusing to voters. The problem is that I can't see why we need to still care about a government that has not existed for seven years a this point, and I do not see this being an effective tactic.
It's especially baffling in the case of a Saskatchewan election because the province has been in a period of significant growth. That means that it has also gained many more citizens, none of which will care about the "same old" anything since they have not actually been around to witness it. Their issues with the province will be exclusively in the present day, and it will be difficult to relate to a campaign focused around a time before they even arrived. For the Saskatchewan Party, this should be an easy to reach demographic, after all they were in power when the new residents made the choice to come to Saskatchewan, they can claim credit for the reasons why they moved. Instead, the campaign just complains about people they have never met.
In any upcoming election, what happened two terms ago will no longer matter, it's nearly a decade and as a province we have moved on. These campaigns need to be built in the present, focus on the current issues, current policies and current ideas of each party. By keeping the focus on the old party, it makes it appear as though you do not know what to do with the current one, a party that is significantly different than the one from seven years ago. An election campaign should take place in the present, not the past, since we're deciding on the future.
