Why Mamata Banerjee joining Congress would be a terrible idea |
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Why Mamata Banerjee joining Congress would be a terrible idea
The grand liberal reawakening around the importance of the Congress as a great national alternative to the BJP has ignited a Mamata-in-Congress fantasy.
Sometimes the people with the best intentions have the worst ideas. For the last few days—and especially after Mamata Banerjee came to Delhi for an INDIA bloc meeting—there has been a grand liberal reawakening around the importance of the Congress as a great national alternative to the BJP.
The best way forward, according to many liberals, would be for regional parties to fold themselves into the Congress, which is, after all, the mother party of many regional players. A good first step, according to this view, would be for Mamata’s Trinamool Congress to merge with the Congress as a sort of homecoming.
I can see the emotional power behind this idea, and I understand why it seems appealing as a way of standing up for secularism, fighting for liberal values, taking on the BJP, or making India great again (take your pick).
But emotions are not always a substitute for strategy, or even logic. The idea of streams flowing back into the river that gave birth to them makes for good imagery.
But it also makes for very bad politics.
The Mamata-in-Congress idea
Let’s take the talk of the TMC returning to the Congress. You need to think rationally about such a merger for only five minutes to realise why it is a truly terrible idea. Here are the reasons one by one.
First, the Congress has nothing to gain from the Trinamool. Mamata Banerjee has never been more unpopular than she is now. I don’t dispute that the Election Commission contributed to the BJP’s victory in West Bengal, but it is now clear, judging from the depth of anti-Mamata sentiment, that the Trinamool would probably have lost anyway.
Why would the Congress not want to start with a clean slate and try to occupy part of the anti-BJP space? Why would it willingly associate itself with Mamata’s unpopularity?
Second, can any party successfully align with Mamata? Her strength as a leader is also her........