ONDP Leadership thread - discuss, debate, post news here!

I'm neither defending nor condemning their endorsement of Prue.  If you have a big problem with it, why not take it up with Barry Weisleder?  The Socialist Caucus endorsement carries no weight in the party whatsoever.

I don't like how socialists are given the "choice" between slightly more social democratic NDPers who won't touch the Catholic school funding issue and a slightly more rightwing NDPer who supports a debate in the party but also wants to reach out to business more, etc.  

Here on babble, we have "socialists" who defend the indefensible - the reactionary, discriminatory Catholic school system - not because they personally have a problem getting rid of it, but rather "the workers" will turn against the Party.  To hell with principles, we have to win at all costs just like an opportunistic capitalist party.

BTW, I'm 100% for one public system.  I could support the NDP offering a referendum.  That should appease the public.

I thought that equity and advocating for no discrimination were NDP principles. I also thought that NDP stood for secularism, which in my humble opinion is about equality of all beliefs and non beliefs, in my humble opinion. 

 I can assume that one must think that the Ontario Public School Board Association who represents over 1.2 million students and about 2.4 million voting parents is a hotbed of "far left thought" - NOT!

In my humble opinion.

______________________________________________________________________________________ Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!

There are plenty of bigoted old-line Orange Lodge members who also want to eliminate Catholic schools - does that make them worthy of support from the so-called Socialist Caucus???

Most of the arguments were made, by Jan and others, in those threads.  However even though the socialist, liberal-democratic and civil libertarian cases were made there, there are just some people who won't support a move for what Tabuns called "strategic" reasons.

Actually folks, a former provincial secretary a bona fide labour guy (as opposed to one of those rich socialists who have never actually seen the inside of a pair of coveralls, but loves to push around the odd Toronto Steel local they have a bit of pull with) and one of the smartest New Democrats around might get your collective heads out of your...silly little debate.

Brothers and sisters, I give you...

AN OPEN LETTER FROM CHRIS WATSON (from Prue Campaign Facebook) 

Dear friends,

The ONDP leadership contest comes at a time of great challenge and great opportunity.

Challenge?

1. If politics is about choosing what kind of government you want, and it is, the ONDP is pretty much irrelevant.

2. 8 ½ out of 10 voting Ontarians prefer some party other than the NDP. Most women, most men, young, old, new Canadians, tenants, students, most union members, most people in every conceivable category prefer the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party or the Green Party to the NDP.

3. If the question is about who you trust on the economy, it's even worse. Not too long ago, I attended a presentation in Toronto by pollster Greg Lyle. He found that 6% of Ontario voters trust the NDP on the economy. 6%. That means 94% did not. It cannot really get worse.

4. After the last election the official sum-up by the ONDP Campaign Leadership framed the result as "Another moral victory." When victory is defined as not losing party status for the 3rd time in a row, is something not seriously wrong with this picture?

Opportunity?


1. The Wall Street Meltdown and economic crisis have discredited the economic orthodoxy of the last three decades and opened the debate to new thinking.

2. Obama has made it legitimate to hope and think big. He proved that even where all hope seemed lost, i.e. public faith and interest in party politics, things can turn around on a dime with the right product on offer.

3. McGuinty is past peak and will lose friends as he struggles with the crisis. The Conservatives don't support their own leader and are on the wrong side of history when it comes to today's economy.

4. The Ontario NDP is going to get a new leader.

I came to this contest as perhaps many of you did. I know all the candidates. I've worked with them. They are hard working, experienced, and we need them on the team. But no one of them seemed to immediately jump out as an obvious choice to lead us out of the wilderness and inspire Ontarians to feel that with this party and this leader, a new day is at hand.

Nonetheless, we are going to choose a leader on March 7th, these are the candidates, and like many I feel a strong obligation to vote. Accordingly I went to the debate on Toronto on February 08 hoping that it would help me move toward a decision.


Each candidate performed quite well. And each made at least one case that I felt was right on the money.


Andrea Horwath. Her light rail proposal is right on the mark. As Andrea points out, we already make the steel at Stelco and in Sault Ste. Marie. We make railway cars in Thunder Bay and at the National Steel Car plant in Hamilton. We need to go green. We need, as Richard Florida reminds us in his new report, to make better connections between our cities. So it's just a smart and doable proposal that will help the economy, and be green at the same time.


Gilles Bisson has been saying from the get-go that our ideas about education and social programmes will remain just that, ideas, unless we can better grow the economy to pay for these things. He's right and this is fresh thinking for a New Democrat. Music to my ears.


Peter Tabuns says we need to develop a green energy strategy as key to our approach to the economy and the environment. I agree.


Michael Prue, however, stood out for me because he seemed to understand that in the Ontario NDP we cannot keep telling ourselves that we are on the right path and just have to work harder at communicating our vision and trust that voters will come to realize that the other parties are not all they claim to be.


Prue seems to be the one candidate who realizes that being relevant to voters is not a function of good intentions, but whether or not you are convincing in your presentation of the best choice to govern, to grow the economy and to ensure social justice and opportunity.


What did he say?

1. Prue challenged us to "face the fact that most Ontarians don't think we can win and don't trust us on the economy." That is where we must start and no one else did.

2. Prue insisted that we not be satisfied just because we get a better result than the last election. The third party does not get to implement its programme. We must be about winning. We must be first and foremost about trying, openly and eagerly to offer a compelling choice for governance.

3. Of the four candidates he seemed most at ease, most at home and in his own skin when talking about becoming Premier.

4. When asked about diversity and connecting with different communities Prue had the courage to point to the fact that we will get their support when we earn it by becoming a contender, proving ourselves relevant as a party that might actually win.

5. He was the only candidate to even mention Richard Florida's recent report on long term economic growth strategy for Ontario. This report is the most original and creative thinking we've seen that is also consistent with social democratic values. In this writer's view, a claim to leadership in Ontario today without reference to Florida's vision is not credible.

6. He was the only candidate to even mention Obama, possibly the most important single political development in North America in our lifetime.

7. He had the most (everybody had some) concrete examples of a fresh economic approach. I clapped when he brought the point home about Ontario's economic potential by reminding us that Thunder Bay is surrounded by some of the biggest forest on the planet and instead of turning it in to furniture, in Ontario, in the north, we shop at IKEA.

8. Prue pointed out that when he became Mayor of East York (Horwath, Tabuns and Prue have all been elected at the municipal level. Only Prue has led a government) he turned around his inherited debt and deficit without raising taxes.

9. He reminded us of his role in leading the Task Force on Assessment and Property Tax and producing what is still the best set of proposals to remedy that system. (Proposals that the brain trust buried in the last campaign and during the campaign lead-up.)

10. He was convincing when he said he can win the support of the broadest assembly of voters. I canvassed daily for Michael Prue in 2001 when he ran in a by-election seeking Frances Lankin's seat in Beaches East York. I have never, in provincial, federal and municipal elections going back 25 years, canvassed for a candidate who had as wide support among voters of all political leanings. You can't argue with success and Michael has demonstrated an unrivalled ability to win support from voters of all stripes.

I strongly believe that most important In our attempt to make a decision in this contest is looking for which candidate has the courage to admit that overall, the NDP as a potential governing party has become irrelevant, that we are not trusted on the economy and that most do not consider us as even trying to win a general election.

No one can become the leader we need, if they do not make these points their starting points. Prue did so when he opened his remarks by asking the room to face up to the fact that no one thinks we can win and no one trusts us on the economy.

There is no guarantee of course that he can deliver, but he is the only one brave enough to identify the real challenges before us. If he is ready to try, I am ready to try with him.

And, with MichaeI Prue, I see a 2009 narrative, a winning narrative, a narrative for the next election in Ontario.

Voting for Michael Prue is about proving that a poor kid from Regent Park can be Premier of Ontario!

That's as good a reason as anyone could ask for to vote NDP.

Please join me in making Michael Prue Leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.

If we do, we have a chance.

Sincerely,


Chris Watson.

(Chris Watson is a long time member of the NDP. He worked at Queen's Park with the Rae government and again in our opposition years. Chris also served as the Federal Secretary of the New Democratic Party from March 2002 to November 2004.)

he'll do;)

his heart's in the right place;)

and at least he ain't pushin' us around. he seems to recognize labour as more than something to be squeezed when it's convenient. i'm sure some decent labour union has to have given him at least an honorary pair of coveralls.;)

like Bob Rae? or Ujjal Dosanjh? or the many others who have become Liberals and Tories?

How come these rich people make policies to placate the rich?  I have no problem with silver spoons unless they're tryiing to feed me it.

While the NDP has a predominantly working class base, the NDP also has a certain base among certain "creative class" professionals that live in inner city ridings like Trinity-Spadina and Danforth, working as teachers, social workers, researchers, so-called cultural industries, etc. 

In my experience, I've found the so-called self-made rich to be more gung ho about capitalism and less sympathetic to the poor and hostile to unions, etc. than those who grew up privileged. 

Ignore it if you must.

ignore what? pedigree?

not a chance, especially not my own particularly low-born one.

that said, mine is what it is, theirs is what it is. when you get right down to it, no aristocrat or pauper is responsible for the accident of their own birth. they're just born into it.

i'm less interested in square footage than i am with the content of character and the vigor of ideas, which is why chris' letter is much more indicative of a respectful attitude towards the working class in a way that offers hope of common ground between that class and the 'creative class' (and new canadians and the poor and LGBT and the oppressed and environmentalists and progressive small business and organic farmers and etc., etc.).

the only way you assemble such a progressive coalition is by have a frank and honest discussion about what's working, what's not working, and acknowledging the need to evolve and adapt. and not being afraid to evolve and adapt.

i think the part of chris' letter that struck me the most was the following:

SNIP

4. After the last election the official sum-up by the ONDP Campaign Leadership framed the result as "Another moral victory." When victory is defined as not losing party status for the 3rd time in a row, is something not seriously wrong with this picture?

UNSNIP

no question something's seriously wrong with this picture. i've noticed a tendency on our part in the party to blame, rather than accept the notion that our shortcomings represent a collective failure on all our parts--NDP, former NDP, labour (public and private sector), social activists, political left in general, really.

many of us cling to a worldview through our own dialectics--socialist, communist, social democrat, democratic socialist, blue collar, pink paper, social unionist, business unionist, craft unionist, social gospel, anarchist, PoMo, BoBo, creative class--what have i missed?

but many of us also seem to cling to the notion that at the root of our problems is the fact that none of us are really doing anything wrong and if people would just 'think more like us' we'd be okay. more often than not, if we assign blame, it's directed outward. the establishment blames someone, the leader's office blames someone, labour blames someone, the executive blames someone, the various caucuses and 'tendencies' blame one another, everyone blames the right-wing media and other bugaboos.

all that blaming really cuts into the introspection time, which really should have began sometime in 1995. we all threw a lot of effort into fighting the harris agenda, but perhaps we should have thrown a bigger percentage of our energy than we did into asking ourselves how things went so wrong and how we could gone from government to losing official party status in two election cycles.

Certainly we ought not to have been patting ourselves on the back when, after another two cycles of flirting with oblivion, we chalked the last election's results up as a 'moral victory' because we didn't lose party status.

once again, there was plenty of blame to go around, but no one seems willing to own the collective failure that has been ongoing for more than a decade. it was john tory's fault for stepping on the rail. it was dalton's fault for exploiting it. it was the media's fault for ignoring us. in the end, it was the voters fault for not voting for us.

but it was also our fault for not giving them a compelling enough reason to do so. some fingers point to the establishment, some to the executive, some to the staff, some to the leader's office. know what? if everyone's blaming everyone, it's a pretty safe bet everyone's to blame.

i think prue has intuited that, and that's why chris spoke out so eloquently in his support.

so yeah, pedigree counts insofar as you can't escape it and it illuminates your worldview. but to dwell on it when the issue really is who has the vision and the courage to renew and modernize our party. chris obviously thinks it's michael, and expresses it in a very articulate way.

if i had any coveralls and shop gloves left, i'd give him a pair of each.

Yeah, I can't stand Florida.  BTW Florida has been influential among the David Miller types and the City bureaucracy in Toronto.

Agreed.

I think Prue would be my 2nd choice after Horwath. 

beg to differ, but you're entitled to your opinion

Hat, did i inadvertently speak in code? whose pedigree did i mention? i said he was a 'bona fide labour guy' as evidenced by his many years of work with various labour unions and the fact I haven't been given any sort of evidence to suggest he's strong-arming union locals where he's got a little pull into supporting a particular candidate...i mean, i'm not aware that he's got any pull with any locals, but what do i know?

Now, others have been very eager to raise Chris' pedigree, but I'm certainly not to blame for that now, am i?

6% of Ontario Voters trust the NDP on the economy.  Why doesn't that surprise me.....

Is there any ONDP leadership candidate that can bring credibility to the party on economic issues?  Seems that the NDP which, according to another thread shows the ONDP between 15 and 19%, loses 2/3s of its own base, when the economy is the ballot question.

That has to change.

Synth, you are SO adorable. Your estimation has just gone up...awww... i could go on a big tangent about how it's an affront to free speech, etc., but i'll just snip from the article...

SNIP

If Tabuns and his NDP colleagues don't like the fact Cara gave its allowable contribution to the Tories, that's their problem. Just like it was Tory supporters' problem that unions and organized labor gave cash to help install Bob Rae's NDP government at Queen's park in 1990.

There are some folks out there who will claim the New Democrats also posed a big threat to the public health with the programs they brought in during their five-year tenure. But we never heard a thing about boycotts from Tabuns and the board of health during all that time.

That's because the Harvey's boycott has nothing to do with public health concerns. It's purely political.

As an angry Mayor Barbara Hall pointed out on Friday, Tabuns' action "verges on a witchhunt."

UNSNIP

pretty harsh, but you know that right-wing media...oh wait--isn't wanagas like david miller's director of communications? i guess that right-wing conspiracy has long tendrils. they apparently got barbara hall, too.

but like most dishonest thinkers, you prefer not to traffic in the issue at hand, and when you're on the losing side of an argument, you resort to tantrums and wild-eyed speculation about what my purported 'defence of capitalism' must mean about my own leanings.

let me set you right.

please don't equate an acknowledgement that you and i both benefit from it with a defence. again, you revert to the same either/or manicheanism you claim to decry. it is indeed possible to put forward a critique of a system and acknowledge that you exist within it. and yeah, i'm not afraid to say that it's a flawed system that benefits you and i. i'm also not afraid to draw a distinction between commerce, which probably pre-dates writing, and market capitalism, a system which is less than 200 years old.  But that's all moot to the core of my own personal vision, which is my own, not a vision of the NDP. i long ago recognized that political parties, like organized religion, live or die on the strength of the ideas their members bring to them. it makes me unpopular with my own catholic church, and it probably makes me unpopular with you. i'll survive.

your concern with notion of 'labour ceding its right to strike' is laughable, given that your candidate has a record of pre-emptively depriving his workers of that very right by stripping the contracts they had signed.

as for your eagerness to flog your t-shirts in what is a refreshingly non-commercial space, you're the one who called me 'gauche' once.

than again, it's not the only crappy merch you peddle around here.

*EDITED* to add missing 'the'

i find nothing boring about using political offices to stifle participation in the political process, but yes, that video is...entertaining?

I like Richard Florida. Is everything he has to say a great idea? No. However, he's shown that things like strong and creative cultural organizations, social tolerance and diverse communities are important to the economic success of cities. That's an important message when things like cultural funding and human rights promotion are sometimes seen as frills.

If Prue actually does make a "big announcement" today when the news cycle is going to be 100% dominated by Obama's visit and any coverage of his announcement would be obliterated - then it would only tell me that his handlers have never taken "Media Relations 101".

Has anyone else noticed that Tabuns' website seems to have been down all day?

Synthome you seem to love throwing around terms like neoliberalism and market mechanisms etc. The obsession about defining just how left is acceptable is the kind of nonsense that is destroying the party. Dogmatic arguments really turn off non NDP voters. WE need to grow the party, not engage in discussions that sound like a bad parody of socialist rhetoric.

Benevolent capitalism is acceptable. When it is exploitative that's a different story. Debate the actions on an individual basis not the theory. The problem with Utopian visions is they are just that, visions. Michael Prue's policies are grounded in reality. They are policies that will get the NDP back into power. We need an NDP premier and Michael fits the bill.

It might be the email that just came out, with a bunch of Municipal endorsements for Prue, including (and this was a surprise for me) Alan Redway, the former Tory Housing Minister.  Has he joined the NDP?  I know some other former Red Tories who have voted for us in the past few elections, but not joined the party or anything.

Not sure if folks here already covered the ground of the Ottawa leadership debate from the other week, but Prue really turned me off there by losing his temper and making a really nasty snap at a couple of the other candidates for not leaving him enough time to respond.  I fast-forwarded to a leaders' debate during a campaign and could not imagine him there.  Howarth also lost me when making an accusation of sexism against another candidate, which didn't really fit, but then I wondered if she was trying to make a joke that fell flat.  It seems like the 4 of them have spent too much time together and that hard feelings have ensued, which is truly unfortunate given the small size of our caucus.

Except for Bisson, none of them speak french terribly well, and even though everyone promised to do better, a few days later emails still arrived from their campaigns in English-only.

I really didn't know any of the candidates before the debate, but left believing that Tabuns was the only one who looked at all like a premier and had the sort of big-picture strategic sense required to pull our provincial party out of the dumps.

wage zombie: actually it's Tabuns alone, after that you might as well put McGuinty on the ballot and get an experienced Liberal leading the New Doomacratic Party. Just kidding, sort of.

alphasix: Yes engaging in a discussion around our core ideological values is totally pointless, especially during the lead up to choosing a new leader of and direction for the party. I can't think of a worse time to reflect on what it means to be the NDP and how we want to redefine ourselves vis a vis the left and or capitalism. Evidently, all that matters is growth and electoral success. I've previously made the following suggestion facetiously, but I'm starting to reconsider. Other than some masochistic attachment to failure, why not become the "not really left but in a bit more of a hurry" flank of the Liberal Party? Because quips alphasix Prue could become the next Premier of Ontario, that's why.

That fairy tale is only outdone by the bizarro world "benevolent capitalism" one. I remember an eccentric professor once puzzled by the sudden interest in "virtual reality". "Virtual reality", he said, "what other kind is there?" To paraphrase, Exploitative capitalism, what other kind is there? 

My advocacy of "socialism" is neither parodic, not rhetorical. I believe it to the very core of my understanding. Lastly, the issue of being in or out of touch with reality. This, of course, presupposes one version of reality and incidentally and amazingly it's your version that happens to be incontrovertible. On the contrary, I like to presuppose multiple realities, contested realities, often leading to, you'll like this word, hegemonic realities, but realities nonetheless. And yes, all virtual.

Whatever the results, love them or hate them, I will respect the will of the membership and won't question the legality and legitimacy of the new leadership. I've prattled on far too long. I've said my piece. Now I'll go away.  Stop applauding, I can hear you...