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North Report:
Get off the PR issue. It isn't an issue anymore. The people spoke resoundlingly, let it go dude. In terms of the last election and running a centrist platform? Would that be before or after "affirmative action" "kill the carbon tax" and offering absolutely NO new ideas on the economy, tax policy or anything else. If they did it sure wasn't communicated that well.
Here's some facts for those who really grate against "centrist" policies. Without a strong economy, you can't have strong social programs without at some point bankrupting the province. I'm all for medicare, child care, a housing strategy and all that. But if you don't have an economy generating that revenue to pay for those things, where's the money going to come from? With due respect, I've experienced an average of a 2.2 percent wage increase over the last 5 years. The maintenance on my condo alone went up 11 percent last year. Inflation and fuel prices bite into that, and now I have to wrestle with having to pay another 7% tax on everything I buy, use and whatever else that was previously PST exempt.
Campbell, Harper and Ignatieff are all wrong on how to deal with the economics in Canada. They slash corporate taxes, income taxes, and consumption taxes in good times, when the economy is going strong. So when something like what we're currently going through hits, there's nothing left to use to cushion the blow. How it should be, is that during the good times, the tax rates stay high or steady. That builds surpluses that allow governments to get through economic tough times like this, without having to hack whack and slash everything in sight.
To the person who thinks that political parties are not about just getting elected. You're right, but you're also wrong. You have to have policies that appeal to an electorate as a whole, not just to your base. The Liberals are masters at getting elected because they get it, federally. In the past provincial election, they got it, because while the BCNDP was out talking about Axe the Tax, they were out lying through their teeth about how they were better suited to manage the economy. But guess what the electorate was more concerned with, a stupid freaking carbon tax or hearing about the economy?
Its like marketing. You have to be able to speak and reach beyond your audience. And to say that this platform was anything close to a manitoba / saskatchewan NDP platform is ludicrous. How come Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the past decade or more have grown their economies while maintaining strong social programs and medicare? Because they got it. Doer lost 3 elections before winning his first, and he's still there. Meanwhile there are those in the party that are quite content to sit in opposition in BC perenially. And let Campbell, Falcon, Hanson et al fuck up this province forever. We tried the nice, co operative approach for 4 years. Didn't work. Time to bear the fangs and go at them. Lord knows they have given us enough targets. If you're not in power and never have a chance to be in power, you can scream from the hilltops about doing the right thing for the environment, child poverty, education, and the like... but you can't effect any change from there.
But this convention coming up is going to be about the future of the party. The fundamental question is, do we go further left, as Tim Louis and others would have the party do, drive out moderate thinking people and their money / time, and pin red stars on our shirts and praise Lenin, Stalin and the like, and forever doom ourselves to opposition in perpetuity.
Or, do we roll up our sleeves and realize that aside from our core values, we need to be able to talk to the electorate on things like the economy, trade policy, tax policy, the world economy, and factors that affect each of those things, and come up with clear coherent policies in areas that right now the party is weak in. Go outside the box. Have some Manitoban NDP'ers come out and talk about what worked and what didn't. Even some nova scotians as well. Because since 2001, what we have been doing hasn't worked. We grew in 2005, but there wasn't any forward momentum in 2009. Why was that? These are the types of questions that need to be asked at the convention in November. No backslapping about maintaining the status quo in terms of seats in the leg. There needs to be a basic autopsy of the 2009 campaign, and it needs to be done by others aside from the backroom operatives.
If this is done and done effectively, perhaps lessons can be learned and major faults rectified, and true rebuilding can begin. But if it turns into the usual dog and pony show... 2013 will be painful. The planning and strategy should start now for 2013, or earlier should Campbell pack it in after the Olympics. There are huge opportunities out there right now to jump these bastards and go after them. HST, BC Rail, hiding budgets from health authorities, and other social service ministries, fudget budgets 2.0 and beyond, and on and on and on.
It is about being at a cross roads.
remind me of what the NS NDP's solution to the economic situation was?
If I remember correctly, it was "implement the Tory budget" and "Screw Keynes, no deficits!"
The BC NDP strategy worked extremely well. Their main campaign message was "Politician's are Arrogant." That resonated so well with voters they stayed at home. But then what is there to a party that wants to govern as liberal lite. If Tommy had worried about being called a commie Canada would have the shitty American insurance model of health care. He believed that educating people was the answer not trying to devise policies based on popular opinion. No progressive change can possibly happen if parties agree that the people's views based on the MSM are the ones that need to be emulated. As for Saskatchewan it doesn't matter whether it is the Sask party or the NDP. Bring on the nukes to provide electricity to the tar sands. That is the type of progressive policy that you end up with.
The "man behind the scenes", former Caucus Communications Director Jim Rutowski is now the BCNDP Caucus Chief of Staff. What does this mean ? As I understand it, the debate within the BCNDP over the 2009 campaign, was that it was either a failure of leadership, or a failure of communications and campaign strategy authoured by the senior party staff. Personally I view this as one and the same, because you cannot simply blame staff for the platform you are speaking to. Promoting the Communcations Director to Cheif of Staff doesn't appear to me like change at all. More of the same. We'll see what happens between now and 2011.
http://www.publiceyeonline.com/archives/004105.html#more
Oh yes, this one. What positive things were you thinking pray tell? So far I've seen little from you but the usual leftbashing I hear from the right Like I said, youre assuming that right wins, left loses, yet the rightwing in the NDP hasn't exactly won over many converts either. Mostly just alienating its base. The real right doesn't seem to forget "who bought em to the dance" yet still does ok, funny that.
The thing is, there's absolutely no evidence that the BCNDP would do any better if it adopted a "fuck off, you little pinko punks" policy like Daddy seems to dream of.
There simply isn't anybody out there that's saying "I'd be glad to vote NDP if only they sounded blander, grumpier and and more right-wing".
Where did Daddy get this idea that the NDP needs to win the "Grandpa Simpson" vote, anyway?
And fine, the NDP is in power in Manitoba, but does that really matter if its policies are barely distinguishable from the Liberals?
Power has never been an end IN ITSELF. It's a great feeling to win an election but it's only USEFUL to win one if you can actually use the victory to do something. And "left of center" that are fixated with distancing themselves from and displaying contempt towards the left usually don't end up achieving anything with that power. Witness Tony Blair, whose only notable accomplishment as prime minister was getting his country into a war, or Francois Mitterrand, whose only achievement was being a more inflexible Cold War hardliner than Reagan.
"Witness Tony Blair, whose only notable accomplishment as prime minister was getting his country into a war"
There was also devolution in Scotland and Wales, creation of a municipal government in London, reforms to the House of Lords, massive new spending in health care and social services - to name a few. I guess if you aren't British, all those domestic policies don't count.
Labour never had to purge its entire left wing and completely suppress internal party democracy to do those things. It had the election won as soon as the Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis of the early 90's happened,
Labour didn't have to hollow itself out and endorse Thatcherism and social uptightness to win.
It was a disgrace that the election of a Labour government coincided with the death of the activist left in the UK. That never needed to be made to happen.
The voters were not demanding that Tony Blair make himself into the mortal enemy of socialism.
Actually Labour did purge its leftwing in the late 80s and early 90s when Neil Kinnock took the lead in expelling those Militant Tendency crackpots.
Ironically, in 1992, an election in which Labour's position had moved somewhat to the right(but was still clearly to the left of the Wilson-Callaghan policies, as every Labour leader should feel morally obligated to keep the party since Wilson and Callaghan's policies were pointlessly right-wing themselves)Labour got MORE votes than it received on Tony Blair's "We're Tories with cooler clothes" manifesto in 1997. Had it not been for the happenstance that millions of Tory voters abstained in 1997, Blair's manifesto would have won the same 270 seats that Kinnock's 1992 manifesto did.
The truth is, Labour lost in the Eighties because it didn't understand how to use television, not because the voters wouldn't tolerate a clear break from Thatcherism. Indeed, in all elections in the UK in the Eighties, the anti-Thatcher parties together won a clear majority of the popular vote.
It did Labour no good to make its own supporters into outcasts. The voters weren't demanding that Labour demonize the people who did the day-to-day work of keeping Labour going.
And the current poll ratings prove that Labour no longer gets support as an anti-radical and anti-democratic party. Face it, a left of center party that tells the left it isn't welcome isn't different than a right of center government. And if being anti-left was such a brilliant strategy, the NDP would have GAINED seats when it moved even further right in the last Sask. election, rather than losing badly.
I think we've been getting off topic here. I'm guessing that all of the senior staff appointments in the BCNDP's Leader's Office, Caucus, and Provincial Party office will be made very soon, probably before the Leg opens in Sept.
This is important, because the individuals in these paid positions will be authoring the NDP political response for the next few years at least.
If all we are going to see is a "change of seats", then I think all we can expect more of the same. By a "change of seats" I mean promoting Jim Rutowski, Carole James former SPEECHWRITER, to Chief of Staff in the Leaders Office. That to me is a vote of confidence from CJ. To date, the defense of CJ that I have heard is that UNSCRIPTED she is competent.
My impression to date has been that she is a poor speaker, with an uninspiring message. If the key individual scripting her is now promoted, what does that tell you ?
Ultimately I see it as one package: the Leader and her inner circle. The Leader represents herself by her choice of advisors, almost as directly as the scripts they write.
Much as I would like to believe messaging or Carole James is the reason the NDP has lost 3 elections, the thing is there is no easy path to victory.
The above posts suggest that the NDP just has to keep changing leaders and principles and eventually victory will be theirs.
The problem is the Left is not going to embrace carbon taxes, increased sales taxes, toll bridges, cuts to services etc and stay forever in the same party with those that want those things.
So if the centrists successfully move the party to the Right the electoral chances of the NDP in 2013 will be even worse because the Left will just stay at home.
I like Carole, in spite of her not being left-wing enough, and I think she's a far better choice than centrists like Gregor Robertson but that doesn't mean I want her to move to the Right so that she can sign up more Greens and disenchated Liberals.
Because why would I want to vote for a party that won't do anything different when in power?
"So if the centrists successfully move the party to the Right the electoral chances of the NDP in 2013 will be even worse because the Left will just stay at home."
Depends on who you mean by "the Left". If you're talking about the actual voters, there are literally barely 1% of the electorate that identifies as being "socialist" or "far left" and whether you like it or not, most of those people live in a handful of inner city ridings that are already super-safe NDP seats. They can all stay home and all it will mean is that instead of the NDP winning Vancouver-Hastings by 5,000 votes, they win it by 4,750 votes.
The BC NDP needs a Waffle group too.
Stockholm, by "Left" I mean people who support the NDP provincially and federally. That includes a lot of people who aren't communists.
The NDP has the support of around 21% of the population, the Liberals have the support of about 23% and the Greens have about 4%. And of course, half the population doesn't vote.
The argument always comes down to where is the NDP going to grow new support and there is no shortage of ideas, exposing Liberal corruption, strengthening social programs, the environment, charismatic leaders etc are always trotted out as the path to nirvana. And yet, the only thing that ever works has nothing to do with NDP strategy , backroom people or leaders at all, what matters is whether the Right is split or not.
So, having spent almost all of my life in either BC or Saskatchewan I think the best thing the NDP can do is make sure it keeps the supporters it has.
Before following the advice of anyone promising a glorious route to power if only we support toll bridges and a carbon tax or whatever, just make sure that the idea isn't pissing off current NDP supporters.
No other party ever thinks the path to power is paved with the hearts of previous supporters that they don't need anymore yet for some reason NDP "armchair strategists" think that is just the thing that will work for us.
Its kind of like a 17 year old dissing friends that apparently aren't cool enough and which he believes are holding him back from being more popular, sad really.
I agree. It's never a good idea to abandon the base. We may have some debate as to who our base actually is, though. Our base, to be fair, is probably more left than I think, but much further to the right than most of you think.
A Waffle is just about the last thing the BC NDP needs. We have been down this road recently. Remember the NPI? Dead in the water because nobody supported it. Remember "Left Turn"? That went into the shitter where it belonged too.
Whether the support base of this party is left or right is of considerable debate. What is clear, though, is that the support base of the party is not the social activist types who show up to Convention.
How could I have been so wrong?
Let's kick all those lefties out of the NDP so their votes go elsewhere. And while we're at it, let's kick all the Green voters out of the NDP, so their votes go elsewhere as well. Let's ensure that we make as many people as possible feel unwelcome in the NDP. I'm surprised that I didn't already think of that.
Put your reading glasses on there, Bubba, because that's not what I said. I was stating the obvious which is that the social activists who grab delegate spots are not the base of the party. This seems to be a fact that is widely recognized, too, as the party has moved to one-member-one-vote for leader. Much of the debate around this move centred on the fact that the delegates to convention were not exactly, ahem, reflective of the party's base of support in general. If social activists want to be effective at creating change, they'll recognize this too. This isn't exactly ground breaking stuff.
Now the only people I would be in favour of giving "das boot" to are the marijuana activists.
Big Daddy if you poll people the vast majority don't think about politics in any great depth. It is Howe Street's best case scenario to have a right wing party followed by a centre party followed by a further right party and we will now follow it with merely a right wing party of Gregor not the far right of Gordo. The activists in the party are more left wing than the majority of the population because we don't ever talk about the real issues anymore. The BC NDP brain trust allowed the most neo-con party in the country get a free ride in the last election. The Liberals were not merely to arrogant they are corrupt and their neo-con ideology led inevitably to the economic woes we have. The majority of people are poorer than they were in 2001 and the centrists in the party ran on "Arrogance" as the central theme. I still put a ballot in the box because I feel I should but it was a spoiled ballot because why would I support a centrist party if I am a socialist. Even if the Ralston/Nix cabal had pulled off the win there would be no change and certainly no hope for the marginalized in our province. It would have been like voting for Paul Martin and his best buddy Ujjal.
Good job helping to re-elect the Liberals. Congrats. Spoiling your ballot is cool man. So because the NDP doesn't adhere to all of your socialist ideals, you're not voting for the NDP. Just goes to show that the NDP should never be listening to folks like you.
I vote NDP, I donate money to the NDP and I ALWAYS have. Seems like the party should be a reflection of some of the things that I believe. The socialists who abandoned the party in 2001 (they never had it so good in the 90's) and in 2009 should go and stay gone, IMO.
Don't worry I am gone from your party. I worked my first campaign in 1972 for the NDP. The central cabal in BC has made it very clear that I and my views are not wanted so why should I vote for them. I have this obviously outdated notion that one should work for a party who shares their believes not for a party that uses the same name for decades but retains no semblance of the same policies. What you are saying is that if I was a BC Liberal before Gordo and Howe Street highjacked their party that I should still send them money and donate time ad energy because look they have the same name as the party I have always supported.
I don't share that view of politics. I would have voted for some BC NDP candidates but voting for the unethical candidate the central party backed and helped win the nomination in my riding was never going to happen. I will not vote for anyone if I truly believe they are unethical no matter what their party affiliation. The cabal that runs the BC NDP interfered in many ridings to purge the left activists and in the ridings they were successful in they complained they had no volunteers. Go figure someone, like Mabel, who withstood the cabal's interference had lots of volunteers and she won her riding. But what do I know I have only been active for over 30 years in various provinces in this country. I got the message that activists like me are only welcome if we give money shut our mouths and do all the campaign work. Remind I'll bet if you thought your NDP candidate was a closet homophobe or a racist or a male chauvinist pig you would not hold your nose and vote for them anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaWNhKYzh3Q
Well, all I can say is that Gordon Campbell is your premier. He's not mine. I hope you like your carbon tax, I hope you like the HST, I hope you like cuts to health care and education and I hope that you like cuts to libraries. That's your responsibility. Don't blame me, I'm NDP. Gordon Campbell is your guy.
To be honest, I am not sure, at one time I would have said emphatically "no I would not". We have a fascist, classist, racist, and sexist government, so I do not believe that any NDP candidate could possibly be worse.
Considering, I did not vote in 2001 and advocated to many they should not either, I look what we have gotten ourselves into and say never again. So at this moment, I am willing to take a shitty NDP government over Gordo anyday.
I personally really like Carole James, but believe she has been swayed too much by the " boys" calling the shots. It would be hoped that she shrugs them off and finally sings to her own tune, it is a worthy one, she just has to have confidence in it.
Having said this, if Adrian Dix et al or Gregor Robertson do their hostile takeover, the NDP will not be getting my vote until they are gone. They are pukeable material. If I was in Dix's riding I may vote for him, but not for any party he leads. I am sick to death of privileged white males running everything.
In my riding and in others in the lower mainland including Mabel's the old boy's cabal used Joy's List to defeat progressive men in favour of centrist women.
Affirmative action is complete bullshit. Anything which allows for direct interference or limits on the ability of a constituency to nominate the candidate of their choosing will result in exactly what you describe.
In Mable Elmore's riding, wasn't her opponent Jinny Sims. I wouldn't exactly call her centrist. But I guess anyone would be compared to Mabel Elmore. If I were in Mable Elmore's riding, I would have voted for her. I think remind points out the problem with not voting NDP. I wouldn't be happy about it though. I'm glad to see that she isn't playing a prominent role in Carole James' Shadow Cabinet. Shows that Carole has mores sense than I thought.
If I don't vote for your party I am supporting the worse alternative. Gee that is the federal Liberal line that I have heard for many decades. I didn't vote for Paul Martin's or Stephans party either I guess I am responsible for Harper
BD your views on affirmative action really are telling. what I described was not the affirmative action program but the central office organizers directly interfering in a riding and using gender as a blunt object to bludgeon leftists with. Quite the sight to see right wing white men presenting centrist candidates as the progressive choice because of their gender. Under that scenario I should have voted for BC's first woman Premier.