The NDP needs to 'push the envelope' about what its universe of supporters and potential supporters will get behind, or can get behind.

Right now, that universe likes the NDP for the incrementalist politics it does. A lot of the NDP core wants more, or would at least accept it, but going straight into more would alienate too much of the universe of voters, and straight into not voting for the NDP. [A lot of that having to do with the fact that a goodly chunk of the unvierse prefers the NDP, and trusts the NDP more, but frankly doesnt like some of the things they know it stands for. If those stayrelatively in the background thats OK, but if they dont....]

If you push away some of your universe of voters, there is no longer term to discuss.

Fortunately there is a way out. Because even those things people know about the NDP and dont like, plus the ones that could surprise them, they tend strongly to have 'dotted lines' between those issues and core values or principles that the voters support. So they can be drawn first to loosen up on what they dont like, and ultimately to re-consider what is proposed to them in light of general principles of the NDP that they support.

Now I know that no one thinks that will be easy. But unfortunately, the left in and around the party has a bullshit delusion that you do this movement purely through the means of making strong and clear stands. You all are intoxicated on a deluded notion that the public space of the national civil society is some kind of university seminar. Where we are all going to sit down and reason things out. [Leaving aside that is practice its actually not a seminar, but we are going to lecture you on how it is.]

This is not how it works. And trying it cannot ever work.

Yes, it does not work for the NDP to go an is if the problem does not exist- to ignore the problem.

But just because you see the problem, does not mean you have the solution. And people do presume they have the solution. And presume heavily. In practice, as if my pointing to the problem is the solution. Or reveals the solution ipso facto.

[Not to mention that a LOT of the people you think are flat out oblivious to the problem, and/or dont want to see it because it will upset the staus quo, DO actually see the problem just as much as you do.]

To me the classic case of the left pushing the enevelope, is the CCF and Tommy Douglas and medicare in Saskatchewan.

Ironically this is part of the left narrative of what was good about the NDP and is no more. "If Tommy Douglas had not just gone out there /told it like it was......"

But let alone the construction of medicare, even selling it to the citizens of Saskatchewan was done very gradually. They had a plan of what they wanted to do, but thay started by just talking about the principles. And moved gradually to specifics.

All at once it would have been too much for people. And the doubts would have let the entrenched interests have a field day. And that was a ruling government with a strong mandate. An opposition party has even less tools at its disposal for taking the long road of developing a discussion.

It still has to be done. And it can be done.

But saying, or even implying, that its just a matter of guts is false. And the distraction is debilitating.