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Interesting if depressing analysis.
If he sees things that way then why isn't he using the next four years to BUILD that ground strength? Four years isn't enough time to do that in ONE provincial riding? If that's how he sees things, why the hell did he seek the leadership of a provincial political party at all?
And, if he had no support network, how did he get acclaimed as party leader?
Who was it in the NB NDP ranks who thought this guy should BE leader and no one else should even be considered? Shouldn't you want a leader who actually thinks it's possible for the party she or he seeks to lead to gain ground?
I'd think at least one of the federal NDP candidates who made an unexpectedly strong showing on May 2nd should be considered immediately as a replacement for Cardy.
Virtually all of those federal candidates are close allies of Cardy's. His deputy leader ran against Dominic Leblanc and did well and the interim leader who ran well in Fredericton is also an ally of his. In fact almost everyone (apart from a few eccentric malcontents) in the NB NDP is a close ally of his because so much of the current membership are people he brought in. He did contest the leadership and he was set to win it by an overhelming margin - but then his only opponent got disqualified for reasons best left unsaid. That's the way the ball bounces - if you are te only candidate, you win by acclamation.
I think it makes sense to look at what has worked so well for the federal NDP under Layton and for the NS NDP under Dexter and try to replicate it in New Brunswick.
As recently as a year and a half ago, the NB NDP literally had a couple of hundred members in the whole province - there was NOTHING. I think that anyone who is willing to make the effort to build something out of nothing and do it for no salary deserves gratitude more than anything else.
Interesting?
I suppose so, if you like your speculations warm. Speculations that are literally baseless in principle, and simply incorrect to boot.
Speculation # 1: Cardy has no base of support in the NB NDP, Stockholm touched on that a bit. Cardy isnt liked by NB Babblers who are also Dippers- which tells us how much about his support in the NB NDP?
Speculation # 2: therefore Cardy knows he cannot win a seat, and is looking for a deal with the Liberals that includes a non-compete agreement. Ridiculous. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth about Cardy. I guarantee you, Dominic Cardy assumes he will win a seat for himselef- and if that's all, he'll consider it a major dissapointment. [He is not looking at repeating the Elizabeth Weir experience.]
Then you are in agreement- Cardy would also agree this ridiculous approach would be unacceptable.
And I have pointed out multiple times now that this gesture towards the Liberals is all about getting his and the NDP's name out there.
The 'clever deal' is a figment of people who go beyond jumping to conclusions.
I admit I am engaging in speculation about what Cardy means by "New Brunswick's Liberals and New Democrats should consider greater co-operation between the parties to push forward policies of common interest" and "What I'd like to see is a discussion that could lead to something in the form of a larger meeting ... among progressive voters in New Brunswick in the next year or so."
Overt talk of cosying up to the Liberals just one month after taking the leadership helm of the NB NDP, is basically touching the third rail of NDP politics for many party members. Along with the the acclamation-by-engineering-the-rules leadership selection puts Cardy in a position of having something to prove to NDP members regardless of how many he signed up on the road to acclamation.
Ken, you yourself said Cardy should explain these comments and I agree. Otherwise you are speculating by suggesting that Cardy is somehow triangulating and looking for something "much more and much different than the stated objective".
Otherwise it looks like its "all about me", something that was said repeatedly about Elizabeth May on her road to a federal seat for the Greens.
Cardy needs to address to provincial party members the perceived democratic deficit in the NB NDP (admit the restrictive leadership rules were counter productive) and then show how he is building a NB NDP that can do battle in more than just his riding next election. Engineering, triangulating and deals with the Liberals just leads to speculation about where the NB NDP is headed and that it is "all about me".
That's the taste in my mouth but I'll grant that Cardy is just getting started in his job and I will be happy to be proven wrong.
I'm not engaging in any speculation at all about what Dominic Cardy has done, or what he has in mind with the gestures towards the Liberals that people here find alarming and upsetting.
That said...
With the important caveat of pointing out that you and others presume it to be cosying up to the Liberals, I agree that he has at least gone close tp a third rail that should be paid attention to.
And I know that Dominic Cardy can be cavalier about that sort of thing. Add to that, the bubble thinking characteistic of a small party. So the fact that Cardy has a lot of support, does not mean that he should not pay close attention. That is part of what leadership is about.
I dont think the rules were gamed to give Cardy an acclamation. To be blunt: Dominic would have known he could beat anyone no matter what the rules, and having at least some kind of race is always better.
I think what happened is probably a case in point of how cavalier Dominic can be. IE, the minimum thresholds of fundraising to qualify as a candidate were a good thing, and "anyone worth it can do this." And with organizational experience so thin in the NB NDP, virtually no one would have equivalent experience in the amount of work and capability required.
We're back again to mostly baseless speculation.
Especially the 'its all about me'.
And while the perceived democratic deficit does need to be addressed; conversely, it is presumptuous to say that Cardy has to admit that the leadership rules were counter-productive. What he has to do is listen, give an account, and be open to admitting.
And again, its only speculation this is about 'triangulating' and making deals. I can understand some of the things that get people to jump to such conclusions, but that does not conferr on them any validity.
I think its fair to say Cardy would have beaten Cyr for the leadership. I was supporting Cyr. We'll never know how close the race might have been. The next leadership review might provide some indications in that direction.
Leadership reviews are not all they are cracked up to be. But in this case, it will presumably give you a good measure of how much discontent there is over the process.
When is Convention? And do only delegates vote in the review?
I can't find that information on the NB NDP website but it may be there and I just don't know where to look.
Wikipaedia has an interesting history of the party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brunswick_New_Democratic_Party
I'm pretty sure that when the NB NDP has a convention, any card carrying member who shows up can vote. Remember that in the "good old days" before Cardy started organizing the party there were only a couple of hundred members in the whole province - it would be absurd to have 200 members choose 150 people or so people to be delegates! Since that time I'm told that membership went way up during the election campaign and during the campaign for the leadership when each candidate had to sign up "x" number of new members who were also making monthly donations. On top of that, there was another bunch of new blood injected to the party during the recent federal election campaign when the NDP won almost 30% of the vote across NB - and let's face it, young newly engaged people who decided to join the NDP because they were attracted to Layton's federal campaign - are probably going to give the benefit of the doubt to the current provincial leadership.
I understand that some people don't like the idea of the NDP trying to project a more mainstream, professional image and also object to the idea of talking about working with other parties. Are any of the people who take that position planning on going to the federal NDP convention in Vancouver next month to actively campaign against Jack Layton when he faces a leadership review with the idea of deposing him for doing all of the above?? Let's face it, if you object to Cardy as NB NDP leader for the reasons given above - then you should also be horrified by the direction jack layton has taken the federal NDP in and you should be organizing to have him deposed.
My advice to the NB NDP dissidents is to take things one step at a time. First try to majority of federal NDP delegates to vote to get rid of Layton next month, then if you succeed at that task, the next step would eb to organize to get party members in NB to reject cardy's leadership in the Fall. Maybe if you succeed in those two tasks the next sgtep would be to try to get the Nova Scotia NDP to vote to fire Darrell Dexter as its leader as well!
Layton and his team of MPs have already been elected, and are trying to co-operate with other MPs on areas of common interest. Neither Cardy nor anyone else from his party has been elected, and no elected MLA in New Brunswick has any interest whatsoever in helping out Cardy.
If Cardy wants to work with the Liberals so much, why doesn't he just join them?
Sophistry.
Your advice Stockholm carries just a whiff of disingenuousness to me.
New Brunswick's NDP has caught the Liberals for second place in popular support among voters, according to the latest Corporate Research Associates poll.
The Liberals and the NDP are tied at 20 per cent among decided and leaning voters. But both parties are trailing David Alward's Progressive Conservatives, which was picked by 56 per cent as their preferred party.
The Corporate Research Associates quarterly political poll found the number of undecided respondents was 37 per cent.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/06/07/nb-cra-poll...
...and 14% say Cardy would make the best Premier which is the best showing for an NDP leader in about the last ten years and not bad for someone who has only had the job for a couple of months and is not that well-known yet.
Its all good.
I'm not sure why this is in the thread about suggesting cooperating with the Liberals. Its more of a general NB politics story.
14 + 15=29
so? 14+39 = 54? 2+2=4 except when it equals 5.
The NB Liberals will pick a new leader at some point and they won't disappear without a fight. One thing for sure, though - this wave of popularity for the NB NDP and for cardy will be like a knife in the gut to the three or four people who keep bad mouthing him...maybe they'll have to go back to plan B and stage a hostile takeover of the Green party.
I'll count you amongst the charter members of the Dominic Cardy fan club, Stockholm.
You under estimate the opposition to Cardy's leadership amongst the membership.
The proof will be in the pudding when the party has a convention in the fall. I suspect that beyond three or four malcontents - everyone else will be delighted to have a leader who's taken the party to levels of popularity not seen in many, many years. Back when the party was totally moribund "the membership" was about 12 people and it was easy to get a clique together and try to control it. Now as a result of the leadership contest and the federal election, membership is vastly larger. Three or four malcontents have gone from being 30% of 12 people to being less than 1% of over a thousand people.
That's what happens when a party grows. Little cliques of ideologues who liked being a big fish in a small pond get diluted and rendered powerless.
Roger Duguay took the NDP to 22% in the polls, but as Stockholm notes, never had 14% support as leader. Looks like Cardy is currently doing as well as Duguay ever did.
Are you predicting Stockholm that Cardy will get 99% approval at the Convention? If you are would you care to back up this assertion with your pocketbook? I'm always happy to make some easy money.
I'm steadfastly not wading into the NB debate but it should be noted I think we're seeing major Layton/federal election spillover. 8 to 20 per cent in NL almost overnight, new numbers in NS today that show the NDP soaring in popularity into the 40's, the Liberals tanking, neither for any obvious reason I can think of, certainly not to the dramatic degree we've seen. So, no thoughts as to what the NB party is doing or not doing, but this is context worth noting in all three provinces...
Edited to add: No sooner do I say it when: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/06/08/ndp-gains-in-polls-across_n_872964.html
There is obviously some truth to that. I also think that the massive NDP gains federally and becoming the official opposition could be very helpful to provincial NDPs in small provinces like NB and NL where the party now has zero or one seat and needs to establish itself as a player. Going up to 20% in those two provinces is good but its still well below what the NDP got federally in those provinces.
Nova Scotia is a bit of a different story. The NDP federal vote barely budged and stayed at about 31% - so going up to 42% provincially is more meaningful because its so much higher than the federal support level. Also, since the NDP is the incumbent government - i think people in NS are more likely to be responsing to what they think of the Dexter government as opposed to it being some sort of vague "halo-effect" from Layton-mania.