NDP Leadership 82

I thought the candidates, overall, did quite a bit better in this debate than in the first official party debate in Ottawa.

It wasn't clear to me who gave the best performance today, but it was quite clear who gave the worst.  Romeo Saganash was very poor.  He seemed nervous and uncertain in English, and his question to Topp was an incredible blunder.  It's rather odd that Saganash, who I expected to be a left-wing candidate, seems to be positioning himself on the right of the party in the debates; in both of the first two official debates, he's openly criticized any proposals to raise income taxes on the top 1%.  It's such a shame that his candadacy has been such a joke.

Topp gave an unmemorable performance.  Quite honestly, I thought when Nash had finished her closing statement that the debate was over, and was quite surprised to see the moderator call on Topp, having quite forgotten that he was there.  Niki Ashton also failed to distinguish herself.  She seems passionate, and her views are, I think, fairly close to my own, but she struggled to come up with answers, and too often simply resorted to her "new politics" slogan.

Dewar and Singh were both much improved from their performances in the Ottawa debate.  I came away from the debate thinking much more highly of both of them.  I don't regard Singh as a serious candidate for the leadership, but he certainly held his own today.  Dewar, who had seemed stiff in the Ottawa debate, was more relaxed today, and, I thought, did quite well.

Another candidate who seemed more relaxed was Peggy Nash.  I know that some people have panned her performance, but personally, I was pleasantly surprised by how well she did.

Cullen and Mulcair are the candidates whose debate performances seem to have been discussed the most.  Both did fairly well, I thought.  Cullen, again, showed his quick wit, and did as well as could have been expected to do in defending his joint-nomination scheme.

If, at the beginning of the campaign, I'd been shown a list of the candidates who would be running and been asked to predict who I would end up supporting, I would have probably said Cullen.  I was initially disappointed to see him running, due to the fact that I feared he would take away support and energy from the campaign of the person I was then expecting to back—Peter Julian.  However, without Julian in the race, I would have expected to back Cullen.  However, Cullen's joint-nomination scheme makes him unacceptable as leader.

Mulcair's performance in the debate was good, but he did not rise above the rest of the candidates.  While one could make a reasonable argument that Mulcair did best today, I think that one could also make a reasonable argument that Nash, Cullen, Dewar, or even Singh gave the best performance.

I don't think I can support Mulcair.  Even if I were to think him to be the candidate most likely to win in 2015, I still couldn't back him, because I don't trust him on economic and foreign policy issues.  I liked having Mulcair as deputy leader, but the roles of leader and deputy leader are very different.  There must not be any doubt about the leader's commitment to the values and principles of the social democratic movement in Canada.

We're not just choosing a candidate to win in 2015.  We're choosing a person to be the steward of a legacy of work that goes back to J.S. Woodsworth.  If the party wins in 2015 but does not implement a bold social democratic agenda, that legacy of work would have been wasted.  I would rather that the NDP lose in 2015 than that it win with the wrong person at the helm.

That IS the key challenge. We want to win, but we also want to know that win will be worth it. I'm glad people are skeptical of Mulcair. What they need to do is translate that into some tangible questions and try to raise them at the debate. I know he rolls through every town and is pretty good about taking questions. Next time he's in Toronto, I'm gonna try to go and ask him something. I might focus on proportional representation... but I'm interested to know what other skeptics would ask.

I understand the reasons behind people feeling this way, but I have to say that I think it's much ado about (almost) nothing. Because, in the end, this joint-nomination plan is not going to work. The NDP constituencies will not want it; nor will the Liberals. End result = it will not happen. If, by some chance, it does happen in a couple of constituencies in the country it will be on a very minor scale. (And even if it does happen, I don't happen to think it's a bad idea! At least when Cullen explains it. I think some people refuse to listen.)

Once we disregard this joint-nomination plan as a non-starter, Cullen is far and away the best candidate in terms of performance, and people are seeing that. I can't see how putting forward an innovative (if disliked) idea for electoral success makes someone unacceptable for leader. Put the ideas out there - discuss them - try to implement them even (if you win). What's worse is not putting forward bold, new ideas.

Re: Greg Fingas blog: "Romeo Saganash's question about income taxes: where Saganash had positioned himself to Topp's left on a number of issues, the comparison between Saganash worrying what the Cons would say about income tax increases and Topp's response as to the need to win the argument in the general public made for an ideal moment to highlight Topp's central message."

Not so sure. I think it was the lawyer in Saganash coming out. Saganash seemed to be arguing that there were plenty of loopholes and ways of getting money away from the rich without having that battle yet. Furthermore, Saganash seems to be arguing that by closing these loopholes and going after other tax breaks first that one might actually be able to get more money from the rich without opening oneself up to an obvious attack from them.

My take is that, if these other means of going after the 1% can gain the government as much money as Saganash indicates (something we should look into) then maybe it would be a good idea to do it during the first term in office and then maybe look at fighting Topp's battle in the second term. Someone else mentioned something about a person should not be able to avoid paying taxes because they got a good accountant. Taken together, one may be fighting the battle on income taxes while keeping open the loopholes that makes it easy for the rich to avoid paying other taxes.

It was a dig. It was a means of mentioning that Mulcair used to be a Liberal.

I don't think that it was an error on Dewar's part - Cullen was showing how Dewar's appointment of Angus could be spun, if someone had a vested interest in spinning things. What it showed was that Dewar was not thinking about how something innocent could be spun and was not prepared to counter it. There were ways that Dewar could have deflected Cullen's spin IF he saw it coming and had worked on a way of deflating criticism on it. Defending Angus's credentials with a vague hint that he has not revealed his other deputy minister yet was not good enough.

Dewar having to give up a name during the debate that he was not ready to give up would be considered a loss because one of the purposes of Question Period is to trick a person into, by defending themselves, giving up more information that they are wanting to. Dewar did not do that. However, he also did not successfully deflate the idea that one appointment made him sexist and Ontariocentric. If the situation was reversed and Angus was up there fielding that question about appointing Dewar, Angus would be indignant about the idea that one mere appointment (or two, if you include Duncan's), with more coming, warrented such outlandish claims. Angus would have made Cullen look silly for asking the question.

Dewar did not deflate or reflect back the spin. Dewar was more sponge than teflon.

I find Mulcair's tepid support for PR to be his greatest weakness. By vehemently opposing Cullen's short term solution to the unfairness of FPTP - Mulcair beg's the question - exactly how do you propose to solve the problem of vote splitting on the left if you exclude short term solutions like Cullen's and the only real solution - proportional representation / fair voting?

Mulcair's answer to the problem of FPTP vote splitting on the left seems to be - the NDP should replace the Liberals by moving to the centre and winning phony FPTP elections as the new centrist party that has taken over the place of the Liberals.

If Mulcair truly supports social democracy he will mirror serious social democrats like Topp, Cullen, Nash, Ashton, Layton, Broadbent, etc, and fully support implementing PR fair voting ASAP.

It's intersting that one of the biggest cheers from the audience during the debate was in favour of PR-Fair Voting. If Mulcair wants to show his support for social democracy he should unequivocally back PR-Fair Voting.

I think you're being a bit histrionic about the polls in Quebec and about what they mean in terms of who to elect as leader. I say that as someone who is still totally undecided and who may vote for Mulcair in the end. Yes, its true that right now - largely due to name recognition - Mulcair SEEMS like the one best positioned to hold on to Quebec. But polls also suggested in 2009 that with Michael Ignatieff, the Liberals would sweep Quebec and I still remember those polls showing Liberal support going up to SIXTY PERCENT if only they would make Paul martin their leader. Some people think Mulcair would be a winner in Quebec, but there are also some NDP opinion leaders in Quebec who think otherwise. I respect the opinion of Francoise Boivin and Alexandre Boulerice a lot and they for some reason think that Brian Topp would better. I also respect Pierre Ducasse and Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet and Dany Morin a lot - and they think Peggy nash would be better. There are clearly people in the NDp in Quebec who are not so sure that Mulcair is necessarily the be all and the end all.

I think its very clear that Mulcair does a great job in terms of performance - and that is an important criteria of leadership - but its not the only criteria. There are other criteria of effective leadership that you don't notice when they are done well - but that when done badly will destroy everything - these inclusing being able to attract a good team of people, inspire loyalty, work with others, unify the caucus and the party and have a good strategic vision for the party etc...Mulcair may well have those qualities too - but unless he does, all the good speeches in the world will be worthless.

Look at the ridings where it might make sense, where the NDP got under 10% in 2011, and the Liberal was close enough to the Conservative to have a chance. Umm, there aren't any.

Okay, let's say 15% (keeping in mind that we will have new boundaries by then, so this is a hypothetical discussion): West Nova (unlikely with the NDP and Liberals competing for power provincially), Ottawa-Orleans (where PSAC endorsed Liberal David Bertschi last May, but I think the whole of the Ottawa NDP would have to be on board, a faint possibility), Ajax-Pickering (this may explain why Mark Holland is supporting PR, he might in theory pull this off), Don Valley West (where the NDP ran an invisible place-holder last May and the Conservative won by 611 votes, were we already doing an informal alliance?), Eglinton-Lawrence, Etobicoke Centre, Mississauga South, and Yukon. That's it.

Polls have shown that federal Liberal voters are much more likely to favour the federal NDP over the federal Conservatives. A poll  a few days before the May election pegged it at 5 to 1!

Here in BC, BC Liberal supporters are much more likely to favour the BC Conservatives over the BC NDP. That's why the right in BC are already talking about merging the BC Liberals and BC Conservatives should the BC NDP win the next election because of vote splitting on the right. The right likes FPTP and merges parties whenever the NDP ever starts benifitting from FPTP. [See the federal Conservative Party, the Saskatchewan Party, The BC Liberals, BC Social Credit etc....] The left in Canada does not want a two-party system so it doesn't see merging parties as a viable answer to the problem of FPTP vote splitting. So the only viable answer left for social democrats is PR/fair voting.

Maybe it's time Mulcair gets asked this question?

umm...you know the UK uses FPTP, right?

In all honesty, I can't see the Conservatives here forming a coalition with anyone.

Which means that the ratio of Liberal voters whose 2nd choice is the NDP grew even higher. It would seem that when push come to shove those on the right put winning above all else. They're willing to play the FPTP game much more then the left is. That's why they vote Conservative federally, liberal in BC, Sask Party in Sask, PC in other provinces, etc... The right dosn't let vote splitting get in their way for long. And in the few instances when it does, they merge parties.

But if the Liberals side with the Conservatives, centre leftish voters will quit the Liberals.

As Clegg has found out, supporting the Conservatives against the wishes of the majority of those who voted Liberal Democrat is likely going to decimate the Liberal Democrats in 2015.

The question to be asked is: Is Canada a centre-left country or a centre-right country. Canada is a centre-left country. The only reason we have a right-wing government is that we have FPTP and we have 4 parties divving up the centre-left vote against 1 party that's consolodated the centre-right vote.

 Also, it is not the right-wing parties that pull out all the stops to keep the NDP out of power, it's the corporate elite. The politicians in the Reform and PC parties did not want a merger. The corporate elite did.

The beauty of it is that it was both. He was saying that if we accept working with Mulcair, we need to accept working with current Liberals too, because they're all individuals bla bla bla and some of them are progressive bla bla bla. It made me cringe, but it was actually pretty brilliant.

CFL