NDP Leadership 83

Exactly, does anyone remember who was the uninspriring interim Liberal leader for about a year in 1989-1990 when the Liberals seemed in disarray and in danger of falling behind the NDP?? (ANSWER: Herb Gray). btw: The Liberals went on to win a landslide majority in 1993

Does anyone remember where the federal Tories/Canadian Alliance were at in 2001/2002? Reminder, the PCs were leaderless and in disarray and the Canadian Alliance was split down the middle over the Stockwell day disaster and they were polling in single digits. The interim leader was John Reynolds (who???). Look at who is in power today??

Australia uses AV, or whatever it might be called there.

I'm sorry for misattributing your words. I remain highly concerned with the NDP's fall.

Howard, this weekend his mother's best friend died. The funeral is today. I think this article goes some distance to explaining what the loss means to both the community and to Romeo Saganash himself.

Rest in peace, Jackie Gull.

Or what about Saganash as PM and Mulcair as Governor-General?

We've already had a G-G named Romeo. Time for a Tom?

8th Fire Q&A: Diom Roméo Saganash

Whose land is it anyway? 8th Fire, episode 3

I have a hard time arguing with you. Youre just no fun anymore, Stockholmer.

So why haven't the "big tent" left parties in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and the US been able to replicate the much better record of social democrats in PR countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, etc...? Why is it that left-wing governments in FPTP countries seem unable to match the levels of social democracy of even the right-wing governments in PR countries?

The key difference between FPTP and PR is that FPTP is a rigid two-party system while PR is a flexible multi-party system.  FPTP tends to create two big tent parties that are very difficult to replace because adding more parties causes vote splitting. The corporate elite understands this and thus they always back one Conservative Party and if they are lucky they back another party if it causes vote splitting on the left. And since it is very difficult to establish new parties with FPTP, corporate elites find it easy to influence leftish parties like the NDP without the fear that this will result in the creation of new left-wing parties.

 As it is under FPTP, the "social democratic" NDP can't easily call for raising taxes on the top 1%. Saganash's question to Topp was very revealing. Is Topp playing into the hands of the Conservative attack machine by mentioning tax increases on the very wealthy? Being a diehard social democrat Topp effectively defended raising taxes by showing that:

 If Mitt Romney were Canadian, he would pay even less tax!

Social democratic parties in PR countries like Sweden would have no difficulty critisizing a taxation system that is even more favourable to bilionaires then the US's. And because of that, these PR countries have taxation levels that have been able to produce more egalitarian societies then the FPTP countries.

How would members of the corporate elite have felt watching the NDP convention? Wouldn't they have felt reassured that Canada's left-wing party can only go as far as raising taxes via cap and trade in order to create a fairer society? And wouldn't they thank their lucky stars that FPTP has safeguarded their priveledge to such a great extent?

Don't get me wrong. I support moving to a system of PR. But I also think we are being delusional if we assume for one second that when push comes to shove - the Liberal Party will EVER put the NDP in power when all of their Bay St. masters will read them the riot act and demand that they prop up the Tories.

Proportional representation is a better system on principle - but we should not make the mistake of assuming that it will result in "more progressive" government. New Zealand has MMP and right now they have a rightwing coalition in power.

Three Nova Scotia MLAs, including one cabinet minister, have endorsed Peggy Nash today.  These are Lunenburg MLA Pam Birdsall, Queens MLA Vicki Conrad, and Dartmouth South—Portland Valley MLA Marilyn More, who holds several portfolios, including Labour, Advanced Education and Immigration in the Dexter Government.

http://peggynash.ca/2012/nova-scotia-mlas-back-peggy-nash-for-ndp-leader...

This is the essence of my name. If you look outside Canada to the broader community of democracies... you'll notice that there aren't very many right-wing parties who would dare campaign on dismantling health care. The consensus is the best economy is a mixed economy: public models for necessities, and private models for wealth-creation, with lots of shades in between.

A big part of forcing a government to represent that social democratic middle is a more proportional voting system. It's not just about electing full-on socialist parties to government. It's also about forcing the so-called centrist parties towards the true political center, representing the broad base of working people.

I would rather a Liberal party that has to compete with the NDP in the actual popular vote and form a coalitiion, rather than an NDP that obliterates and replaces the Liberal party on the center-right.

Wouldn't that mean that the only way for the NDP to obtain power is through winning an outright majority?

If the Liberals don't prop up an NDP government if given the chance, they will likely lose a lot of their support and condemn themselves to oblivion as they will win hardly any seats if they go under 15%.

If the 2015 election doesn't produce a majority, the post-election negotiating will be fascinating. In such a case, electoral reform may likely be the biggest negotiating chip as it was in the UK after their recent election that produced a minority. Hopefully the Liberals would be smarter than the Liberal Democrats were and not sell their souls in order to get a referendum on electoral reform that is doomed to failure because it is associated with a party that's sold out their supporters who mostly detested the Conservatives. In retrospect, the Liberal Democrats should have made a deal with Labour, especially since Labour agreed to implement AV immediately and have a referendum on PR. As it's turned out, the Liberal Democrats are likely going to head into oblivion after the 2015 election and will have nothing to show for their deal with the Conservatives. If the Liberals are smart, if they find themselves in the same poisition as the LD's found themselves in, they'll agree to prop up the NDP in exchange for implementing PR as PR would insure the Liberal's long term survival, albeit in a smaller role than they're used to.

Of course one of the reasons the LDs couldn't support Labour was that they didn't have enough seats to give Labour a majority...they would have needed support from Ulster Unionists and Scottish and Welsh Nationalists to have something like a three seat majority! Also, Gordon Brown was by all accounts a miserable guy who was impossible to deal with...its news to me that Labour ever offered AV with no referendum.

I still think that unless the NDP wins a majority - the Liberals will be forced by their corporate benefactors to keep the Tories in power. Throughout canadian history - when Liberals have to choose between the NDP and the Conservatives - they ALWAYS ally themselves with Conservatives. They only cooperate with the NDP when they are the party that will be in the drivers seat.

The NDP had the best ever election results last election running against the Liberals as well as the Cons. Why in the world would we want to change direction now? Answer: The NDP doesn't want to change direction in that area.

I wish people knew how to understand polls, instead of just repeating them. A poll isn't a prediction. It's a snapshot of where things are now. That means that numbers can be depressed or inflated, depending on circumstances. Right now they're blatantly depressed: a caretaker interim leader, no election on the horizon, a dull leadership race, and our heavyweights spending too much time outside parliament. All things that will change soon and instantly improve.

I fully admit that the polls show that Mulcair would help us bounce back substantially. The thing that the polls can't show is what would happen if we picked another leader who goes from relatively unknown to our official spokesperson. Nearly any of the candidates would outperform Turmel. They'd start getting at least SOME of the coverage that's somehow been annointed to Bob Rae.  Plus, having some of those MPs back in Parliament would take some spotlight away from the Liberals, and turn up the pressure on the Conservatives.

And most of all, there IS someone who would make a great leader, but hasn't been introduced to the Canadian people yet. Our job as NDP supporters isn't to look at a narrow snapshot of what's going on now and just roll with the polls, but to look at someone's actual political acumen and reputation and see if they could win hearts and minds, given the chance. The answer could be Mulcair, but it could easily be someone else.