NDP Leadership #96

Aww darn, I wanted to start it this time. = P

I'm lost. What are you referring to? 

Mayhaps we've all had a bit too much cheap hallmark choclate today. Before anyone tares up their membership card in a huff, I'll just reaffirm that we're lucky to have gotten such a deeply talented leadership slate, all of whom have worked damn hard for the New Democrats over the years, and I for one am going to support the leader whoever the membership chooses. 

+1.

I'm with KenS and like a good debate. I don't feel like hiding disagreements makes them go away. If Mulcair is going to get my #1 preference vote (which is my current plan), I want him to earn it.

BTW: If I was giving advice to Mulcair (which I am not), I would tell him that there is a very simple way to defuse any line of attack on him for being a so-called "Blairite". The fact is that for better or for worse - Tony Blair was seen as a god in social democratic and centre-left circles - until he backed the Iraq War and sucked up to Bush. I think that most NDP members who have a low opinion of Blair have it almost exclusively over the Iraq issue (yes, yes, i know there are other things he did that we don't like - but most people don't follow British politics closely enough to know about any of that). I suggest that if asked, Mulcair simply reiterate his total condemnation and opposition to the Iraq War. As long as he attacks Blair over Iraq - that will get him leftwing cred in the NDP and no one will see him as a "Blairite!

Well at least Topp is trying to provide us with a real choice. It may not be a compelling one, given Topp's history with the Romanow NDP and other sorties, but he is trying to create a contrast.

Also, I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but the "New Democratic" wing is also what Bill Clinton said of himself as he took the US Democratic Party to the right. These "New Democrats" are what inspired Tony Blair & co to create "New Labour." The name "New Labour" was a direct reference to the "New Democrats."

At the beginning of this campaign I didn't know almost anything about the "Third Way," but after josh and others accused me of being a "Third Way"-ite I started to do some research and learned more about it.

When it comes to the "Third Way" their private-public partnership (P3) experiments, hawkish foreign policy, and open-to-lobbyists government are a real turn-off. That is not to say that "New Labour" didn't have some good accomplishments too.

While the use of the term "New Democrat" in the United States is completely unrelated to the Canadian usage, Topp's statement, "I'm from the New Democratic wing of the NDP" is definitely inspired by an American slogan.

During his 2004 Presidential campaign, left-wing Democrat Howard Dean famously said he represented "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party."  The phrase was designed to draw a contrast between Dean and his main opponents, most of whom were campaigning against George W. Bush but had voted in favor of his policies.

I believe that the late Paul Wellstone, another leading figure on the left of the U.S. Democratic Party, also used the phrase quite a bit.

It was a reference to the Convention resolution to remove the "New" from the party name.

It is hard to understand Topp's scorched earth policy as reflected in today's Globe article. It is written by Daniel Leblanc who is reputed to be close to Topp so I assume it says exactly what Topp wanted it to say.

I don't see that it will get Topp any new support, even if it does undermine Dewar and Mulcair to some extent. Topp ranks quite low in both of the recent polls for second choice suport, third in Mulcair's poll and fifth in Dewar's. Mulcair is ahead of him in both so even if Topp succeeds in shaking loose some Dewar votes they are unlikely to break for him over Mulcair.

Topp may have made himself less attractive to Dewar's supporters by this attack. I watched the first debate in a bar full of Dewar supporters. They were not amused then at Topp's attack on their man. The Globe article may inspire a similar reaction.

About a month ago Ian Capstick mused that Topp may drop out in an effort to block Mulcair. He seems to be pursuing the Nixonian task of slurring Mulcair but running the Spanish Prisoner risk at the same time. I can forsee him endorsing Peggy Nash after having fallen on hs sword bloodying Mulcair and saving her the effort. He did try to tie her to Buzz Hargrove but that was a long time ago. Since then he seems to be blindly lashing out at everyone except her.

Of corse Topp is going to make himself less attractive to such strong supporters of Dewar that they go to a bar together to watch the debates. But they are a small fraction of the support that Dewar and Topp share, and which both campaigns are obviously after.

Do you really think Dewar's email with the mirror image intention is any less scorched earth? It obviously has effectiness problems since I didnt like the attack on Mulcair, and until Alice Funke's hint missed the point of it being after my support of Topp. But that was the intent.

And dismiss those polls as showing anything other than Mulcair in front, followed by a pack of four after the shot to be in the last round. The numbers on down ballot support are TOTALLY unreliable and meaningless.

And for the umpteenth time, he's not working at blocking Mulcair. The ONLY goal is Topp winning. Same as the rest of them, they just all have different needs and challenges for getting there.

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The "moving to the centre" and "really a Liberal" are weak arguments.

Even before getting into the main argument, it bears saying that contrasting to the Liberals positional gyrations is setting an extremely low bar. Mulcair has nothing to prove that he is not really a Liberal... and proving it is just too low a bar.

It's not a question of abstract intentions, like 'move to the centre,' or not. I believe Mulcair when he says he has no intention to move the NDP to the centre. Thats a bad in the NDP. Who wants to do bad? Let alone you can't win the leadership saying it. Which doesnt imply its some kind of hidden agenda. It just means the simple fact that if you want to be Leader you are not going to want to move the NDP to the centre. Thats not a concious and calculating process, its just the basic internal consistency required for all the leadership candidates.

The question is whether we will GET a centrist positioning from the various candidates. More like the degree of that. And what we will get bears directly on the holistic question of what kind of political animal they ARE.

Ideological or positional inclinations- in the abstract- are only a limited part of determining what we are likely to get from the candidates should they become Leader. Which is why the typical Babble/lefty approach of looking for the 'true clours' of a candidate is so futile. What did they do and what did they SAY in the past? What does that say about what they are REALLY like?

This is worse than futile. When it comes to judging a potential Leader and what a decisive impact they have on the direction of the party, looking for 'the real candidate' is misleading and misses the point.

And the problem with Mulcair is that he makes things up as he goes, and has a limited range of political skills and political 'antenae'. He is excellent at the 'air war' of the moment- impression management for right now. He does that so well that he has autopilot for it.

But he shows very limited sense of everything beyond that. That was fine for his political career to date. And unfortunately, it seems to be sufficient for an NDP leadership race.

But the demands on the party and its Leader are FAR greater. And Mulcair does not cut it.

I've been making arguments that amount to that for a long time. I dont think many people buy it- even a piece of it. And if they do, chances are they arrived at a similar assessment about Mulcair in their own way.

Somebody might beat Mulcair just on better sizzle. But I would think that is only possible by Cullen.

I think if a mark is going to made on Mulcair by something similar to what I am arguing it is not going to be via discursive blah blah blah. Since I'm not a candidate all I have is discursive rational blah blah. A candidate could make a mark on Mulcair, but it would be mostly with a contrasting vision, one that by contrast puts Mulcair in a poor or at least weaker light.

Topp is the only one positioned to do that. And presumably that is a primary goal, and needs to succeed at to win. I have no way of knowing the Topp campaign's high level messaging plan. But what makes sense to me is that the current weak argument and almost ad hominem tagging of Mulcair is the 'softening up'. Whether they have the plan and capability to do really effective positive contrasting, I have no idea. But I can't see Brian winning without delivering it.

I think Brian is capable of his personal side of delivering that. And having quickly developed the capability to pull it off is no mean feat. But having the capability is only a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Ironically, my hunch is that it is what Brian is seen as best at that most remains to be seen if he can pull off: whether he is a good enough master campaigner.

While it's certainly believable that Topp prefers Nash to the other candidates, there are other ways to explain his less aggressive strategy against her.  While Dewar's French decifit and Mulcair's centrist views provide clear lines of attack against them, it's hard to see a similar line of attack to use against Nash.

I also think, from a strategic perspective, that it makes sense for Topp to focus on winning over potential Dewar voters on the language issue in order to leapfrog Nash to make it to the final ballot, and on highlighting the differences between him and Mulcair in order to make sure that Nash voters place him ahead of Mulcair.

I think I am going to rank Topp second. He would not have let himself get pigeon-holed by an incomprehensible question in the French language debate.