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NDP leadership race 104
February 21, 2012 - 9:33pm
"Blessed be the peace makers" ironic statement for a guy using a dishonest smear campaign. What peaceful about scorched earth tactics against allies.
A reasonably good overview of the Leadership race, and notice the reference to the Liberals
NDP numbers game likely to work in Thomas Mulcair’s favourhttp://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/21/john-ivison-ndp-numbers-g...
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/powerful+player+leadership+race/6187...
http://www.punditsguide.ca/2012/02/bc-and-ontario-to-decide-ndp-leadersh...
Nobody should take anything for granted.
Brian Topp has an excellent chief organizer in BC in the name of Gerry Scott, whose organizing skills helped to secure the BC NDP Leadership surprisingly for Adrian Dix.
I have to agree. A very impressive interview.
[Editor's note: Bill Tieleman's column "The Case Against an NDP, Liberal, Green Coalition" published this morning on The Tyee immediately sparked a storm of tweets and debate. Here is a rebuttal just submitted by a key supporter of NDP leadership candidate Nathan Cullen.]
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/02/21/Cullen-Cooperation-Defence/
I don't know the exact numbers for any party but from what I gather about 50% of the eligible membership voting is normal, and you'd expect maybe 2/3rds of the members who were signed up during the leadership campaign to vote. This has been a longer leadership campaign though so maybe we'll get a number closer to 2/3rds for the whole membership voting.
The membership numbers turn out to be more informative than I thought they would be, though the whole new members and who do they support thing remains a guessing game at heart. Largely speaking performance of out of province candidates in signing up members is unknown as we jump from region to region.
The Mulcair camp were looking at 20,000 new members for his candidacy in Quebec. The overall numbers, while good, were well short of that, and other candidates signed up Quebec members, including Topp, Ashton, and Nash, so Mulcair must concentrate on existing members across Canada if he wants to win.
New sign-ups in Ontario suggest strength of the party is growing in the largest province. Nash is the leading Ontario candidate. She has excellent labour support, and resides in the GTA where her qualities as a community worker are well recognized. People see her a party leader, she has already been its president after all. Dewar has a great ground game, and is strong in Eastern Ontario. Outsiders doing well ? Every candidate has supporters in Ontario for sure.
The team with the best ground game in BC is not easy to ascertain from the sign-ups. The province has the largest number of members. Singh signed up lots of new members and encouraged renewals. Topp had an early lead, and has not slowed his efforts. Cullen goes from strength to strength, but carries the same weakness with him here as elsewhere with partisans. He is setting the agenda on enviro questions. I am part of the Nash campaign here, and her team is outstanding, young, dynamic and working hard. Peggy is covering the province and she is recognized as the candidate to deal with working class issues. Google Catalyst to see what the province is facing outside the lower mainland. Vancouver Island was home to 10,000 members prior to sign-ups. Nash has great organizing strength on the Island. Its not only vote rich, its members will vote.
The prairies are a mystery to me, though I grew up there, and still consider myself a prairie guy. Edmonton and Calgary? Regina and Saskatoon? Winnipeg and Brandon? Niki will do well in Manitoba, but Dewar has big strength there and with provincial government employees in particular thanks to his brother who is a big player in Man. labour and party circles.
Atlantic Canada? Nash is competitive in N.S and Newfoundland for sure. N.B and PEI still have lots of room to grow. With Robert C. gone from the race, interest may have slacked off compared to elsewhere, but people take their politics very seriously in the Maritimes.
Mulcair is an excellent platform performer and has gained respect as people get to know him. How many people outside Quebec joined the party to vote for him, I have no idea. You can be sure he has support everywhere among existing members. Nobody knows for sure how much support, to state the obvious.
I do know enviros join to vote Nathan, as do riding by riding co-operation people. It seems that young people are going Ashton, and Nash, and youth are joining. Women and labour people are signing up to vote Peggy, but how many are there? Dewar tried a Western strategy and he may have support on the prairies but his French is an obstacle (as is Topp not being poised to take the Danforth seat). A great number of people think a leader from Quebec is necessary for the province to vote NDP again in 2015, and will vote Mulcair on that basis alone. How many signed up to do it?
Conclusion: My guess is that Mulcair must run very strong outside his base to win. Nash must run strong in her base -- distancing Dewar and Topp, as well as Mulcair in Ontario -- in order to win.
I am interested in hearing others comment the good news about sign-ups.
There's plenty to feel bullish about as a Mulcair supporter. Quebec has only increased its share of the vote since the membershp numbers Dewar polled on, we don't have full details but Dewar's campaign did indicate Mulcair support was somewhere (anywhere) above 50% of the province. As the percentage of Quebec voters in the overall pie has increased this is almost certainly a small boost to Mulcair's number, although we would never have been in the running if Tom didn't also attract significant support in the rest of Canada.
That said nobody has enough support to win this on one ballot and their are doubtless still scads of undecideds to be reached. Anyone's game.
I fear the only one served well by Topp's latest column in the Toronto Star is the Conservative Party of Canada.
I am proud of the candidates who for the most part have played above the belt, and while disagreeing with other candidates have done so respectfully, and that will be reflected on my ballot.
The thing that strikes me as so off-putting about Topp's latest is that he is making stuff up, out of thin air, that Mulcair has never said or insinuated. I won't strike back against Topp with some negatives of my own, because that would be exactly what he wants - for Mulcair and his supporters to go wild too. It won't work.
Its one thing to say he disagrees with his opponent. But to make up disagreements with things he has never said, and to quote them as if he did. Not cool at all.
Me neither. I know in my heart Nathan Cullen is the one to pick up where Jack left off.
These threads would be good illustration of that old adage: bullshit is in the eyes of the beholder.
We do agree on not wanting the bullshitter to be Leader.
Oh, please. Impressive? Evidence of desperation and petty-mindedness. He attacks Mulcair as if Mulcair is the enemy, the death of the party, the Liberal mole burrowing through all the healthy "moral" (he uses that word!) values that we cherish.
On Israel and Palestine, his views (although probably abridged in this story) are indistinguishable from Mulcair's, except perhaps in terms of rhetorical flourish.
He accuses Mulcair of favouring "privatization"! Mulcair, who as a cabinet minister, publicly broke with Charest's plan to partially open Mount Orford to private development, and paid the ultimate political price for his stand.
And this accusation comes from Topp, who worked with a Romanow government that completed the sell-off of the Potash Corporation which Grant Devine had privatized!
I'll leave the rest of the critique as an exercise to the reader. But what is most startling about this interview is the sheer churlishness and flailing around against a colleague, an ally, Jack's deputy leader - and pretending that he is defending the party from Blairite betrayal. Whatever else we may say about Brian Topp, he is not leadership material.
You'd be on pretty safe ground mtm if you said that Topp did a lot of exagerating and spinning about Mulcair. I couldnt or wouldnt argue with that.
But to say that Topp is making it up out of thin air presupposes that there is nothing of substance to his criticism. And that is a matter of opinion.
Which is why you can have in the same thread people who say 'good interview' and others who say 'what utter bullshit'.
I think its kind of entertaining you all aggreing and congatulating each other on the self evident truth of your observations of Topp. Dont get me wrong, I know plenty of people here will largely agree with you. But talking as if its self evident truth is a bit over the topp.
There's a lot of people who think Mulcair is going to move the party to the center. You would think that if he were going to do this, after a handful of debates and dozens of interviews and events, someone would be able to verify at least *one* NDP policy he wanted to jettison and replace with a neoliberal idea. I've been watching really closely because I'd hate to see us become a so-called "centrist" party in the mold of Tony Blair, and I haven't seen it.
So now Brian Topp is saying Mulcair is going to move the party towards war and privatization. Where?
I'd find the amount of stuff made up about Mulcair more amusing if it weren't so persistently frustrating.
I repeat: I don't care of Mulcair wins, but if he loses, I'd like it to be because there's an honest-to-God difference that people care about.
I'm giving Nathan Cullen a second look.
I hate his idea for strategic cooperation. But he's proposed that new wealthy tax breaket that I think is critical policy AND politics.
The thing that's making him interesting to me is I'm starting to see a legitimate swell in support among my age group on Facebook. It's only two or three people, but considering that my Facebook has been quiet about the leadership race I think it's a sign of things to come.
For the young people who were attracted to the NDP because of Jack Layton, a guy like Cullen has the right demeanor/charisma/sense of humor to keep that enthusiasm going. That's way more important than the conventional wisdom that Nicki Ashton will attract young voters because she's young, IMO. (We see that "identiy group" fallacy a lot on babble, and we always call it out.)
And there's a part of me that would really like to see Cullen debate Harper.
Plus, for his terrible idea for strategic cooperation, there's the safety valve that the members could stop it from being party policy.
"Mulcair is going to move the party towards war and privatization." I wouldnt take that too literally. Its not a quotation, or even close. Its a summarizing by reporters of what they heard.
I would guess Topp did say something that they arent just making it up. But I'll bet what he said doesnt come across like that at all.
Its a good eyeball catcher for a reporter.
I agree KenS. Everything that comes through the media filter is to make things a lot more black-and-white, conflict-driven than it is in reality. I take these interviews with a huge grain of salt, and I do give Brian some benefit of the doubt.
I dont think its appropriate to follow this up in the 'who are you supporting' threads. So I'll move it here.
Despite the fact that we made progress on the corporate taxes issue, and that it is at the very least a very strong case to be made that Canadians will be with us on raising taxes on the wealthy.... all Mulcair has to say about it is that it's too risky.
Thats not leadership. And its not what we got from Jack Layton.
Don't worry Ken the things that are direct quotes are bad enough. Topp is bottom feeding. Shameful.
Surely the NDP is more than Jack Layton. No?
Ken, I couldn't disagree with you more.
There are blatant fabrications in that article, including the two you just mentioned. This is not highlighting a legitimate difference of opinion. It is fearmongering Republican style tactics. It is framing the candidate as standing for positions they don't actually support (like war and privatization), and saying the candidate represents something they clearly do not.
It is sad.
For the record, just to highlight it since you brought it up - Tom has been an ardent defender of public services, is staunchly anti-P3, and is not proposing we go to war with anyone. How can you say this kind of insinuation is in any way shape or form legitimate, Ken?
Anyway, this is the last I'm posting on this. It really is self-evident and I feel like you're just trying to be provocative - it is after all what you see your role as on this board. I'm not going to play into it. I for one can see that Jack respected Mulcair immensely to put him in such important positions as Finance Critic, Quebec Lieutenant, and Deputy Leader. I think that respect speaks volumes.
I'm very proud of the campaigns that all the other leaders including Mulcair have run. The messaging has been positive, constructive, and respectful. I hope they all keep it that way. Jack would want nothing less.