NDP Leadership Race #134

Success, in large part, due to the early stages of the recasting process.

Hebert: Pauline Marois hoping Thomas Mulcair loses NDP leadership race

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1149948--hebert-pauline-marois-hoping-thomas-mulcair-loses-ndp-leadership-race

"I want to work with the unions, but I’m never going to be beholden to anybody other than the people who voted me there, which will be the membership of the party."

For those who have neutral or positive feelings about Mulcair, that quote seems like common sense. "Yeah, the Conservatives are attacking us for being in the pocket of unions, so we can accomplish more by working with unions than by openly marrying them." (Keeping in mind the context is that Brian Topp wanted to reintroduce the quota for affiliated members, where unions have had a special status in the party.)

For those who hate Mulcair, that's the telltale sign that he hates unions, that even though he wants to "work with unions", he sees them as a special interest and wants to keep them at bay.

There's also a third kind of person. The kind who hates unions. They'll read that, and add a whole ton of slime to keep driving their vendetta against unions, which is what the mainstream media typically does. But be clear that the slime ("NDP reducing unions' role", "unions have a bad rap") is coming from the media, and not Mulcair's mouth.

Another thing...

I saw one of the "infighting" media articles was tweeted a lot. So I checked twitter to see how people were using it. Of those who actually commented on it (as opposed to just blindly sharing it), many of them thought the Globe and Mail was full of shit, trying to force a narrative of civil war onto an ordinary battle between candidates.

The mainstream media wants us to implode. But thankfully, we're smart enough to not take the bait.

Good Brian Topp video Let's Get the Job Done.

Apparently voting live at convention, the first vote will start on Friday (ending Saturday morning), with subsequent votes on Saturday.  I find that curious, since I'm used to such things being done in one day.

yeah, I wonder what the makeover will be - any big hints? We could look at all the leadership candidates to see what their vision is for where they want to take us for a clue, or perhaps not.

Don't know about the Coldwell quote from your post, but the article you linked above from Rowan (whom I know nothing about) does reflect my own attitude in that I feel most of the candidates, besides Cullen and Topp, have just provided fluff.  Only Cullen and Topp have provided any real concrete substance in their pledges.  Where they differ is on whether the idea of cooperation with Liberals and Greens before an election is a good strategy or not.  Topp feels that it would not work, since many Liberal voters would choose Conservatives rather than New Democrats if denied the Liberal choice, and thus the idea would ironically strengthen Conservatives, whereas Cullen feels that if Liberal voters had a choice between New Democrats and Conservatives, that they would choose New Democrats.  Hard to tell.  But it does seem to project a message of lacking confidence in our own ability to win over the electorate without having to pre-engineer the result with Liberals in Cullen's odd scheme (hence, I prefer Topp over Cullen).  Still, Cullen ranks highly for me because at least, like Topp, he's giving concrete proposals.

"Don't know about the Coldwell quote from your post..."

Mulcair's comments trashing the NDP come from his recent interview with the Star:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1129700--ndp-leadership-hopeful-thomas-mulcair-we-have-to-renew

I remain utterly paranoid about a Cullen win.  Months later, and the best thing that can be said for his insane plan is that it probably won't go anywhere.  I'm not sure what that assumption  is based on, myself.  Even if you swallow the pill and say, "The Liberals might  refuse", you're atill putting our electoral future in the hands of another party, and giving an already Liberal-entrenched media apparatus another excuse to lavish attention on them and their leadership race instead of on the NDP message.  And why on earth would the Liberals say no? Cullen says, "hey, you guys help yourselves to 40-50 seats on us, we'll direct our resources accordingly."  It's literally a no-lose situation for them.  They make gains where they run unopposed and poach marginal NDP seats.  And they refuse...why?

He wants a merger but he has the sense to see that he'll need to pitch it from above first.  To those who would call that a conspiracy theory, consider:

- he has no plan to build the party beyond the next election

- he waxes rhapsodically about the irrelevance of political parties and regards it as a positive, rather than something to be remedied.

- he's willing to sacrifice decades of growth to win power and he's "not marraied to the details"! (Jesus H., does that sound to anyone else like a brain surgeon who's kind of fuzzy on his methods?)

- he talks contemptuously about socialism and those in the NDP who don't support him.

- all this noise about the "real enemy", scary Conservatives, etc. etc. etc.

For him there is no real difference bwtween the "progressive" parties, that much is clear.  He talks about "culture" differences, but he obviously dosn't buy into them, whatever they are, if in fact he recognizes them at all. I think if he'd run in the next riding over in 2004, he'd be a Liberal today.  Crucify me.

Mulcair is one thing.  You can fight him, and he'll fight back full bore, in public view.  The part of the NDP core (or "establishment"- hah) who feel threatened by him can stand to take the blows, and so can he. Cullen's a different beast altogether  You're guaranteed to have a divided caucus and party for as long as he's leader and persuing this.

I think what gunder is getting at is that the Liberals being in the position to poach marginal seats from the NDP is a direct result of them not having to spend as much effort screaming "STOP STEPHEN HARPER! VOTE LIBERAL!" from the rooftops in order to win the seats where the NDP stands down under the Cullen Plan—as a result, they're relatively more free to go after NDP-Liberal marginals currently held by the NDP.

[Edit: decided that "Satan Hitler" was a little too much.]

blah blah blah, give it a rest.  if mulcair wanted to go after the unions, he wouldn't have been a labor lawyer.  oh yeah, and the next time the ndp includes a 25% corporate interest leadership selection vote carve out, let me know.  with the union carve out, we all knew it had to go - one member one vote was adopted under jack back in 2006, so can it.

I can't get a read on Cullen, to be honest. On occasion, I hear some people say that he *is* basically a Liberal. But then I see him proposing to raise taxes on the wealthy, he's fiercely committed to the environment (he's the only candidate AFAIK with a policy paper just about oceans), he wants to reform NAFTA to be better for farmers/workers/environment, eliminate the monarchy... So I see him as a committed New Democrat. And yet, I see him as more of a "progressive" than a "social democrat". Is there a difference in this day and age?

I think 100% of my concerns about Cullen have to do with his proposal for strategic cooperation. I think it alienates populist conservative sympathizers, I think it alienates social democratic Bloc sympathizers, I think it alienates the anti-Liberal vote, I think it comes across as anti-democratic in some circles, and could overall annoy more people than it wins over.

My consolation is that the NDP members would never let it go forward, let alone the Liberal elite. And who knows, maybe the optics of it let us have the best of both worlds: Cullen seems reasonable and non-partisan and pragmatic, but we refrain from tying ourselves to the anvil that is the Liberal Party of Canada.

I think it's because we've done less opposition, and more proposals about what we'd actually do in government?