babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Support rabble | Advertise with us | Contact our staff | About rabble | Log-in or Register for a new account | Corrections | Privacy policy | Newsfeeds | Mailing lists
rabble: Features | Columnists | In Cahoots | Blogs | Books | Photos | What's Up | Polls
babble: Forum Topics | Active Topics
The rpn: About the RPN | Become a podcaster
rabbleTV: Program Guide | Features | Indie Inside | Best of the net
Copyright © 2001-2013 the authors
Syndicate
NDP Frays Over Mulcair's Candidacy For Party Leader - by Carl Bronski
http://wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/cndp-m23.shtml
"...There is no doubt that Mulcair seeks to move the NDP further to the right. But the trajectory he is following is that uniformly pursued by social democratic parties around the world and which was championed by none other than the party's 'sainted' late leader Jack Layton..."
Good thing my irony meter was already broken, otherwise the thought of someone chastizing all of us for not being left enough using Greg Weston would have shattered it.
The NDP Leadership Convention: Expectations and Reality - by Don Currie
http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=651#_ftnl
"..Within the narrow boundaries of social reformist class-collaborationist politics, the just concluded NDP Convention upheld the view that image trumps substance. Using that measure to determine the outcome of the leadership convention, the NDP has moved to the right...To be popular, the NDP establishment wanted that outcome. That makes the task of labour, peace and democratic activists more difficult. There is a discernible movement among voters for a change in capitalist Parliamentary politics that will not be denied and may not go to the NDP if it continues to move right.."
Time for a "hostile takeover" of the Green Party?
I guess the endorsement of the largest private sector union in the country (that's the UFCWs folks) didn't register on any of these insta-pundits.
I'm more happy that I voted for Mulcair than I was when I cast my vote. He was awesome in the Mansbridge interview, and quite good tonight against Evan Solomon on P&P. If he and the caucus can keep this up for the next three years, I think the NDP will have a good shot at finally forming the next government.
But Mulcair quit the Liberals and rejected the Conservative government's request for him to lend credibility to their anti-Kyoto, anti-environmental agenda. And instead of providing us with the obvious reasons why the environmentally responsible Mulcair rejected those two parties is because of their actual records in government for polluting the environment and betraying voters with their promises to do otherwise. That is the most obvious explanation which Bronski neglects to mention.
Why would Mulcair reject a top job in government and political limelight if he just another conservabral?
Mulcair did not consider the federal Liberals is that they were the ones who sold the environment to Exxon-Imperial and fossil fuel industry and not the NDP. Bronski makes no mention of that fact, either.
If the NDP are just like the two old line parties in federal government, then Bronski should be able to point us to a federal record of NDP government to examine. He can't. He can't because it doesn't exist the same as his equating the federal NDP with those parties that have actual historical records in government for every Canadian to examine. That's not bs, it's the truth.
The same link is being posted here and in the Thomas Mulcair for Prime Minister.. Perhaps we can combine both threads into a "Mulcair Discussion" thread and no one will feel overly complicit by contributing to an unpleasantly-named thread ;)
Sounds like some people are just happier losing. Then they never have to take responsibility for anything.
On P&P just now: "FEAR THE BEARD!"
Why did Mulcair never consider joing the Green Party, or the natural law party?
And why on earth did Mulcair reject top government jobs with the Conservabrals if he's just another Bay Street stooge?
He was just lusting after power and planned to take a road less(as in never before) traveled to federal power with the NDP all along? Is that why?
Judy Rebick's take.
Oh, here's the same article, on rabble.
I will judge Mulcair's NDP after their first term in federal government and not a minute sooner.
Because right now Ottawa is about as far to the political right as its ever been. We have no government, really. They are just colonial administrators and tax collectors for the corporatocracy.
And these Reform Party retreads tend to rubberstamp U.S. takeovers of our economy same as the Liberals and Tories before them.
The truth is that Ottawa swung so far to the right since 1975 that they've met themselves on the way back. We actually could not swing much further to the political right in Canada without eliminating socialized medicine altogether and moving to a U.S.-style system of free market health care where only those with lives worth living can afford to see a doctor.
If the NDP can save socialized medicine and rollback the rollbacks to 1990s levels, then Canada might be as far to the political right as we were by 1991.
It took decades to push Canada this far to the right, so what's the hurry on the return trip? Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will social democracy or democracy in general be achieved in Canada over one single four-year term in power. It's time to be realistic imo.
While we are all suspending judgement for the next seven years, does that mean we need to talk, campaign and rule right (center) so we can maybe have a shot at implementing something from a social democratic agenda AFTER a first term in government? Wouldn't it have been easier to just vote for the Liberal party?
It's frightening the way the rank and file is falling all over ourselves to jettison long-held principles so as to be deemed worthy of the big chair. What about vigilantly holding the party leadership to a social democratic agenda? Not on any more?
I have no idea what you meant by that.
By gum I just hope and pray we don't shift any further to the political right in Ottawa. Let's never allow that to happen.
Because any further to the right will mean that we've been pushed over a cliff compared to about 15 other OECD capitalist countries further to the left than Canada.
Before we can climb into the gutter, we first have to climb out of the sewer. Maybe the gutter is where we ought to be.
Were you about to quote Oscar Wilde there, Fidel?
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars".
I'm surprised it took so long for this thread to get going - you're slacking!
This crap is straight out of the Liberal's playbook.
No wonder so many progressives drift away from here but quite understandable with nonsensical threads like this. Too bad!
Nothing so literary. And perhaps that quote was borrowed for the sake of a Hollywood movie.
Gene Hackman in a scene from Mississippi Burning when he and Dafoe are standing in a field in the pouring rain discussing tactics.
I think sometimes agents of change along the road to overall change are not so memorable but still necessary in the greater scheme of things. I think it's always been a game of inches and small victories. A good football analogy might come in handy. Bronko Nagurski perhaps. Bears v Cardinals final game 1935?
Wrong thread.
I was expecting satire.
Well, maybe it is.
Dobbin doing self parody?
-Re-open NAFTA
-Progressive tax system
-Proportional representation
Two down, one to go.
*Layton's position on NAFTA detailed here by poster theArchitect: http://rabble.ca/comment/1327264
I really don't want to bash Mulcair before he's had a chance to show and prove, he deserves every chance. I'm just appalled at rank and filers on here suddenly cool with the NDP being cool with NAFTA.
Could you wait to see how Mulcair performs before claiming he's a "right-wing bully"? And stop giving credibility to Liberal and Conservative pundits who are eager to claim that the NDP is breaking up because they hope that by saying it often enough, it will become true. This is their game, divide and conquer, they want to split us up.
Please don't give in to the stereotype that New Democrats just want a protest party, that the last thing they want is to govern. If you want to change things, to really change things, you need power. You don't get to change the world by always sitting outside the room where decisions are made. If the principled refuse power, only those without principle will have power.