Tom Mulcair will be Prime Minister #3

While you're among them, whoever you might be talking about, maybe you could try listening to what they have to say and why they respond to these media messages in the first place. The fact is that people in general, including you and I, make decisions for emotional reasons much moreso than logical ones. You might think you've got the greatest argument ever written and no rational mind could deny it, but you'd be ignoring the fact that humans don't really have rational minds. We have very complicated minds that are capable of rational thoughts. If what you're saying doesn't have some resonance on a deeper level than the rational, you might as well be talking another language.

So I think that's an element you're missing in your formulations of "show the masses how wrong they are". Knowledge is just a tool you give someone to get them where they're going, but the will to get there comes entirely from the person, and without it no amount of knowledge will help. Canadians aren't lacking left-wing polemics. Anyone who wants to find such stuff will have no trouble doing so. What they're lacking is the spirit to stand up and be counted, the courage to resist government and corporate tyranny, and the belief that their efforts can make an impact. It seems to me that you want to browbeat people when you should be seeking to inspire them, and you won't do that by talking down to them.

I know you are directing this at Gaian, and probably rightly so, but for goddess sakes do you not see this equally applies to a wide cross section of babblers?  I read post after post from self-proclaimed defenders of the working class on this site yet they don't have a clue how the average person thinks, what their priorities are and how even to speak to them in ways that matter to the average person.  Look at the way they talk about rural people, if it even occurs to them that there might be rural people, an issue that has been brought up by a number of rural babblers -most of whom seem to have all given up and left.   Read about a bazillion posts in the NDP leadership threads for examples of people who don't know how to talk to the average non-politically obsessed.  So I guess I wonder why one is condescending while many others are swell.  It makes no logical sense.  

On the Huff Po, Part 2 "Trudeau not ruling out eventual run for leader". Couldn't the Huff Po at least pretend that aren't a Lib propaganda tool even a little bit?

Actually I believe it was the NDP who approached them and wanted them to moderate to make the debate more entertaining and to increase ratings etc...I actually thought both Dumont and yaffe were very fair moderators, though the guy in Halifax did the best job of challenging people when they were being evasive.

As opposed to this?

Humm...........while I may agree with some, I certainly don't agree with all of this

The NDP and me

http://www.theargus.ca/articles/opinion/op-ed/2012/04/the-ndp-and-me

read this in the link to the article above - the road to govt for the NDP via the vaniety article

Ahead of the convention, Nova Scotia premier Darrell Dexter published an op-ed in the Globe and Mail touting his government’s many economic achievements. Indeed, Dexter’s government is one of the few in Canada to be running a budgetary surplus. New Democratic governments, past and present, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan have also enjoyed many successes. As the New Democrats look towards the 2015 election, they should aggressively recruit current and former cabinet ministers from these governments to run.

But but aren't those old outdated ND govts who were unprogressive NDP govts, especially in Sask., just can't understand why now we would trot them out as something to emulate - thought they were old, outdated and not modern, and anybody who would have been even remotely associated with them - why they are part of the old guard. Hmm, just a couple of weeks ago, that all I heard on these boards during the leadership race that those govts and those people/leaders associated with such needed to be discarded, and really they were not progressive. The negative association was constantly linked here by some posters, and now, why it's a different story - interesting that.

This is probably why the Topp campaign didn't stand a realistic chance of winning.

http://www.punditsguide.ca/2012/04/cullen-narrowly-won-convention-but-mu...

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I apologize but I don't understand what you are trying to say here at all.  First off Dexter has only been in since 2009.  What exactly are you attempting to criticize here and who are you accusing as saying that the NDP governments in Manitoba and elsewhere should not be emulated.  Is ANYONE saying that?

Ditto with mtm Jan, I didnt understand what you were saying about Dexter, etc.

‘Dumbed-down nature of the conversation’ forces NDP MP off Twitter

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/dumbed-down...

I agree with Angus about Twitter.  I've never been able to get into it.  I don't really get how people can have real conversations in nothing but 140 character soundbites.  It's okay for following real-time events as they're happening with people reporting from them in quick bursts, but I don't find it a very friendly medium for political discussion.