ONDP: Can Balance a Budget in Heels! Part 2

We are supposed to believe that some phony majority of Ontarians are ready to elect a socialist government if only the ONDP would promise socialism in one province. And this is possible under the federal neoliberalorama implemented by the Liberals, Tories same old stories in Ottawa.

But these same people neglect to mention that Ontarians have voted mostly conservative for the last seven decades here in Canada's largest province. It's why we're in such an economic mess today.

But again, these people say Ontarians are ready for Swedish style social democracy in Ontario. Never mind that Swedish style social democracy took several decades to achieve and at federal levels throughout the Nordic countries. These people want the ONDP to promise to fix in four years what took the two old line parties a number of decades to screw up as badly as things are today.

And so I have no alternative but to conclude that these people don't really want democratic socialists in power in Toronto. They want sweet baby Jesus and miracles, and they're not going to settle for anything less.

Cueball wrote:

Fidel wrote:

But these same people neglect to mention that Ontarians have voted mostly conservative for the last seven decades here in Canada's largest province. It's why we're in such an economic mess today.

So you agree. The messaging is conservative. They don't really have any option but to vote conservative.

The phony majority of voters doing the choosing in Ontario are conservative and have been dabbling in Liberals federally and back and forth, flip-flop as if they believe there are significant differences. There aren't any. Or at least, not since Harris and McGuinty. The Liberals in Ontario used to be to the right of the Tories and ready to sell off bits of Ontario to rich Canadians and Americans for a long time.

It was always CCF policy to balance budgets. Once again, it was always CCF policy to balance budgets, and that was in a time when people in Saskatchewan were essentially living in third world conditions after the Liberals were finished. Liberals then were a lot like conservatives in every province except they were even less honest and more ready to pawn off the family jewels and silverware to the highest bidders at the drop of a hat. And this was especially true of the Liberals in Ontario for the longest time. Political conservatives in Ontario were traditionally for publicly owned utilities before Mike Harris neoliberal sideshow. The ONDP has always stood for publicly owned and run utilities and large public sector economy.

And now that deregulation is proving to be a giant ideological flop throughout most US states and Ontario, the two oldest parties don't really know what to do about failed deregulation policies since Harris only that both parties want to pawn off the common good even moreso to their rich friends.

If you agree with deregulation and privatization of the common good, then you should vote either Liberal or Tory same effect. The ONDP is for publicly owned utilities and actually reversing deregulation(the neoliberalorama that hasn't worked anywhere in the world where tried).

But if you want socialism in Canada, then vote NDP federally. You might not receive instant gratification inside of one four-year term though. Canadians have to learn to be realistic and eventually realize just how wrong the new liberal capitalism really is and how much damage it's done to everything from Canada's economic sovereignty to the environment and basic workers rights. It would actually take some time and effort to undo the current setup and create a real country.

Mod hat on.

Thread drift.

For the record, from the other thread:

Fidel: "mooj" is a racist term. DO NOT use it on babble or you will be suspended. And stop trying to derail this thread, as posts 3 and 5 seem to be doing.

Life, the Universe: while you can say whatever you like about what your feminist daughter and feminist wife told you, the discussion babblers are having is that the poster is sexist, and some don't agree. I suggest that you stick with your thoughts and opinions and not bring in those of people who aren't posting here. That said, calling Cueball an asshat is a personal attack and it's not okay. As you know.

Cueball, you managed to stay within babble policy with the "some of my best friends" poke, but you know that your comment was deliberately needling. If you could cease and desist that kind of tactic that would be marvelous.

End thread drift.

i'm going to send a note to the editors and business people. This is too much. Now I am hassled by a different moderator in every thread I post in and threatened with banning.

Maysie, the mujahideen "holy warriors" are there in Karzai's government today and are crooks and war criminals and misogynists in the extreme. You are no friend of the women of RAWA representing millions of the oppressed people of Afghanistan, that's for sure.

Cueball wrote:

Thank you for clarifying the issue of "muj" or "mooj."

Why don't you fly over there to Kabul and kiss all of the "mujahideens'" asses for them. Karzai's and his dope dealing brother, Wali, too.

Warning: crass opportunism ahead.

Good time for a new thread on Canadian politics and the Afghanistan mission extension.

KenS wrote:

Warning: crass opportunism ahead.

Good time for a new thread on Canadian politics and the Afghanistan mission extension.

Heh. And I was just warned about "digs". But ok Ken, I guess its your position that NDP messaging is irrelevant. I agree.

And besides my quip being unkind, its also unfair.

While Fidel is prone to going right over the top in his choice of words... the discussion ending exchanges that go on for dozens of posts invlove one or two other people... who while staying within the rules better than Fidel, are anything but innocent.

More passive aggressive nastiness from you I see. On what basis do you claim to judge others innocence or guilt when you are overtly trolling and baiting right here, and right now? Fundamentally, all of your contributions to this thread amount to getting people who you don't like to shut up. What is worse your attempt at censorship has no obvious relationship to anything to do with the subject of this thread, except in as much as you want to bait and abuse people who don't share your love for the NDP, and that is about it.

I'm not trying to get people to shut up Cueball.

My original staement was exactly what it said. Crass oportunism: if Fidel is gone for 24 hours, that means that the idiotic exchanges he is at the centre of are gone, and maybe we can return to having a sensible discussion about politics and the Afghanistan mission.

I had reservations about the de facto sideswipe at Fidel in particular. But when you leapt in Cueball, I had to dissasociate myself.

I shouldnt have gone there in the first place. It was an expression of frustration at the derailing of discussions. Fidel just happens to be the worst actor in the gong show.

Sunday Hat wrote:

I think Stuart lecturing a party with a female leader, female Provincial Secretary and female President on good gender politics is pretty funny.

I would like to address this issue not only because this sniping is directed at me but because I think it reflects the general (low) quality of the "we can't possibly be sexists," discourse in this thread. Sexism inheres in the actions and words generated by an organization, not in the bodies of its members and leaders.

In my posts, I unfavourably compared the references to coupon-clipping and high heels to the rhetoric of the Mama Grizzlies of the Republican Party led by Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. In my view, Bachman and Palin actually offer a rhetoric that is less explicitly sexist than do Horwath and her crew in these posters. While the language of the NDP posters evokes 1950s images of female domesticity and the Ginger Rogers feminism of the age, Bachman actually conveys more of a "women can do anything" image when she gets out her assault rifle on the campaign trail.

Now, of course, people would quite reasonably respond that just because SarahPAC and the Congressional Tea Party caucus are female-headed, they are not immune to criticism for doing unfeminist things. So if I can criticize the Palinistas for their record on women's issues, I am well within my rights to criticize Horwath's team or even to compare their rhetoric of female empowerment to that of the Mama Grizzlies' and find it wanting.

Good feminist people can make mistakes and say sexist things; good socialist people can make mistakes and say capitalist things; good anti-racist people can make mistakes and say racist things. I don't see why people can't admit that this might be such a situation.

Now, onto the balanced budget front, I decided to look up the Regina Manifesto last night to remind myself of just how anti-public borrowing the original CCF was. I recommend that others similarly refresh their memories here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Regina_manifesto . I am especially taken with the statement that

Regina Manifesto wrote:

An inevitable effect of the capitalist system is the debt creating character of public financing. All public debts have enormously increased, and the fixed interest charges paid thereon now amount to the largest single item of so-called uncontrollable public expenditures. The CCF proposes that in future no public financing shall be permitted which facilitates the perpetuation of the parasitic interest-receiving class

Financing that can be controlled by capitalist bond-rating agencies and banks gives international capitalists power over governments and can lead to such horrors as structural adjustment programs. Only a truly independent government can enact socialist policies, especially in today's world. Borrowing to finance social policy is a liberal tradition; when groups like the CCPA encourage us to adopt this approach, they help to transform our movement into "liberals in a hurry."

So I have zero problem not just with the NDP running on budget balancing but doing so as a major issue. I think that's a step forward that doesn't just burnish our credentials on fiscal issues but gives us a solid metaphor for discussing ecological sustainability and other issues to which the "deficit" metaphor is applicable. The Saskatchewan NDP has been able to retain public confidence in ways the Ontario NDP has not not only because of its budget-balancing record but of the sustainability of its programs, which is rooted in fiscal balance.

As for the people making the "it's just a poster, not party policy" comment, well, what is party policy?  As far as I know, we actually don't have any.  We have a resolution booklet that you have to ask provincial office for that contains resolutions that go back years, and, for the most part, are ignored.  The party's election platforms, so far as I can tell, are a bunch of small talking points developed by people at Queens's Park and Provincial office that may or may not have anything to do with said resolutions.  In that context, the issue of whether or not the posters reflect some kind of ideological shift is entirely meaningful.

Beyond that, I love the comments about how the great unwashed are simply not sophisticated to understand the machinations of political campaigning, where you need to use messaging to cover your flank.  Fine, so you get elected (I know, I know, bear with me) on a platform of "business is not a 4 letter word", and then you expect to turn around and get rid of scab labour laws, and the people who voted for you aren't going to notice?  This is the NDP strategy: appeal to the people who are ideologically opposed to you because they think you have shifted to the right, and then hope they don't notice when you govern from the left.  Sorry, but that is as cynical and naive as it is stupid.  But yeah, I'm the one who doesn't understand political campaigning...

If they copied Ford's messaging, that would be awesome: belligerent rage against elites is something I would totally canvass for. But they won't because they'll be trying for "Ford's messaging but polite," which kind of misses the point of the whole thing.

Belligerent rage against "elites' is what has driven left-wing soclial movements in to power, in almost all cases. That said there is one lesson from this, it is that left wingers should never try and capture right wing ideological ground, if only because they suck at it.

Stockholm wrote:

It was his messaging that got him elected (among other things). We try to learn lessons from successful campaigns and learn what not to do from unsuccessful campaigns. I suggest the NDP not use the messaging of the Communist Party since it has abviously been a total failure in Canada.

Absolutely. Ford's deportment was outraged, unapologetic and anti-elite. I think that the problem, for New Democrats, is that we tend to emphasize content over tone and structure when we seek to learn from messaging strategies. Ford succeeded because he was fundamentally not sorry about anything and outraged at perceived elites; we would be mistaken to get hung up on the specific things he was unapologetic and outraged about.

What we need to learn from Ford is how to talk not what to say.

Stockholm wrote:

Cueball wrote:

There problem is that they think it was Ford's "messaging" that got him elected.

 

It was his messaging that got him elected (among other things). We try to learn lessons from successful campaigns and learn what not to do from unsuccessful campaigns. I suggest the NDP not use the messaging of the Communist Party since it has abviously been a total failure in Canada.

It worked for Ford. He was alone among the candidates to use the phrase "working class", and his primary policy target was a regressive user fee, the vehicle registration tax that had been been downloaded onto the average taxpayer in order to create a revenue stream to compensate for the loss of corporate tax revenue.

Whether you like it or not - the media coverage of an election campaign tends to be about 95% leader driven - so either try to build up the image of your leader - or die.

Stockholm wrote:

Whether you like it or not - the media coverage of an election campaign tends to be about 95% leader driven - so either try to build up the image of your leader - or die.

95%, eh?   How many significant digits of accuracy is that?  Are you sure it's not 100%, or 84%?

Of course, if you build a party around the image of a leader, and the leader gets discredited somehow in the media, then your party tanks, and you die anyway.  That's the problem with trying to distill left-wing political analysis down to a soundbyte.  As the number of words tends to 0, all political slogans start to sound the same.

Ford was mad at percieved elites but I think it would be a mistake to say that he didn't offer any quarter or temper his beliefs. He never said, "I hate cyclists". He said "I love cyclists I just don't want them on roads. I'll build them bike paths far away from roads". This wasn't an attempt to appeal to the cyclist vote. It was an attempt to nullify their biggest argument against him so he could focus on other issues.

In the same way, I think it's smart for Andrea to say, "I don't hate business  - but I do think it's irresponsible to drmatically slash corporate taxes when the government has a revenue problem" Again, an attempt to nullify the biggest argument that will be used against you.

I don't think anyone's planning to make it a KEY message - just A message.

And Kloch, I get the point about Morales not running on "balanced budgets" but my point wasn't that it was a key commitment. It was that it was A commitment - and that avoiding debt is not a right-wing position (If the NDP runs on balancing budgets this fiscal year I don't think anyone will vote for them)

Sunday Hat wrote:

Ford was mad at percieved elites but I think it would be a mistake to say that he didn't offer any quarter or temper his beliefs. He never said, "I hate cyclists". He said "I love cyclists I just don't want them on roads. I'll build them bike paths far away from roads". This wasn't an attempt to appeal to the cyclist vote. It was an attempt to nullify their biggest argument against him so he could focus on other issues.

Who accused Andrea of hating "business". Care to find a quote? Doubt you will find one. On the other hand, many people accused Ford of many things, from hating cyclists, to wanting to remove all the streetcars in Toronto. And yes, Ford RESPONDED to those charges.He did not charge into the media scrum to say: "I don't hate cyclists".

He charged in there with his message: "Stop the gravy train". He used every single moment of air time to present his message.

The worst aspect of these ads is that break a cardinal rule of sales, by answering objections before they are made -- in so doing they act as a media campaign that draws attention to the objection while trying to nulify it.

As if Ford Motors tried to sell Pintos with an ad that said: "These cars don't blow up!"

These are garbage. Get rid of them. Try again.

Sunday Hat wrote:

And Kloch, I get the point about Morales not running on "balanced budgets" but my point wasn't that it was a key commitment. It was that it was A commitment - and that avoiding debt is not a right-wing position (If the NDP runs on balancing budgets this fiscal year I don't think anyone will vote for them)

 

Well, I've got bad news for you, but most of Canada is in debt in some way. Personal debt is very high.  Even if you are not one of the Canadians that is a few paychecks away from having to "Clip and Save" as Andrea put it, you probably are in debt in some way.  If you own a house, or a car, you have some form of debt.  Debt is an integral part of the current economy so, in the first place, campaigning against public debt is actually kind of stupid.  The more relavent discussions are around who is the debtor, who is the creditor, and what is that debt being used for?  In most of the world, governments are in debt because they are bailing out the private sector due to a crisis that they created for themselves.  In this example, we see the government, which never seems to have enough money for schools, healthcare or social services, suddenly spending like drunken sailors to help people that nearly blew up the entire international financial system through their own greed.

This is the context in which the NDP introduces it's "balance the budget in high heels" schtick. Instead of campaigns around the reponsible use of public funds, she just says "I'll balance the budget" - full stop.  Instead of attacking right-wing sentiment, it panders to it.

You want me to explain how using right-wing talking points is pandering to the right?

remind wrote:

A good defense is a good offense Cue.

Aphorisms don't necessarily retain their truth if you reverse the order of the nouns in them.

Thanks for that very moving and eloquent account, remind.

I don't agree with you about the Horwath posters (especially the defensive pandering about business, fiscal "responsibility" and the environment). And themes about women that were acceptable 65 years ago may seem wrong today - for instance, we wouldn't want the leader to call herself "Mrs. John Doe" and talk about her special duty to cook the family meals. But my respect for your POV has just gone up.