Heels Part 3

Malcolm wrote:

* @Kloch or whoever - I have never doubted that the posters were real.  I just don't think they're very good or likely to be very effective.  That has nothing to do with over the top delusions that they are unarguably sexist.  (I can see the argument that they are.  I don't see that it is an indisputable point.)  It also has nothing to do with them representing an intent to "run from the right."  Frankly, it appears that unless a poster says "nationalize the commanding heights of the economy," the NDP haters on this board will revert to that tires old meme.

 

Malcolm (or whoever), what you and, I would argue, most of the defenders of these ads seems to be ignoring, is that the NDP does not have any public policies on anything.  Go to their website, I dare you to find it.  There are a bunch of angry statements denouncing whatever it is the Liberals have done wrong, but no specific policies, as voted on by the party.  The Liberals have them on their website, but we don't have any.  Unless my memory fails me, we haven't had any formal policies on how we would act if we were the government in a public domain for the better part of a decade.

What that means is that our election platform will consist largely of whatever messaging comes out of the NDP office at Queens Park and Provincial Office.  If the posters are indicative of what will be coming our way during the election campaign, we are going to get destroyed for reasons that Cueball has already articulated quite nicely and need to further explanation.  To say nothing of the fact that balancing the budget during a recession is actually really stupid economics.

And yes, for the 1,435,5644,657,345 time, I know that Tommy Douglas balanced budgets.  That's not why he was elected.  He was elected as part of a broader social movement to change the workings of the political economy of Saskatchewan.  The NDP in Ontario is not a part of any such movement. They are not the parliamentary arm of any working class political constituency.

Their identity, such as it is, is summed up in their posters.

Firstly, as I stipulated earlier, obsessing over balanced budgets in a economic downtown is not fiscal prudence.  It is a recipe for prolonging suffering, as a cursory study of history will reveal.  

Incidentally, how is the NDP going to balance the budget in the recession?  Are they going to find "inefficiencies", a la Rob Ford?  Privatization?  Outsourcing?  If you're spending more than you're making, your money has to come from somewhere.  I suppose they could raise taxes... but wait, didn't the poster say "More Clip and Save, than Tax and Spend"?

And so, we're right back where we started, doing what the NDP has been doing for the last 10 or so years: trying to find the magical, perfect sound byte that will somehow neutralize the mainstream media and lead us to electoral victory.  Except there isn't one.  If a person wants to get progressive policies enacted, it takes hard work, organizing and an understanding that changing the political discourse is more important than getting elected.  

Hear! hear!

Flush those lazy bastards out of the back rooms, and put them to work on the streets.

Ah yes. Working the streets hard like the brothers who spend 18 hours a day on rabble.

When was the last time you cats knocked on a door?

Please don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.

Sunday Hat wrote:

Ah yes. Working the streets hard like the brothers who spend 18 hours a day on rabble.

When was the last time you cats knocked on a door?

Please don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.

You know what? you're not allowed to attack people here just because you don't like their ideas. You're supposed to counter with your own ideas and experience. And if you or anyone really doesn't like babble, , which you called [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/central-canada/ondp-can-balance-budget-heels#com..."ridiculous discussion boards like this one"[/url], no one is forcing you to post here (unless it's a school assignment or something...).

Sunday Hat wrote:

Ah yes. Working the streets hard like the brothers who spend 18 hours a day on rabble.

When was the last time you cats knocked on a door?

Please don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.

Well I will answer it "cat".

It started 23 years ago when I was 17.

I knocked on doors in the 1988 federal election to oppose strategic voting.

Then in 1990 I was a paid organizer for the NDP and I worked in Parkdale when Bob Rae got elected.

In 1993 I was a paid organizer for David Miller when he ran.

In 1994 I worked on his campaign when he got elected.

In 1995 I was a paid organizer for the party in Parkdale.

In 1996 I worked on the Miller campaign in York South.

In 1997 I knocked on doors for Mel Watkins & others.

In 2000 I was a paid organizer for Ali Mallah while being a candidate in Scarborough.

In 2003 I was a candidate in Scarborough.

From 2003-2010 I canvassed for every candidate in Etobicoke Lakeshore and, at some points, was on the exec.

In 2010 I ran as a socialist in Etobicoke municipally.

From 1988-2005 I was on the exec of an NDP association somewhere without break, Sometimes two at a time. I donated thousands of dollars to the party and knocked on litterally thousands and thousands of doors.

And I think these posters are AWFUL.

So just who are you "cat"?

Reminds me of an old Steven Wright joke: Have you ever asked a rhetorical question and gotten an answer?

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Always. Be. Closing.

For Sale. Baby shoes. Never used.

I can photshp that... wait.

Humor is reason gone mad.

Oh - and if Michael Laxer is still here - Happy Birthday!

Thanks Unionist!

It has been a hell of a day! (or yesterday at this point I guess) Cupcakes at school for my darling 6 year old daughter who shares my birthday (talk about the ultimate BDay gift), and a good amount of Jim Beam for me!

And some fun politics.

All the best!

Malcolm wrote:

Nice to see Kloch at least making a distinction about "in an economic downturn."  Economic downturns can be one of the occasions that justify temporary deficit financing.  That doesn't make concern about balancing the budget "right wing," as much as the simplistic argument being presented here would wish.

Your point would be valid if there were anything on them other than right-wing talking points.  That is the problem.  How is she going to balance the budget?  Privatization, outsourcing, mass-layoffs?  We know she isn't going to do it by raising taxes, because she doesn't believe in tax and spend.

These ads are incredibly silly and the fact that someone produced them without considering these fairly elementary facts suggests to me, if nothing else, a complete lack of understanding of both economics and marketing (may as well throw in elementary school arithmetic for that matter). 

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

So this fantasy that they symbolize anything is pure and simple wrong. 

But of course, reality and actual factual accounts have no place on babble.

A fun thread if there ever was one.  We've gone from questioning whether the posters ever existed, to them being just a one-off joke.  Either way, the party is covered if we never see them again.  Nicely done.

Kloch, thanks for proving my point.  In complete good faith- as one of the only babblers to actually, you know, see the posters in situ- I posted about my actual experiences.  I am not the only one who saw them as mocking and funny.  Not by a long shot.  I don't and can't speak for other babblers.  Your attempt to link them  and me in a thread I didn't post in is rhetorically childish, but typical based on my 6 years on babble. 

I provided my best guess as to what they were.  I have no idea beyond my experience to guide me.  As I said I don't know I am guessing. I am not an insider so all I can do is guess.  Just like you are.  However, based on actually being there and having been through past campaign material roll outs- it was clear that these posters were not of that sort.

I don't know how many times I have to say that they were not the centre of anything at Council.  Not a new strategy, not party messaging, nothing.  They were never, ever mentioned, which if they were part of anything they would be.  Always, always, always this is the case.  

Instead what there was 4 lonely little posters sitting on easel thingies.  That's it. 

Trying to make anything of them beyond, especially the ridiculous lenghts some are going to on that end, is pure fantasy.

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

Thanks for proving my point.  In complete good faith- as one of the only babblers to actually, you know, see the posters in situ- I posted about my actual experiences.  I am not the only one who saw them as mocking and funny.

Nobody here is taking the position that those not offended by the posters really were offended and are lying to us. What we have done is put forward the view that a significant portion of our base would be offended by them. I get that some people found them funny and lighthearted; what I don't get is how some people having that experience is supposed to invalidate the experiences and interpretations of others.

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Not by a long shot.  I don't and can't speak for other babblers.  Your attempt to link them  and me in a thread I didn't post in is rhetorically childish, but typical based on my 6 years on babble.

I literally have no idea what you are talking about here. To whom am I linking you? You chose to stand behind remind's insulting treatment of me and throw in some of your own; this is consistent with your behaviour in every other thread in which the three of us interact. How is my observation that this is what you are doing "childish"?

Quote:

I provided my best guess as to what they were.

And I disagreed with (a) your guess and (b) the idea that any one interpretation of the posters can invalidate how they are seen by others. What the posters are inheres in the subjective experience of their viewers not in the intentions behind their creators. As I said upthread, I am convinced that the posters were an honest mistake by Horwath's cadre who are individuals I firmly believe are feminists.

But I think this new narrative that the posters were never intended for public consumption at all strains credulity. You don't put up posters in your head office and in the public halls of your provincial council meeting if they're some kind of in-joke. These are places frequented by media and interested members of the public. I might disagree with the current leadership crew but even I wouldn't suggest that they were such amateurs that they were prominently displaying materials to the media that they had actually produced as an inside joke.

Quote:

I don't know how many times I have to say that they were not the centre of anything at Council.

And I don't know how many times those disagreeing with you have said, "we never said they were; stop putting words in our mouths." This is the kind of strawman argumentation that makes me wonder why I even respond to you.

Quote:

Instead what there was 4 lonely little posters sitting on easel thingies.  That's it.

It's nice to know that the party has the time and resources to invest in producing glossy, expensive, enormous promotional materials each with a print run of 1.

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

Cueball wrote:

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

I take it no one bothered to read what actually happened at provincal council and the tiny, teeny role these posters actually played.

I thought not.

Ok. So what happened?

In the previous thread I posted at length the role these posters played in the provicial council meeting, which amounted to a big pretty much nothing.

Having been around even longer than Michael Laxer, but I guess I am not so preening trying to rationalize my connections, it is my experience that if these 4 lonely little posters were anything of import- say like the messaging for an election, or even pre-writ period- they would have been up on the screens, in boxes for us to take home to our riding, cover all available wall space and so on.  Instead as I said there were 4 posters in total mocking some of the mainstream views of the NDP.  There was a 5th in another location, but I don't recall it having type on it, but I didn't look at it closely.

When you worked on the Pantelone campaign I will be amazed if you never ran into those sorts of comments.  I have for the entire 32 years since I worked on my first NDP campaign.  If you actually talked to voters (and I only say that because I am not sure what you did on the campaign) at their doorstep these sorts of comments had to come up.  If they didn't than chalk it up to the difference between municipal and other levels of government.  Because in those other two levels those sorts of things come up hourly or better in canvassing.

[/quote]

I think it is a bit disingenuous to intimate that Laxer is "preening" when his statement about his past efforts to help the NDP were in the context of being challenged on his willingness to put his money were his mouth is.

In point of fact, my comments are largely drawn from experiences I had on the Pantalone campaign. One thing that astonished me is that many Canadians, in particular immigrant Canadians I met had no idea that the NDP was on the left of anything. It seems to me that "Left' messaging has become so buried in attempts to look to be part of the mainstream and uncontroversial center, that many people are hardly to be blamed for not being able to locate the NDP program.

Simply saying that Pantalone was on "the left" drew in many people I met who were not from mainstream anglo society.

Kloch please be factual.  They were not ads.  They were a grand total of 4 posters.  They do not symbolize anything other than a willingness on the part of the same people over and over on babble to attack the NDP at any opportunity at ever growing ridiculous lengths.

Cueball wrote:

I think it is a bit disingenuous to intimate that Laxer is "preening" when his statement about his past efforts to help the NDP were in the context of being challenged on his willingness to put his money were his mouth is.

In point of fact, my comments are largely drawn from experiences I had on the Pantalone campaign. One thing that astonished me is that many Canadians, in particular immigrant Canadians I met had no idea that the NDP was on the left of anything. It seems to me that "Left' messaging has become so buried in attempts to look to be part of the mainstream and uncontroversial center, that many people are hardly to be blamed for not being able to locate the NDP program.

Simply saying that Pantalone was on "the left" drew in many people I met who were not from mainstream anglo society.

I was refering to the comments he made about being friends with all of caucus and half the executive- which had nothing to do with anything in the context of the post. 

So based on one municpal campaign in Toronto you are able to draw conclusions about how the NDP is viewed in the entire province in the context of provincial politics.  That's a good trick.  I'm impressed.

I do take your point though that the NDP has a huge job ahead of it building identity and support amongst new Canadians.  Frankly that is true of all parties, unions, social activist groups and so on.  I think we would agree on that wouldn't we?