NDP Leadership 19

Malcolm wrote:

This destructive meme is just a small handful of gullible babblers who fail to grasp that the corporate media are not our friends.

I don't think that's fair.

I'm now dotty and giving in to the corporate media for asking my question?

I pointed out this same concern way back in late August, long before the "corporate media" seized on to it. The issue has been raised by numerous Babblers. I am scarcely the only one to recognize the perils the party may face as a result of this problem. I think it is extremely important for the matter to be addressed.

I have no doubt that if the leadership candidates asked Federal Council to change the rules they would do so. If this ship has in fact sailed it may be heading straight for the rocks.

So where do you stand on this Brian?

Malcolm wrote:

While it is possible I am wrong, what I've seen over the past week is a constant refrain based on the fatuous assumption that the proportion of the NDP membership from Quebec is unlikey to grow significantly during the course of the leadership race.  Frankly, there are three possible reasons one might have for repeat8ing that refrain: 1. the person is gullible and swallows corporate media memes unexamined, 2. the person is somewhat dotty, 3. the person is actually repeating the media meme in an effort to undermine the party.  Of those three, gullibility is the most charitable thing to assume.

On the other hand, there might be something to it. As Pat Martin remarked about the federal Ag Minister the other day - an ostrich farmer - regarding his nonchalant position on wheat sales and the economic health of farmers without the Board, is he, like his flock, putting his head in the sand?

Anyway, not to grow paranoid about the big media or the gullibility and dottiness of the concerned. Rabble is riding to the rescue and calling for input from the mouths of all the horses in this race. Let's sleep on it until then, keep the labels tucked up securely somewhere out of sight.

Boom Boom wrote:

Just saw on P&P Mulcair speaking on Topp (in French): "Brian Topp hasn't been in Quebec for five years". 

That seals it for me. Mulcair is on the bottom of my list.  A candidate that was born and raised in Quebec doe not pass Mulcair's pure wool test. We have seen the purity test for a leader of a NATIONAL party go from being a fluent French speaker to being a current resident of Quebec who is not FN's. I think what really scares the Mulcair crowd is that other candidates will also have support with new members in Quebec.

I think this meme is bullshit, (that Topp is not really from Quebec and Saganash is FN's so he might say that not only Quebecois have rights to self determination.)   So according to various chicken little's we have to vote for Mulcair or the separatist sky will fall.   This is destructive talk and can destroy the NDP.  Why do some people want to give the separatists a club by starting this crap that anyone but Mulcair will be a slap in the face to Quebec voters. 

Here's the link to what Rosemary Barton was referring to last night on P&P: 

Thomas Mulcair hasn't yet entered the NDP leadership race, but is sounding like a candidate

excerpt:

Thomas Mulcair sounds like a candidate, even though he's yet to officially enter the NDP leadership race.

He's targetted candidate Brian Topp, the party's former president, who wants to be leader.

Mulcair complimented Topp for bringing NDP organizer Raymond Guardia into his camp, but adds Topp had nothing to do with the party's huge gains in Quebec during the last federal election.

Mulcair also says Guardia was one of the architects of the so-called orange crush along with him and the late Jack Layton, but not Topp.

According to Mulcair, Topp wasn't even seen in Quebec during a five year period.

Malcolm wrote:

Sorry Nicky, but this whole "issue" is based on a fatuous assumption.  The Quebec membership is going to grow during the race and actually has the best potential to grow.  While it may not precisely match Quebec's proportion of the population (and there is a chance it may even excede it), the rest of this meme is chicken little bullshit.

If you prefer that I attribute your obsession to malign intend rather than gullibility or dottiness, I am prepared to do so.

I don't think a weighted membership is plausible at this point, or desirable. I do think the party needs to commit resources to a non-candidate related membership drive to match the role provincial sections play in other provinces, especially given that other provinces have a huge head start in that regard.

That being said, while we know that membership will likely grow in all provinces (and there are reasons to believe it could grow faster in Quebec than some others), we simply don't know what the numbers will look like at the end of the day. A huge imbalance may persist.

With that in mind, if one otherwise thinks that a weighted voting system WOULD be a desirable way to avoid Quebec being grossly underrepresented in the event that there are not enough memberships sold in this brief period to adjust for the recent surge in support for the NDP, then why not adopt a weighted system JUST IN CASE this disparity persists?

Is the fact that enough memberships MIGHT be sold to correct this disparity enough, in and of itself, to make this a ridiculous suggestion?

(Keep in mind that if enough memberships are sold to correct for the current imbalance, then the weighting system would become irrelevant anyway.)

Well, I hope that Mulcair doesn't continue mudslinging. People need to realize that these attacks will be quoted and used by the conservatives in attack ads.

Gaian wrote:

Some people are suckers for mainstream Conservative Party plants. What do they think Mulcair might have actually said about Topp's presence/absence - probably in reply to a question that he had to answer? Such babes in the wood, coming through right on Conservative que, driven by pure, unthinking emotion.

You obviously did not read my post in its entirety. This was broadcast on CBC - with emphasis from Rosemary Barton on Mulcair's comment on Brian Topp, along with a warning from her that it's all on tape.

A few things:

 * Everyone at Babble should commit to watching the full videotape, or reading the full transcript of anything a leadership candidate says before jumping to the same conclusions about it that a member of the Ottawa press gallery does. This is because it's in the gallery's *interest* to promote a dog-fight. They are not going to tell you the context of the comment, they are going to call a disagreement "slinging mud" when it's no such thing. They are trying to sow dissension; do not let them. It's relevant that Mulcair made that remark in answering a torqued question. I'm not going to read anything more into it than that, therefore.

 * Nicky, you can ask whatever question you want. Malcolm can have his own issues with it, but mine were different. The party has advice that a change along the lines of what you're advocating is impossible to achieve without a constitutional amendment, and is thus not on before the leadership convention. That's a decision for the membership to take, therefore, not the leadership candidates or the party bureaucrats. My issue was with the tone of your question: asked like a criminal lawyer would pose it. You've already identified as a Mulcair supporter, and it sounds to me as though you're trying to create a wedge on behalf of your candidate, on an issue that no-one can do anything about now anyways. The "please start your answer with a Yes or No" part was kind of insulting, actually.

Boom Boom wrote:

Gaian wrote:

Some people are suckers for mainstream Conservative Party plants. What do they think Mulcair might have actually said about Topp's presence/absence - probably in reply to a question that he had to answer? Such babes in the wood, coming through right on Conservative que, driven by pure, unthinking emotion.

You obviously did not read my post in its entirety. This was broadcast on CBC - with emphasis from Rosemary Barton on Mulcair's comment on Brian Topp, along with a warning from her that it's all on tape.

 

I read the CJAD blurb, Boom Boom. Where's the CBC extract? And somebody has the incriminating evidence all on tape? Jesus.

The day I take political advice from Rosemary Barton (the biggest airhead on public television) is the day you should shoot me and put me out of my misery.

ottawaobserver wrote:

The day I take political advice from Rosemary Barton (the biggest airhead on public television) is the day you should shoot me and put me out of my misery.

Nah, your misery amuses us.

Criticism of or disagreement over a position is not mud-slinging (except in the eye of headline-writers trying to sell newspapers). Slanging someone's personal characteristics without foundation, or accusing them of amorous inclinations towards barnyard animals qualifies as mud-slinging.

Malcolm, you have sent me to my dictionary to understand the slurs you have slung at me - fatuous, malign, etc.
You may not believe it but I want what is best for the political party I have belonged to since my teens when I joined, like Jack Layton did, in reaction to the War Measures Act.
I would like to know the candidates views on the Quebec imbalance because I and many others can see disaster looming. I do not believe that Brian Top has addressed this yet. Don't you think the party, not just me, deserves to know where he stands on this? I don't think we can naively assume that Quebec, a province without a strong organization, can close the membership gap with other provinces which have had the advantage of recent elections and traditional strength.
And Ottawa Obsever, don't you think it would be refreshing if all politicians expanded their political vocabularies to include those simple words yes and no? Maybe you like the obfuscation and avoidance and spewing of talking points but I am tired of them. I have tried not to make personal criticism of Topp but I will say this: he never seems to answer a question directly. From what I see he would profit from saying yes or no every so often.

nicky wrote:

I have tried not to make personal criticism of Topp but I will say this: he never seems to answer a question directly. From what I see he would profit from saying yes or no every so often.

You keep saying this. Can you point out examples where Topp was answering questions only indirectly? I ask this because I haven't paid super-close attention to his interviews since his launch, but he actually made the exact opposite impression on me during that launch. He did on Paul Wells, too, who said the following in Macleans about the launch:

Quote:

He says “um” and “uh” a lot, and he treated tricky questions with due respect, sidling up to them and nudging them for booby traps before answering them.

But he did answer them. He wants Canada to support Palestinian statehood in a UN vote (good luck with that). He wants the Harper Conservatives to abandon deficit reduction if the economy keeps stagnating. He will run for Parliament, win or lose the leadership (an excellent promise, because if he loses nobody will care whether he keeps it). He refuses to drop the notion of a Liberal-NDP coalition, in a future Parliament, if the numbers make more sense than they did in the last Parliament or the current one.

So he has not prematurely adopted the classic front-runner strategy, which would have him pretending to answer touchy questions while refusing to answer them, while hoping nobody notices.

I guess what I'm asking is this: is it that "sidling up to them and nudging them for booby traps" tactic that's making you feel like Topp doesn't answer questions directly, or has he actually started adopting that "classic front-runner strategy" since his launch (and I just haven't been paying close enough attention)?

Yes but theres a difference between using negative ads on the liberals and tories like the NDP did in Manitoba vs negative campaigning against someone in your own party for the sake of advancing one side over the other.

In other words, I don't want factions to start forming in the NDP that will start clawing at each other wherever they go. I can point to many examples

Factions in the Socialist Party of France wrote:

Aubryists (left-wing, Christian left, democratic socialism): Martine Aubry, François Lamy, Sandrine Mazetier, Pierre Mauroy, Paulette Guinchard-Kunstler, Adeline Hazan, Arnaud Montebourg (Renovate Now)
Royalists (moderate, social democracy): Ségolène Royal, Gérard Collomb, Jean-Noël Guérini, Gaëtan Gorce, Jean-Louis Bianco, Julien Dray, Vincent Peillon, Aurélie Filippetti, Hélène Mandroux, Jean-Jack Queyranne, François Rebsamen,
Delanoistes ("right-wing", social democracy, social liberalism): Bertrand Delanoë, François Hollande, Jean-Marc Ayrault, Lionel Jospin, Michel Rocard, Jean-Yves Le Drian, Élisabeth Guigou, Michel Sapin, Alain Rousset, Harlem Désir, Pierre Cohen, Michel Destot, Roland Ries.
Fabiusians (left-wing, democratic socialism): Laurent Fabius, Claude Bartolone, Marylise Lebranchu, Alain Le Vern, Alain Vidalies, Marie-Noëlle Lienemann
Strauss-Kahnists (right-wing, Third Way): Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Gérard Collomb, Pierre Moscovici, Manuel Valls
New Socialist Party (Left-republicanism, democratic socialism): Henri Emmanuelli, Benoît Hamon, Jacques Fleury, Michel Vergnier, André Lejeune, Paul Quilès, Gérard Filoche
Eco-socialists (eco-socialism): Christophe Caresche, Jean-Louis Tourenne, Nicole Bricq, Geneviève Gaillard, Philippe Tourtelier
Utopia (Alterglobalisation)

Well, the point being is that these quotes will be clipped, then they will be put into attack ads. Saying Mulcair can't win outside QC is also mudslinging. The definition of mudslinging is negative campaigning. Perhaps I'm using it to broadly, when I'm comparing people to the optimism and spirit of working together that Jack had. And I remember watching the BC NDP and ONDP debates, and they were quite peaceful if I recall correctly. My standards might be too high, but its better to aim high than aim low. (I edited mah post)

dacckon wrote:

Yes but theres a difference between using negative ads on the liberals and tories like the NDP did in Manitoba vs negative campaigning against someone in your own party for the sake of advancing one side over the other.

In other words, I don't want factions to start forming in the NDP that will start clawing at each other wherever they go.

Candidates are going to go after each other. But New Democrats understand it's a contest among friends and when it's over, they always come together.

I remember Svend Robinson misquoting Lorne Nystrom from a news article in a leadership debate in 1995 (something that Svend couldn't produce of course). Fireworks erupted. You could hear the two going at it outside the room.

As for factions, they already exist to some degree and leadership campaigns don't create them especially if they're based on policy/ideology. We're different than the Liberal Party which create divisions based on pursuit of power.

.

I would certainly raise my hand to AM's proposal. I would point out however that Mulcair himself made such a proposal about a month ago and was castigated for it in certain circles. In particular no other leadership candidate endorsed it, perhaps because they did not think it would help them. And Malcolm, there you go again. I don't need my dictionary to understand "destructive BS " intended to " damage the party" or to be offended by it. You refuse to accept that my concerns are genuine and that I seek to avoid a situation where Quebec's preferred candidate is defeated principally because Quebec does not have a fair say in the leadership. I suspect even you recognize that is a formula for electoral disaster. I have been a party member for 40 years and have worked in almost all elections during that time. I have frequently been a riding association executive and was once president. I have been a Provincial Council delegate and a delegate to maybe 8 NDP conventions. I have always contributed financially, often generously. I resent your tired innuendo that I am some kind of infiltrator intent on undermining the party. I also find your blythe assurance that party membership will soar in Quebec to be naive at best. Consider: 1. No candidate except Mulcair will be interested in a general membership drive in Quebec. They will confine themselves to sell memberships to their own supporters. The Leger poll among NDP voters in Quebec put Mulcair at 50 per cent and Topp at 3. 2. There is unlikely to be a considerable drop off in the ROC as you assert owing to non-renewals. Memberships are good for one year. All of the provincial elections will have been held this fall. The federal election was in May. The BC leadership was in April. 12 months will not have passed. 3. There is considerable interest in the federal leadership which will mean that membership in the ROC is also likely to grow exponentially. With little formal organization in Quebec, it is unlikely to close the gap appreciably. Finally, where do you get the number 2400 for Quebec? The last published figure I saw was only 1690.

nicky wrote:

Consider: 1. No candidate except Mulcair will be interested in a general membership drive in Quebec. They will confine themselves to sell memberships to their own supporters. The Leger poll among NDP voters in Quebec put Mulcair at 50 per cent and Topp at 3.

I disagree that it will be in no-one else's interest to sell memberships in Quebec.

Also, the Leger poll is measuring name recognition at this stage and little else. If those are still the results 6 months from now, then Mulcair will win.

I'm not against a central membership drive in Quebec, or at least I haven't heard a good reason not to have such a drive. There may be one, but I haven't heard it.

Thanks AN for pointing out what I did in fact say about a "general" Quebec membership drive.
I think, subject to being called "silly" by Malcolm again, that all candidates will concentrate their limited resources to recruit new members where it will help them the best. I hope they will all support a general Quebec drive but I fear only Mulcair will.
So let me pose a non-confrontational question to Brian and the others (hoping OO does not think it comes from a criminal lawyer):

"Do you support a general membership drive concentrated in Quebec and, if so, how would your campaign facilitate it?"

I think it has been sufficiently established that the leadership campaigns have both the incentive and the means to be signing up LOTS of members in Quebec. If not all of them, at least the Topp campaign, which gets under the microscope the most here. [And I think it will be the campaign of any candidate that remains in serious contention at all.]

But leaving behind the histrionics of doom and horrible unfairness if the party does not get involved in membership drives... it is a fair question whether it should not happen anyway.

Practical two cents:

Normally, it would be harder to get people to join with the pure pitch that is solely "you can be a participant and participants from Quebec are vital." Easier when you can say that with "I am calling on behalf of the Booby campaign, Booby is the greatest thing since sliced bread...."

But in this case, I think the party would be on at least close to equal ground with the campaigns for natural 'hooks'.Ensuring neutrality, and the appearance of it, in the canvasers would not be as easy as people might think.