If the Greens take Victoria, should Mulcair still lead the NDP?

Despite the Greens surprising results, it is not a safe riding for the NDP. Part of the reason the NDP ran such a green candidate there is that is what it took to win the seat in the first place. Denise Savoie was known as a green, but she ran for the NDP. It was a surprise to people that Denise chose the NDP. Anderson, before Denise, was known as a green but ran as a Liberal.

The Greens have never been competitive before because it has never seemed like they could win and with EMay next door and so little on the line, that option seemed more credible. Even so, Galloway is a very weak candidate and the Greens have run a weird campaign. Throwing sewage treatment under the bridge might have been a cynical and clever calculation to win over the low tax vote in wealthier parts of the riding. It seems to have worked. Economic conservatives have thrown support to the Greens (see Calgary Centre for a similar storyline).

Should Mulcair resign? Hell no, but he does have to wear this one. I think Mulcair needs to cut out the aloofness and get his elbows dirty with the people. He hardly goes out in public without a podium to read from behind and spends all his energy in Ottawa. He's also lost the message track that Jack Layton worked so hard to develop: "imagine a leader who actually cares"

Felixr, man you nailed it with your comment above. As I have said so many times in other threads, where the hell is the NDP? I don't trust the brain trust running things. I think they think they are smarter then they actually are.

Mulcair's been running the party like he's a cabinet minister, directing ministerial aides and doing press conferences. In parliament, he has been running things like a deputy leader of the opposition. A new job requires new skills. Mulcair has got to learn how to develop a bigger shadow. Delegate. Hit the streets. Show us what you learned from Jean Charest and Jack Layton.

I think the key thing here is that being a by-election, it somewhat levels the playing field for the smaller parties, so they have more resources to throw around. The spill-over from Saanich was also a factor. In a general election, the Greens will be running a full campaign, so even assuming that Victoria is a targeted riding, they will be spreading their small resources over a much larger area. Plus the fact that (fingers crossed) should the NDP win, then Rankin gains the incumbency advantage.

felixr wrote:

Should Mulcair resign? Hell no, but he does have to wear this one. I think Mulcair needs to cut out the aloofness and get his elbows dirty with the people. He hardly goes out in public without a podium to read from behind and spends all his energy in Ottawa. He's also lost the message track that Jack Layton worked so hard to develop: "imagine a leader who actually cares"

I agree.

*Edited to add* This is also ironic since this was the opposite approach to how he approached building the party in Quebec.

In Victoria, the byelection has nothing to do with Mulcair--its all about the electorate not wanting their taxes to go up and pay for the sewer treatment plant--the Greens have Uplands (used to be Conservative voters) voting for them because Andrew Weaver has convinced them the currents will carry away the sewage and they won't have to pay more taxes.  Andrew Weaver is right wing (on his own admission) and is running for the Greens in the provincial election in Oak Bay.

Stockholm wrote:

As it turns out Rankin will win by a reasonably solid margin of about 1,300 votes. I don't think people should over-react to these things. Exactly two years ago the NDP WHILE BEING LED BY JACK LAYTON lost Winnipeg North to the Liberals in a byelection and it was regarded as an even safer NDP seat than Victoria is or was...there was lots of hand wringing and feeeting about what this meant for Jack layton's leadership etc... in the end it turnout to be quite meaningless - not only did the NDP win 103 seats just five months later - but a year later the Manitoba NDP won a massive re-election...weird things happen in byelections.

Stockholm, you argument is valid up to a point in that one obvously can't read too much into by-elections, but remember that the 2011 election may have been an anomaly.  

Up until the half-way point of the 2011 election, the Liberals were way ahead of the NDP.  It was only because of a remarkable breakthrough in the English language debate where Layton knocked out Ignatieff that the Liberals tanked & the NDP surged.  The NDP also benefitted from the collapse of the BQ.  Those events were unique to 2011 and won't necessarily be repeated again.

Every election is different.

I'm not counting anything except the numbers in the 3 ridings tonight.

Why don't we agree that all the parties had mixed results tonight?  I think that's what most of the objective commentators are going to say tomorrow.

Stockholm wrote:

I would agree that the results were mixed for all parties. The NDP did well in Durham, badly in Calgary Centre and had a bit of a near death experience in Victoria. The Libs did well in CC - but the whole story will be that Justin "blew it" and cost them the seat, plus they were demolished coming in 3rd in Durham and FOURTH in Victoria. The Tories dropped 20 points in CC and almost lost and they lost a ton of votes in Victoria - but their vote held up quite well in Durahm

Justin didn't blow anything - that was one of the stories tonight.  The comments about Alberta had no effect in Calgary Centre.  The polling numbers before and after the Justin remarks stayed the same.  Locke was about 4 or 5 points behind going into it, and that's where he finished tonight.

The story will be, as Rob Silver said tonight, that the Liberals had the best percentage of the vote they've gotten in Calgary Centre since 1968.

This is comparable to the 2010 byelections in that the NDP had to face them at a time they didn't have a tremendous amount of traction in the national polls. They also had trouble recruiting a strong candidate in Dauphin-Swan River Marquette.

Winnepeg North is/was a more solid NDP seat than Victoria. The results there were attributed to the poor provincial NDP numbers. In Victoria, the near death experience is more an indication of where economic conservatism and the protest vote pushed the Greens. In Calgary Centre, the same factors pushed the Greens up as well.

It is the wrong side of the equation for the NDP to be on when they don't seize the popular zeitgeist, when they don't really have momentum as challengers in the polls. That same populism that pushed the party over the top in Quebec in 2011 i important for the party in 2015. Mulcair's personal poll numbers are not good. They rarely have been. It is a priority for him and the party to reconnect with the public in the coming months. You can't reconnect by hiding at Board of Trade meetings and the OLO. You must visit the ridings and connect with the non-elite. It's just a requirement of the job.

As for Durham, the results are an improvement, but not nearly good enough if those are to be a headline news story for the NDP. The party had a much better candidate, and they were good for a 5% bump. How much of that is due to improvement for the party and how much is due to improvement in the candidate?

By-elections are going to be an anomaly because of low-turnout, local issues, and so on. I wouldn't read too much into it. The fact that the incumbant parties held all their ridings, I'd read even less into it.

No news here.

But agree that the NDP should be doing more to reach out to the grassroots. I appreciate the whole media-and-professional circuit that Mulcair is doing, but the best he can ever do is make them not hate us. He can't make them love us more than the two corporate-funded parties. He has to go directly to the streets.

Ken Burch wrote:

That's a good point.  It has probably hurt the party that Mulcair is so bloody obsessed with making it look "respectable", "responsible" and "safe".   Safe, respectable, responsible parties don't help put social change or economci justice into practice. People don't WANT the NDP to be  just like the old parties in any way at all.  Being "responsible" centrists in orange ties is a total waste of time.

And as to Libby...voters who put being "pro-Israel" ahead of everything else(i.e., the only sort of voters who'd really be offended by her position)aren't going to agree with the NDP on much of anything.  But there really aren't that many of that sort of voters.

Let the NDP be a "bottom-up" party, rather than a "top-down" party, and you'd see massive renewal in energy and support levels.

I'm not sure what respectable and responsible look like when the chances of limiting global heating to less than 2 degrees Celscius are slipping away, and I doubt there is a safe approach anymore.

like last election many people said NDP voters are protesting voters but now it turns Green voters are protesting voterrs....

felixr wrote:

As for Durham, the results are an improvement, but not nearly good enough if those are to be a headline news story for the NDP. The party had a much better candidate, and they were good for a 5% bump. How much of that is due to improvement for the party and how much is due to improvement in the candidate?

Let's not forget that the Conservatives had a much better candidate, too--which might have firmed up some of the "soft Tory" vote that might otherwise have drifted to O'Connor...

This isn't a disaster, we won Victoria, improved in Durham, and well Calagary is Calagary. Not too bad.

The Green thing is a quirk and it won't stand up to the test of time, and the price they payed for it is superhigh, they're street cred with many legit enviromental scientists will be shot to hell and they now have a huge bulleye on enviromental issues.

The Greens got alot less well Green and May will wear that in 2015 during the leadership debate.

We can't paniac and decide to stab the leader in the back and throw him over board every time we hit turbalance, for to do so is the Liberal way, and we've seen where that gets you.

Remember Steven Harper's first national election? Did the Tories throw him over board?

Look at Andrea Horwath, the last election was disappointing, we barely got minority status, and almost lost Trinity Spedina. Now we've won KW and even most of the Tories' I know believe Andrea will win the next provincial election.

If the Liberals hadn't tossed Dion away, they'd be governing Canada right now.

Research shows that firing leaders everytime one loses or don't meet expectations is a bad move.

These were the first elections with Mulcair as leader. Give him time to grow into the role.

Leaders aren't an ATM of elections spitting out victories on demand they're long term investments. All long term investments rise and drop in value in the short term, the goal is that they grow in value over the long term.

Mulcair has done alot of great things as official opposition leader, the cacus is well organized, effective, and united. Harper has been held to account.

Yes he has spent alot time in Ottawa, well over half the cacus was green, had a massive size increase, and key posts in the staff. Plus he had to show he has the chops in Parliament. Plus he's been hard at work boosting fundraising and enlarging the base of donors.

Also to think about the price of "if you don't go to work you don't get a promotion". That price is people expect Mulcair to be in Parliament most of the time when its in session.

Now that chain will loosen in time, and probable already has some.

As for going around to chamber of commerce, well so are Andrea Horwath and Andrian Dix. It partly to discourage capital flight, partly to fight stereotypes of the party, and partly for fundraising (people will pay to find out what to expect so they can plan ahead, business likes the security of knowing what to expect), to show the public that the NDP is business friendly, not corporate boot lickers like the other two parties, but business friendly.

As for like ability Andrea Horwath's popularity didn't grow until just after the debates I believe. Hopefully we use good ads and other opportunities to jump start this proccess.

So yes Mulcair hasn't defined himself outside Quebec enough yet, but all the attempts of the media, tories, greens, and liberals have failed everytime to stick as well.

There is still lot of work to be done, its been less then a year since Mulcair got the job, be patient, as my dad says this too shall pass. By some time in the spring things will be improving.

PS I'm looking forward to seeing a christmas time interview with the official opposition leader, a chance for the people who are unfamilar with Mulcair to see his charm.

Pss I'm far more concerned by evil Validation,errors then the outcome of these by elections, which can be best said to be so so.

Mulcair's east west position would protect BC from the embridge pipeline, so your logic is faulty here.

This post on the bielection results by Liberal Blogger Dan Shields made me LMFAO. Don't think I'd put it the way he did, but its clear who he thinks were the losers of these bilections. His point that the Liberals came in fourth in gross vote over three bielections, with the Cons, NDP, and Greens beating them is a good one and its not coming from a Dipper.

http://thewfds.blogspot.ca/2012/11/5380were-number-four.html?m=1

Brachina wrote:

Mulcair's east west position would protect BC from the embridge pipeline, so your logic is faulty here.

So you are saying that thick, much, much heavier than molasses bitumen that is transported in a pipeline mixed with toxic condensate is acceptable? Through environmentally sensitive areas, wilderness, streams, lakes, etc. in SK, MB, ON, QC and the Maritimes? And will be accepted by First Nations, environmental groups, community groups, small businesses like eco-tourism, etc. in the rest of Canada?

BTW, you are likely referring to TransCanada Pipelines's proposal to change over its under-utilized natural gas mainline from natural gas to bitumen transport. It's obviously not on the public's radar screen YET:

Quote:

TransCanada Corp. is proposing a major shift in the way oil moves across Canada, urging the oil patch to consider a massive $5.6-billion new pipeline system that would carry large volumes of western crude to refineries in Ontario, Quebec [u]and beyond[/u].

The East Coast Pipeline Project, as TransCanada has dubbed it in presentations to energy companies, could do more than supply the east with fuels made from oil sands crude. [u]It could serve as an alternative to Northern Gateway, the controversial West Coast export pipeline project from TransCanada competitor Enbridge Inc. that has faced a wall of opposition from first nations and environmental groups.[/u]

The TransCanada proposal would send 625,000 barrels a day across the country to Montreal, Quebec City and potentially Saint John, N.B., where Irving Oil Ltd. runs a large refinery. [u]Tanker exports could then also take the crude to Europe or Asia.[/u]

For TransCanada, the project would help solve two of the most pressing problems facing the energy sector today. The company’s Mainline, the principal pipeline backbone that carries natural gas to heat Ontario homes with Alberta gas, has been flowing half-empty due to weak demand. That has caused numerous problems, including huge increases in the cost of moving gas cross-country.

At the same time, oil companies – especially in the oil sands – have grown fearful of being boxed in, as export projects like Gateway and Keystone XL, the proposed TransCanada line to the Gulf Coast, stumble.

The East Coast project, described to The Globe and Mail by industry sources, would involve converting roughly 3,000 kilometres of underused natural gas pipe – the Mainline is made up of a series of parallel pipes – into oil service. It would also involve building at least 375 kilometres of new pipe from Hardisty, the Alberta oil hub, to the Mainline at Burstall, Sask., and from near Cornwall, at the other end, to Montreal. Another 220 kilometres would be required to reach Quebec City.

[u]Oil could be loaded onto ocean-going vessels either on the St. Lawrence River[/u], or destined for American refiners via Portland, Me., through a pipeline to Montreal whose flow could be reversed.

“Significant changes to the crude diet to really ramp up the volumes of [u]western-based heavier crudes in Eastern Canada is going to require some significant investment in refinery reconfiguration[/u],” said Peter Boag, president of the Canadian Petroleum Producers Institute, which represents the refining and marketing sector.

TransCanada, however, is positioning its pipeline as more than just a pan-Canadian project. [u]It sees it as a potential alternative for exports to Asia, an idea that may appear difficult since it would require sending oil much longer distances, and loading it into smaller and less efficient tankers.[/u]

But TransCanada has the advantage of using substantial existing pipe, compared to Northern Gateway, which would be all new. It has estimated that oil moving by Northern Gateway would cost $5.20 to $8.20 a barrel to get from Alberta to Shanghai. The East Coast project, TransCanada estimates, would cost $8.50 a barrel.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-a...

Tom Mulcair won the leadership race by treating it as a marathon and not a sprint. Brian Topp made the mistake of thinking he could put it away early. We should all take a lesson from this.
I got to know Tom reasonably well during the leadership race. He has impressive political skills and instincts. He is disciplined, tireless and strategic. He is formidably articulate and persuasive. These skills enabled him to win every leadership debate, overcome the leads of his opponents and win decisively despite the opposition of most of the party establishment.
Don't sell him short. Watch him in parliament or on TV or on the stump and you will be reassured that we have a real political thoroughbred as our leader. He will take Harper, May and Trudeau apart in any debate.
The Greens have the capacity to play mischief in individual seats where they can focus their resources. Remember London NC. But where are they in that seat now?
There are suggestions that the party now needs to turn sharply to the left, that it only needs to rally it's base in order to win.That is essentially the message the Tea Party is propagating as the route to Republican salvation. It is equally fallacious.

Policywonk wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..a pro pipeline stance will make people in bc very nervous. this will not go away. the bc ndp is clear about enbridge but hedging over kinder morgan not to mention pacific trails. mulcair's west east position will not go unnoticed.

I think that the provincial NDP would put Kinder Morgan and other pipelines through a stringent provincial assessment process, which would at least delay it if not preclude it, considering the assessment process would have to be developed. I'm not at all clear whether Mulcair is advocating west-east transport of conventional oil or of diluted bitumen, however I assume that such a pipeline could carry both.

..without getting into whether or not there is a safe outcome, stringent assesment or not, in this thread. the resistance is real and growing as it is knowledgeable. will it then be the position of the ndp as government to enforce eminent domain, force pipelines through the first peoples land, arrest those who oppose etc. in short will it become the spokesperson for the corporations so they can make lots of money sending oil to asia as we here in bc take most of the risk.

..the ndp, at this point, should be listening. taking things slow. intiating dialogue. educating itself. responding to real concerns instead of making statements that support pipelines or dismissing peoples fears. i remember posting an article from germany more than a year ago where a small party, to everyones surprise, took a lot of seats over the social democrates. when people want they find a way make change and the greens here represent a possible way to go when you don't have real choice.

I'm sorry Mulcair lovers, but Tom needs to get out of the Ottawa bubble and spend some time with real people. His leadership polling numbers are abysmal.

If you want to connect, you can't do it by spending all your time with mayors, the media, business clubs, and other groupings of the elite.

Some Mulcair's best press came from going to the Calgary stampede and showing he could enjoy a good debate, with real people.

Mulcair's speeches are also hit and miss. He needs more consistency. Perhaps hiring better speech writers would help.

i agree that mulcair needs to get out there more, but that's what summers are for.

Stockholm wrote:

felixr wrote:

I'm sorry Mulcair lovers, but Tom needs to get out of the Ottawa bubble and spend some time with real people. His leadership polling numbers are abysmal.

I'm not sure what numbers you are referring to...from what i have seen his approval numbers etc...are very typical for an opposition leader who has not yet had the exposure that you get once you have led a party through an actual election campaign. If you want to see really "dismal" numbers check out where Jack layton stood in the polls in 2003 when he had just become NDP leader and had not yet been through an election campaign - at that point 90% of Canadians had no idea who he was. Jack only started to get good polling numbers after FOUR federal election campaign and about $50 MILLION worth of NDP campaign expeditures from 2004-2011 to promote him to the Canadian people.

 

Rome was not built in a day!

That is mostly true. Still, Mulcair's numbers are very poor for a leader of the official opposition. Elizabeth May and Bob Rae beat him in polling on the environment. Bob Rae beats him in the Nanos leadership categories on ocassion and Bob Rae is a lame duck. Justin Trudeau, sadly, beats him on everything. The NDP have already spent a lot of money on an excellent ad buy introducing Mulcair, but nothing at all on defining him. I'm very pleased with the tight ship the NDP is running in terms of cash-on-hand and it is a good sign that fundraising has improved (although not by enough), but if Mulcair is going to keep building an election warchest (great idea) he needs to find other ways to boost his likeability and, as a broken record now, I really believe that consists in showing that he can connect with average people. We saw this during the leadership campaign: Mulcair talked about how his campaign was going to be the most fun, he stuck to the high road and was always positive. I'd like to see it more. I understand that Mulcair has taken on a monumental task in transforming the party into a Parliamentary machine, I just want to see him defined as a HOAG and connect with the people, before the opposition beats him to the punch.

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