NDP-has the "move to the centre" done more harm than good?

onlinediscountanvils wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Stepping away from traditional socialism happened with the founding of the NDP!  Don't you know the NDP constitution was designed to have not only trade unions joining as affiliates but Societies from social movements as well.

Layton was a hypocrite and Mulcair is just a little further down the same road. At best they are both left liberals and neither of them have ever considered themselves a socialist.

He may have been a hypocrite and left liberal, but Layton did consider himself a socialist. From the same conversation I posted upthread:

Jack Layton wrote:

Socialist? I’m proud to call myself a socialist. I prefer it by far to democratic socialist. But I don’t go around shouting it out.

So, if that reasoning is acceptable. There should be no problem removing the word from the constitution. Therefore.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Rokossovsky wrote:

You think? I think they are at least birds of a feather. Layton very much encouraged Mulcair's advancement in the party. I don't think you can shrug him off as some kind of abberantion from the line that Layton developed.

WTF are you on about. Your use of the 'B" descriptor says alot about your understanding of social movements. I don't know about you but I have been a syndicalist ideologically forever but have still worked on behalf of NDP candidates that I thought were suitable to be my MP. I have helped elect women new comers too politics in two different provinces who were promoted to cabinet ministers in NDP governments. Federally I worked for many years on campaigns for Svend and then Bill. I have normally voted for NDP candiadtes but that was because of the candidate not the party.

I would rather send a strong voice to Ottawa to speak truth to power than to send a bunch of jelly fish to be whipped into shape by the backroom people in Ottawa. 

What part of the old "preamble" of the NDP constitution says anything about "social movements". You described the NDP as a wedding of the "social movements" and "union movement". I don't buy the idea that the term "social movement" is anything other than watering down of "socialist" talk.

"Social movement", not "Socialist movement". That is the way it looks to me.

So the question to you is still the same. What is a "social movement", and why can not the "right to life" movement not be charchaterized as a "social movement"?

Jack Layton says he can't see what the fuss is about when it comes to the party's decision to put off a decision on a proposal to scrap its constitutional commitment to "democratic socialism."

The federal NDP Leader, responding to questions at a news conference concluding this weekend's biennial convention, said few people can make sense of the terminology anyway.

"I don't use these terms. "Social Democrat? Democratic socialist. Can very many people describe the difference?"

The former professor noted that "long books" have been written on the subject : "There are whole courses that have been offered. I have taught some of these courses in the past. I have found that it is much more important to focus on the issues that matter to people."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndp-holds-on-proposal-to-re...

Really? Fascinating. When and where?

And how do social movements "by official act, undertake to accept and abide by the constitution and principles of the Party" and refrain from being "associated or identified with any other political party", such as the Liberals?

PrairieDemocrat15 wrote:

*Clap, clap, clap* I agree.

I think Mulcair's handlers need to tell him to ixnay ethay Airblay eferencesray (nix the Blair references) and talk about policy. Whenever Mulcair talks about ideology and the left-centre-right spectrum, I see the (Quebec) Liberal in him; but when he talks policy, I find myself agreeing with him (personal tax increases notwithstanding).

Even though the NDP faces no threat from the left, he does risk turning off left-wing voters with his language about the centre and Tony Blair (though, that didn't seem to hurt Layton).

On a different note, I was looking up pre-campaign polling for the 2011 election - the NDP was in much worse shape a year before the 2011 election than it is now. The party was polling around 15% and was consistently well behind in third even in BC and Sask/Manitoba. Also, the Greens were polling about 10% nation-wide and even came close to tying the NDP in a few polls. A 2010 "voter retention analysis" survey claimed the NDP had lost 45% of its vote from 2008! The point: polls are unreliable and campaigns matter.

Of course the NDP was much lower in the polls a few years ago!  They were the 4th party.  They were even behind the BQ in seat count.  They were even the 5th party for a while in the 1990's.  Now they are the Official Opposition and get a large chunk of support in Quebec, the 2nd biggest province, so you're comparing the NDP at 2 different points in its history.  You're comparing a 4th place party from pre-2011 to an Official Opposition post-2011.

What's significant is the current Liberal numbers.  It is very unusual in Canadian history for a 3rd party to consistently poll ahead (& beat in by-elections & fundraising) the Official Opposition, as well as usually placing ahead of the incumbent Prime Minister.  Broadbent did that briefly during the 1980's, and Audrey McLaughlin did for a short while in the early 1990's, but Trudeau has maintained his numbers for quite some time now.  It's also interesting that Trudeau has been able to maintain his levels of support for longer than Mulcair's brief honeymoon period in the Spring of 2012, and for longer than Dion & Ignatieff.

Btw, I'm not sure how you can say Mulcair faces no threat from the left!  What do you think Justin Trudeau represents?  You may not consider him on the left, but many voters do, and that's why he's displacing Mulcair.  Even Liz May is able to take away votes on the left from Mulcair, although because he is often so dismissive and disrepectful of her, he probably hasn't noticed that she nearly defeated him in Victoria 2 years ago.

takeitslowly wrote:

sherpa-finn wrote:

My own view on all this is that NDP members made a decision two years back, - we all knew who and what Mulcair was and is, and we chose this route to 2015.  This is no time to start beating each other up, -  the Libs and Cons will do that quite enough as we have seen in recent months. 

But it is time to start framing a program and platform around which the NDP can energize Canadians in 2015. (And a freeze on ATM fees just won't cut it.)

 

There are alot of liberals on babble just so you know. So you have to be careful who you are speaking to, because some of them DO like to see the NDP going down.

 

Anyways I do agree with you. Like I said on the other thread, the Mulcair needs to talk about democratic reform, and that means proportional representation now that Senate reform is dead.

I will agree that a campaign platform that proposes to freeze ATM fees will not cut it.  It may give a minor boost to the NDP on the first two days of a campaign.  However, gimmicky issues will fall flat through the duration of the campaign.  If Tom Mulcair wants to become the next prime minister, he needs to focus on the big picture issues.  He can campaign on economic growth with job prosperity.  He can talk about getting rid of the Temporary Foreign Worker program which takes away jobs from qualified Canadians and suppresses the wages of Canadians.  He can talk about sustainable environmental development.  Yes, that sounds sort of like an oxymoron.  That might mean offering tax credits to families to put solar panels on their homes.  I do think that he should campaign on improving Canadian democracy.  In doing so, Mr. Mulcair can offer a contrast between the autocrat Stephen Harper and a democratic Tom Mulcair who is willing to listen to Canadians.  He can offer ideas to improve democracy by proposing to change the voting system to something proportional, and abolishing the existing senate.  He does need a set of campaign policies that will attract both centrist Canadians and left-of-centre voters.

sherpa-finn wrote:

My own view on all this is that NDP members made a decision two years back, - we all knew who and what Mulcair was and is, and we chose this route to 2015.  This is no time to start beating each other up,

Au contraire.

Josh wrote: While Layton did make some tactical moves to the middle, no one, generally speaking, questioned his progressive bona fides.

Well, depends on your definition of "progressive".  But I recall no shortage of carping about handing over the reins of Canada's nominally working class party to a latte-drinking, bike-riding yuppie from Toronto with no understanding of Canada beyond the 401 corridor.

Rosskovsky: The urban-rural imbalance has even been discussed by Conservatives over the years, as crazy as that sounds. There are logistical problems which result in a huge geographical riding. Kenora-Rainy River (or whatever it is called now) has the same area as Ireland, and you pretty well have to fly around it to see everyone. In addition, you have to set up multiple constituency offices. As I recall, Howard Hampton had to have 3.

Your idea is good in principle, but as always in this country, the devil is in the details.

As I recall, the boundaries legislation requires something like an 'integral community' which at the very least is given a name. It has to overlap counties, towns, etc. If you put voters from mutually unknown communities together there is going to be a lack of coherence. What are you, politican X, going to do for the residents of Riding Y-34? There has to be some commonality of the area a politician can represent, and most importantly what citizens can feel they are part of.

This is not to say that gerrymandering does not go on. The Saskatchewan situation is pretty bad with 'fingers' of rural ridings going into the cities, squelching the urban vote. Or enlarging the area to include the suburbs like Toronto (as Mike Harris did) so guys like Lastman and Ford could win.

Then you have constitutional provisions which give certain provinces a minimum number of seats like Prince Edward Island which has 4, and a population about the same as Trinity Spadina. Do you want to be the one who tells Prince Edward Islanders they are going to lose 3 seats? Or Canadians they have to put up with an extra 600-700 MPs to give everyone deluxe P.E.I. service? You would need to move the House of Commons into the Convention Centre.

Although it is glacial, redistribution generally tends to favour areas with increased population. Activists should be more involved with boundary redistribution commissions as much evil is done there.

Gerard Di Trolio: [url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/07/canadas-third-way/]Canada’s Third Way[/url]

This move to the center has not helped the NDP’s electoral prospects. They find themselves in third place in the polls nationally, behind the Liberals in first place and the governing Conservatives.

How can the NDP’s rightward drift be reversed? Some of the NDP’s weaknesses obviously come from a weak left, and a labor movement with a confused strategy. There are signs, however, that a militant labor movement is reconstituting itself in Canada. And social movements like Idle No More and the Quebec student strike of 2012 have galvanized activists across Canada.

In these movements, the NDP has been AWOL. Mulcair did not meet with Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence during her hunger strike. The entire federal NDP remained silent during the Quebec student strike.

The broad left movements in Canada also have something to look forward to: the upcoming People’s Social Forum meeting in Ottawa this August. The goal of the PSF is to unite social movements across the country to build a broad strategic alliance against neoliberalism and colonialism in Canada.

onlinediscountanvils wrote:

Gerard Di Trolio: [url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/07/canadas-third-way/]Canada’s Third Way[/url]

This move to the center has not helped the NDP’s electoral prospects. They find themselves in third place in the polls nationally, behind the Liberals in first place and the governing Conservatives.

How can the NDP’s rightward drift be reversed? Some of the NDP’s weaknesses obviously come from a weak left, and a labor movement with a confused strategy. There are signs, however, that a militant labor movement is reconstituting itself in Canada. And social movements like Idle No More and the Quebec student strike of 2012 have galvanized activists across Canada.

In these movements, the NDP has been AWOL. Mulcair did not meet with Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence during her hunger strike. The entire federal NDP remained silent during the Quebec student strike.

The broad left movements in Canada also have something to look forward to: the upcoming People’s Social Forum meeting in Ottawa this August. The goal of the PSF is to unite social movements across the country to build a broad strategic alliance against neoliberalism and colonialism in Canada.

The third way will not be discarded until a third place finish in next year's election.  What may buffet the NDP seat total, and make the third place finish a stronger one, is becoming the default party of many in Quebec.  So its salvation may lie in geography, not ideology, such as it is.

Debater wrote:

True, although Trudeau & the Liberals are going to go heavily after Quebec, and as we've already seen, it's unwise to underestimate Justin Trudeau.  He was ahead of Mulcair last year in Quebec, including with Francophones, and he can be again if he plays his cards right and does a good job of resonating with them next year.  Trudeau is stronger in French than Mulcair, has a Francophone wife and isn't going to be giving up on Francophone Quebec, despite what some on Babble may think.

And of course if Mulcair does finish 3rd in the next election, he will have to step down as NDP leader which means that the NDP will lose the advantage of having Mulcair in Quebec in the 2019 election.

But according to what the polls are showing now, there's no reason to believe Quebecers will suddenly start to prefer Trudeau over Mulcair. The latter has 88% of Quebecers holding a positive opinion of him, while the former is only 50/50. Of course, things could potentially change by April or May 2015, October even. The polls could be skewed. But I guess those caveats only apply when it's the Liberals leading the NDP in national polls.

Debater wrote:

Mulcair's approval rating in Quebec is 57%, not 88%.  I'm not sure where you're getting that number.  And Quebecers change their minds back & forth very quickly as you may have noticed from the dramatic change in fortunes of Pauline Marois & Phillippe Couillard in this year's election.

Quebecers don't have to make their mind up right now.  They are giving Mulcair good reviews because they like his performance so far and they feel safe with him since he has been in Quebec politics for longer and they know him well.  But many of them want to be able to vote for someone who can beat Harper.  And if Mulcair continues to rank 3rd in the ROC, he risks losing support in Quebec.  On Monday night the NDP loss in Trinity-Spadina was the top news story on RDI on the 11:00 pm news with Emmanuelle Latraversse reporting in French what a big blow it was to Mulcair.

My point was, who's to say exactly what will happen? A lot could happen. Quebecers do change their minds quickly. But you and other Libs on this board seem to use that to your favor when the NDP is ahead, and when the NDP is lagging you claim that it's forever. 

Of course you've never outright SAID that. But you've suggested it by assuming that this Trudeau wave will continue into 2015 and decimate the NDP, when the Liberals often poll highly before campaigns and start to drop when the campaigns start. So far, I'm not convinced that this will be any different. For all any of us know, the reason Mulcair has been laying low is because he's formulating an actual platform, and we'll see it and how the public reacts to it in August or September. 

josh wrote:

onlinediscountanvils wrote:

Gerard Di Trolio: [url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/07/canadas-third-way/]Canada’s Third Way[/url]

This move to the center has not helped the NDP’s electoral prospects. They find themselves in third place in the polls nationally, behind the Liberals in first place and the governing Conservatives.

How can the NDP’s rightward drift be reversed? Some of the NDP’s weaknesses obviously come from a weak left, and a labor movement with a confused strategy. There are signs, however, that a militant labor movement is reconstituting itself in Canada. And social movements like Idle No More and the Quebec student strike of 2012 have galvanized activists across Canada.

In these movements, the NDP has been AWOL. Mulcair did not meet with Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence during her hunger strike. The entire federal NDP remained silent during the Quebec student strike.

The broad left movements in Canada also have something to look forward to: the upcoming People’s Social Forum meeting in Ottawa this August. The goal of the PSF is to unite social movements across the country to build a broad strategic alliance against neoliberalism and colonialism in Canada.

The third way will not be discarded until a third place finish in next year's election.  What may buffet the NDP seat total, and make the third place finish a stronger one, is becoming the default party of many in Quebec.  So its salvation may lie in geography, not ideology, such as it is.

Yet another article making a bald assertion that there has been a "lurch to the right", based entirely on the popular perception without reference to policy.

Yeah, the NDP is right-wing, because everyone says so.

The NDP is no more right wing now than it was under Jack Layton.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Rokossovsky wrote:

And how do social movements "by official act, undertake to accept and abide by the constitution and principles of the Party" and refrain from being "associated or identified with any other political party", such as the Liberals?

Its your constitution so maybe you can take a stab at explaining that.  Why can't you just say, "oh I didn't know that about the Constitution" instead of nitpicking over semantics?

The original idea 50 years ago was to try to join forces between three parts of society on the left, the socialists and social democrats in the CCF, ther trade union movement and civil movements that were immerging such as the womens movement. It never worked because of course any movement activists did not want to be allied with a rump political party when to get any progress on issues they had to ask the Liberals. The trade unions were happy to take over the party officially.

Yes the original idea was to meld together a multitude of progressive organizations in a big tent "social democratic" and quasi-Socialist party. But, as we can see, a "movement" doesn't really have an organizational structure that can be integrated into that kind of party, and this highlights the failure of Layton's "pitter-patter" about "social movements" to have any real basis in the real world of politics.

So, you still have to explain what a "social movement" is in real terms.

I hope the Liberals spend a lot of time and energy in Quebec because it will all be for nothing and I like to see them wasting their resources. I also predict they'll do poorly in BC, where the respect for the Liberal brand is low. When JT's weaknesses start becoming apparent, these places will turn away from him. The Libs will probably do better in Ontario and the maritimes, where nostalgia for a party that no longer exists can still pull votes.

Steve will be just fine. I wouldn't worry about him.

:)

That has got to be one of the stupidest pieces of commentary yet. An byelection with a 15% turnout now has national significance.

Well it's just my opinion. You can value it or not at your leisure. But I think I have good reason for these opinions. Support is strong for the NDP in Quebec and apparently rising. This is the province that knows Mulcair and Justin the best and its clear they like Mulcair better. Add to that the BQ vote which is, in all probability, still collapsing, and breaks at least 4-1 for the NDP. I just don't see much room for growth for the Liberals. The NDP are too solid. What can Justin do? As for BC, the NDP is the clear challenger to the Cons out here, and that's what people are looking for. The Libs have risen a bit since 2011 on the strength of JT's fame, but it hasn't been enough to take the NDP's place. Like I said, there isnt the same sense of tradition in voting Liberal in the west, and the provincial party will be deeply unpopular by that time. If they see no advantage in it, the people of BC wont bother clinging to the Libs. Once the campaign starts, people will see Mulcair outperforming JT and rally behind the NDP to defeat the Cons.

Rokossovsky wrote:

Shockingly, with the Trudeau lodestone weighing him down, Vaughan's popularity plummeted in this byelection, dropping from the 75% of the popular vote he received for Ward councillor in the 2010 civic election to a mere 53% of the popular vote, against a completely unknown NDPer.

Seems that Vaughan may have to hide his Turdeau connection in the real election in 2015, or find himself looking for a new job.

Is this a serious post?

Debater don't you realize all four newspapers has a bias against the NDP?

I don't see any real, solid numbers and analysis disputing what I'm saying. Just a link to the globe and mail that you cant seem to stop posting. I suppose I could try that too. Every time I have something to say I could just cast about for some pundit who agrees with me and link to them, but really all that would do would be to show that my arguments are so weak that I can't back them up with my own logic. Or your own logic, in this case. If you disagree with what I've written, then say why. If you can't say why, then just admit that your views have no merit. Don't link to pundits as if their approval somehow makes you more right. Aren't you smart enough to see that we're all here because we've realised how intellectually bankrupt and hopelessly corrupt the mainstream media is? Yes, I can easily say they are all biased against the NDP. It's a simple equation. These are media corporations and they favour the two corporate parties. It's not rocket science.

Debater wrote:

Rokossovsky wrote:

Shockingly, with the Trudeau lodestone weighing him down, Vaughan's popularity plummeted in this byelection, dropping from the 75% of the popular vote he received for Ward councillor in the 2010 civic election to a mere 53% of the popular vote, against a completely unknown NDPer.

Seems that Vaughan may have to hide his Turdeau connection in the real election in 2015, or find himself looking for a new job.

Is this a serious post?

What happened to Adam. One minute he is bragging about getting 75% of the vote share in the last civic election, and now he is at 53%, against an NDP unknown. What can be the explanation for the collapse of his local popularity. Clearly the NDP brand is strong in Trinity Spadina.

Debater wrote:

Oh, please, Terry Towel.  The NDP can't accuse every newspaper of bias. 

No but babblers on this forum feel that way.