Olivia Chow now running federally

adma wrote:

Also, how much of the kind of "Chinese community" terrytowel speaks of *remains* in Trinity-Spadina/Spadina-Fort York?  You might as well still be speaking of the Polish community on Roncesvalles as a barrier to NDP (re-)electability in Parkdale-High Park.

Another way of putting it: if the ethnic and cultural demos of a generation or two still held, Doug Ford would've done much better in said ridings.

Clearly, a substantial part of Han Dong's successful run to unseat incumbent Rosario Marchese in the last provincial election had something to do with being able to galvanize a large section of the Chinese community in Trinity Spadina behind his campaign. And this will be even more important in the upcoming election, since Spadina-Fort-York loses much of the European community in the north end of Trinity-Spadina and hands it over to University-Rosedale.

Trudeau/Dong both heavily campaigned side by side for Adam in the byelections, in the Chinese community -- that may stick.

I don't know how much influence Chow's ethnicity will have on the campaign, given her leftist identification. But, her name recognition will work for her in condoland, and there are still substantial sections "lefty-liberal" types in west of bathurst up to Ossington.

Rokossovsky has very clearly articulated some of my concerns about Olivia.

I think she may well be the strongest candidate we can field against Vaughan in an electoral sense but I would have hoped we could do better in terms of quality of candidate. I would be very keen about James Lockyer in preference to her.

I soured on Olivia when in an act of political idiocy she opposed the initial redistribution proposals a couple years back. It would have created three NDP seats in downtown Toronto. Rosedale would have been removed from Toronto Centre and grafted onto a new riding including the wealthiest sections of St Paul's and other areas to the north. It would of course be unwinnable for the NDP but it consolited the worst areas of both TC and St Paul's into one riding and in so doing gave us notional majorities in both St Pauls and TC.

But in doing so it would have attached much of the Annex into St Pauls. This would still have left Spadina safe for Olivia but she objected with the result that St Pauls is now safe for the Liberals and Rosdale is grafted n to the Annex making a very difficult new riding for the NDP in University-Rosedale. Futher consequent changes to TC now give the Liberals a small majority there.

So we went from 3 NDP seats to one thinks to Olivia's shortsightedness.

Then she committed an even worse blunder by engineering the nomination in the by-election for a candidate with no public profile and no reume of any significance. Having frozen ourt other possible canduidates she abandoned the NDP in the by-election by announcing she would remain neutral when it became apparent her chosen candidate would be trounced.

Then there was Helen Kennedy years ago but I will refrain from further comment on that fiasco.

The uninspiring mayoralty election further revealed her limts as a politican and squandered much political capital. She has shown horrible political judgement as well as a real lack of regard for the party that nutured her political carrer.

Nonetheless, should she be the candidate in S-FT I will back her as I backed her for mayor, out of a loyalty to the party, far greater than what she has shown, and with a real lack of enthusiam for her personally.

BTW here is an article where she said NO NO NO she was NOT going to run for Mayor

Asked directly if she wants to run for mayor, Chow gave a blunt “no.”

“Thank you for asking though,” she said. “I thought it was just summer idle discussion.”

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/22/olivia-chow-rules-out-running-again...

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

terrytowel wrote:

I know it is TOUGH but you have to face facts

IT'S OVER!

Why can't you accept it like everyone else here on this forum?

 socialdemocraticmiddle can you do me a favor and spread my "It's Over" quotes or more threads than just this one?

It seems too exclusive here, and needs to be spread over on multiple other threads.

Thanks sweetie. much appreciated.

Hugs & Kisses!

yes but it shouldn't be strictly on this thread, I need it spread over multiple thread.

Thanks.

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

You're already doing a great job, Terry. This was the only thread where you hadn't beaten me to it.

Olivia and the NDP thank you for your support.

Why are you thanking Olivia she hasn't even replied to this thread?

Can you get with the program? I'm with the Scarborough Chinese community now. Not the Chinese community in Trinity-Spadina anymore.

I thought you realized that.

If you are paying attention to my "It's OVER!" narrative you should of realized that

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

You're slipping Terry. First you show up to this thread without your famous "IT'S OVER" tagline. Now you're out of touch with the community in Trinity-Spadina.

Like I said I can only speak of PAST expereince living in Trinity-Spadina for 20 years. Since I don't live there anymore, I don't what is going on in terms of community meetings with the Chinese community. I'm more in tune with the Chinese community in Scarborough.

So if there was a meeting of Chinese community in Trinity-Spadina I would be unaware of it,

socialdemocraticmiddle LOL you definately have a sense of humour.

terrytowel wrote:

It also doesn't help that most Chinese read the Toronto Sun, who have countless stories of government waste. Just feeds the distrust.

Probably explains why you write in single-sentence paragraphs.

Like Joe Warmington.

Why do you write like that?

Oh, and you're proved my point: Chow-hating Chinese have voted with their feet.

So, if there's so few of them left, why do you still portray them as a threat?

Resentment?

The revenge of the squeezed-out?

Maybe you deserve Scarborough, and Scarborough deserves you.

So rather than harping on about Olivia, harp on about Rathika.

Quote:

Probably explains why you write in single-sentence paragraphs.

Like Joe Warmington.

+1

Not for the dig at terrytowel, but for speaking truth about Joe Warmington.

Remember back about 6 or 7 years ago when his little picture/icon was of him in a fedora, like he was some old timey "newsman" from the 40's?

adma wrote:

terrytowel wrote:

It also doesn't help that most Chinese read the Toronto Sun, who have countless stories of government waste. Just feeds the distrust.

Probably explains why you write in single-sentence paragraphs.

I've noticed that too. Not sure why I write in single-sentence paragraphs here at babble. I sure don't do that on other boards I visit. I think it might be the width/length of this comment box. It bigger than your average comment box. So big I think I subconscienly feel I'm going to run out of room. I know it should be the reverse.

ctrl190 wrote:

What would be the possiblity of Linda McQuaig or Jennifer Hollett bowing out - or perhaps a Toronto NDP incumbent in a much safer seat than SFY - stepping down and letting Olivia run?

ZERO

"I wouldn't underestimate the Fords. They have no shame as well as an abnormal sense of entitlement to be in top positions of power." (Misfit)

That is true. However, it doesn't take away from the reality that the left is not much different. 

"someone like her stepson Mike Layton to take down Tory and return the mayor's chair to the left" Robbie_Dee

The "left" held the Mayor's seat precisely because David Miller built a centre-left coalition. The "left" cannot win the Mayor's seat in the megacity - at least not anytime soon. Chow could not win the mayor's race running under the NDP banner. Sure, she could have likely beaten Ford in a two-way race. But who really expected that? Giambrone, Pantalone and Chow never stood a chance. The stakes were just too high for these backroom misadventures. 

I don't understand why Chow left federal poitics in the first place. The NDP was Official Opposition with their best shot ever at forming a government in 2015. She was doing a good job as an MP - often carrying the flag for issues that other MPs had reservations about - e.g. Afghanistan, US war resisters etc. Chow could have accomplished more as a federal minister than as Toronto mayor. I will still be be rooting for her although I don't share the same visceral reaction to Vaughan as many others here do. I would take Vaughan against a Harper Con in a heartbeat but that's not going to be a problem in this riding. 

Backroom politics and political dynastiies are alive and well at all levels of government and in all parties. 

Gary Shaul wrote:

I don't understand why Chow left federal poitics in the first place. The NDP was Official Opposition with their best shot ever at forming a government in 2015. She was doing a good job as an MP - often carrying the flag for issues that other MPs had reservations about - e.g. Afghanistan, US war resisters etc. Chow could have accomplished more as a federal minister than as Toronto mayor.

At the time Trudeau was riding high in the polls and the NDP was stuck in third place. The narrative back then was the NDP had no shot of winning. Then comes poll after poll after poll that showed Chow beating both Ford and Tory without even breaking a sweat. In fact the hopes was that Ford and Tory would split the vote on the right, and allow her to come up the middle.

Only problem is that Tory ran as a Liberal, attracting votes from both the left and the right. Now that the NDP is surging, I guess Olivia wants back in the game.

Maybe. She hasn't said yes, yet. My sense is that their might be a fight about it.

University-Rosedale has big CPC/LPC split. Will vote consolidate around one or the other? Hard to tell, but in byelection for Toronto Center, Tories stayed home.

By the way, this formulation is a direct result of Chow's intervention in the process to add a downtown riding.

What it does, is make NDP chances greater in more ridings if NDP is doing well, while eliminating safe seats, if NDP is not doing well.

With Vaughan, Spadina-Fort-York is the most challenging.

Keep in mind that in 2011 the NDP just had a name on the ballot in Toronto Centre and virtually no active campaign at all - and still got over 30% of the vote! Imagine if there had been a serious campaign then?

I'm right on the border myself. When I finally put in some volunteer hours, I'm honestly not sure which riding will need my help.

socialdemocraticmiddle wrote:

I'm not sure I agree about the challenge. We're using the past to predict the future, which isn't always accurate. But it's the best way we have.

No it isn't. The best way is to understand is by understanding voter dynamics and interests in the riding.

We need to look at the riding, its politics and the camps involved, Liberal, NDP and Conservative. Adam Vaughan is a challenge because he is still a popular candidate elevated to local start status, partly with the complicty of the NDP, in that they refused to challenge his "progressive" credentials, or even run a candidate against him when he was Councillor.

I am not talking about statistical analysis of past polling results. If they were that valuable, Rosario Marchese, and incumbent should have held his seat in the last provincial election, according to the metric you are using. Instead, Han Dong, a new comer completely trounced the NDP.

NDPrs have been falling over backward not to challenge Vaughan for years due to local political considerations on City Council, and so he has solidified a strong orangizational relationship to the NDP base. Indeed, Vaughan and the NDP politicos in the riding continue to have a political "friendship" even today.

Unlike Freeland or Morneau, whose relationship to the ridings in question is tenuous at best, Vaughan has strong political connections that cross party lines and embed him in the NDP core voter base. He has far more personal profile in Toronto, in comparison to the other, much weaker candidates. He is the Liberal champion of its "Cities" Agenda, proposing solutions to issues that are very attractive to progressive voters that are high on the agenda of Toronto voters trapped in miasma of catastrophic planning and funding failure in Toronto.

This has been substantively erroded by present LPC position on C51, but he still carries weight as a "progressive" voter choice attractive to swing voters, and even NDP core members.

He will be carrying the flag for the Liberals in the downtown core on these issues, from which the other candidates expect to get "urban agenda" credibilty to lift their boats.

I have always thought a Vaughan/Chow race would be 50/50, but the Liberal brain trust is doing a good job at giving the NDP better odds.

For the people who are highly in tune with politics, that's probably why Adam Vaughan can at least be competitive against Olivia Chow. They see him making those moves and treat him as a practical and progressive. So let's say, pessimistically, that the race is 50/50.

That means that the federal race will be the big tiebreaker. If the Liberals are ahead of the NDP, voters will probably pick the Liberals to stop the Conservatives. If the NDP is ahead of the Liberals, Chow will cement the win.

I think that's a pretty safe prediction.

And, because of the nature of the component old ridings and the parts thereof, you cannot judge "safety" simply through transposition.  That Spadina-Fort York "looks" so safe according to 2011 results is because it overwhelmingly consists of former Trinity-Spadina parts with only a smidgen of Toronto Centre--but that's more the wind-blown effect of Olivia's incumbency + catastrophic Liberal collapse skewing appearances upward.  Otherwise..would it even have gone NDP in 2006 or 2008; let along if you transposed the subsequent condo-boom conditions back to 2006 and 2008?  Oh, the notional NDP share would still have been *high*; but that's more because Trinity-Spadina had the Chow machine and Toronto Centre had no such thing...