Next Federal NDP Leader

currents wrote:

It is also pretty obvious that with Mulcairs love for balanced budgets, his admiration for Thatcher, his disdain for activist governments and his concern for the doctors who may have to pay more taxes (Imagine!) his credibility as a progressive voice is totally gone.

Hmm.  I seem to be experiencing déjà vu w/ these talking point comments.

You seem to be making a lot of excuses for Tom Mulcair.

The chance to get rid of Mulcair did not "came and went."

If it does effectively pass, it would not be this fast. And not after just a few moves from the brain trust.

Nulcair is not the issue. If there are not enough supporters and members to get together and talk about what they want [and babble is too peripheral to play a significant part in that]..... then as far as I'm concerned, its over, and any "mainstream group" can go on in control.

It is WAY bigger than "is Mulcair too right wing to expect anything from.

If we dont find a way to bypass the deliberately ossified  structure of the party, then there is no point to the party.

If Mulcair successfully circles the wagon and defines the future of the NDP on his own, it will be because the membership and activist cadre are a bunch of stunned nose pickers.

Times changed, and I think the leadership must change along with it. During minority Parliaments, I think Jack was great at rising above the fray and insisting that the minority Parliament work on issues of concern to Canadians. Harper was a bully as a Prime Minister, so I think Mulcair was exactly the kind of Opposition Leader we needed when Harper had his majority. I don't think he's the right person to take on Trudeau, simply because he tried to "mop the floor" with Trudeau during the debates, and came across as very petty, and I think Trudeau could easily charm his way out of anything Mulcair tries to throw at him.

It should be pretty obvious that Nulcair is not the issue.

And neither is Nutella.

I largely agree with you Kens, its much bigger than one person.  But if Mulcair gets a pass then any chance to reform the "ossified structure" is finished.  So far all I heard from the top bass of the NDP is that mystery as why NDP lost.  The powers that run the brain trust of the NDP are linked with the Mulcair.  They know if he goes down then they could to be next, so they will singing from the same hymn book. 

I realize the rabble is specator sport to the real action that is happening in the party.  I really hope that your right about some rumbling in the party ranks but call me cyncial.  So far I have not heard anyone in potential leadership even critical of the paltform much less Mulcair. Any hope for any cleaning up is going to bottom up.  The people at the top are careerist they will not be giving their perks and careers without a fight.   If people raise a stink mybe Mulcair can be sacfriced to appease the masses, it would be start but rot is much deeper as you suggested.

SeekingAPoliticalHome wrote:

I realize the rabble is specator sport to the real action that is happening in the party.  I really hope that your right about some rumbling in the party ranks but call me cyncial.  So far I have not heard anyone in potential leadership even critical of the paltform much less Mulcair. Any hope for any cleaning up is going to bottom up.  The people at the top are careerist they will not be giving their perks and careers without a fight.   If people raise a stink maybe Mulcair can be sacfriced to appease the masses, it would be a start but rot is much deeper as you suggested.

I would trun that around. "Starting" with knocking off Mulcair is an impossible goal. You need the ossified structure to do that, even if you avoid the trap of working on it directly. Dissent is not silenced in the NDP, it is rendered impotent at the strarting gate. Paradoxically, working directly on the strucure is the third rail for attempting to subvert it, thow it for a loss [like getting Mulcair kicked out], whatever.

I dont know how much rumbling there is "in" the party. It would be nice, but frankly, I'm long beyond caring.

But I do know this. There are more pissed off ex-cadre than there are activist cadre IN the NDP. And my experience is that most are like me- too fed up to be interested in initiating any more boulder rolling. And the great majority of us have not changed vis a vis what got us involved and kept us there for however long.

Call us a latent force to be reckoned with.

I wish you luck in reforming the party but I largely given on up on ONDP but you never know if people with your passion can do something about federal NDP maybe I'll vote NDP in 2019.  But I don't want to invest any more emontional and physical energy into either of the party branches rather I want to try some new. 

If my health keeps up(i am not sure that I live to see the 2018 ontario elections) I will be voting socialist in 2018. In my riding in 2014 we had the 4 major parties and the libertarian candidate so I felt very disappointed that I had to vote for a party did not represent my views.  I decided if I make to 2018 I will vote for a party that does represent my views.  I plan to talk to the ontario socialist party in the spring to see if I can be candidate for them in 2018 in my riding.   

KenS wrote:

But I do know this. There are more pissed off ex-cadre than there are activist cadre IN the NDP. And my experience is that most are like me- too fed up to be interested in initiating any more boulder rolling. And the great majority of us have not changed vis a vis what got us involved and kept us there for however long.

Call us a latent force to be reckoned with.

Absolutely. And there will be a reckoning. The Canadian Left deserves better than the generational policy drift and undemocratic structure of the NDP. The party will either be won back from those who led it to this place or it will be abandoned.

KenS wrote:

The NDP is already an emptier shell than people think. As in thin.

It still has no problem fending off internal threats. But that comes as no surprise when the threats are one-offs that dissapear after predictably failing.

The fact the ruling elites always win obscures what a dilapidated structure they rule over. It is a very limited number of people who cannot count on the unconditional support of that many more.

When they win [again] it is because it is no easy task to win over the many "loyal foot soldiers" who are not by nature unconditional supporters of the self recruiting ruling elite..... but who are not convinced that the epehemeral attacks on the fortress they witness amount to any kind of alternative. More "practical" than it is "cowed".

Ken, The Waffle and the NPI both failed for the very reasons you and others have stated. The difference this time is that the party was in a place it had never been before (i.e. official opposition), and so its failure will be much harder to paper over than previous "moral victories".

A superficial "consultation" process, followed by the "we have heard you and will do better" rubbish that often comes out of these self-reflections is not going to cut it.

If I'm wrong, and the party hierarchy shuts down the calls for renewal, once again, I agree that there will be an exodus of disenchanted members who will have given up on the NDP. Sadly, the NDP will have become the parrot in Monty Python's 'dead parrot sketch'.

Stockholm wrote:

I wonder how we would be reacting to the election results if the Alberta election had not happened and the NDP had NOT enjoyed what was in retrospect a "sugar high" after that win and instead went into the election where the polls were in April (ie: Liberals slightly ahead of the Tories and NDP stuck at around 22%)...it would have been a totally different campaign with totally different expectations - instead of being up in the mid 30s at writ drop, the NDP would have been in 3rd place from the get-go...and likely would have had to adopt a seemingly more "high risk strategy" to get into the game. who knows how it would have turned out. I'm just saying that Mulcair and the NDP campaign is partly being "knocked" because for a brief shining moment after Rachel Notley won in Alberta, the federal polls looked so good.

I agree 100% that in retrospect the NDP should have run a gutsier, more populist campaign and not allowed itself to be "outflanked" by the Liberals etc...but who knows if it would have made any difference. In the end, years of Tory negative attack ads against Trudeau set the bar very very low for him - and in the end Trudeau performed far better than expected and more than held his own in the debates. Maybe it wouldnt have mattered what the NDP did - most Canadians always liked the idea of liking Justin Trudeau and maybe once he showed that he actually was "ready" - nothing else was going to matter.

In the off-election period, even though the NDP was polling lower than what it got in 2011, it had a floor of around 25% in polling, and that was in spite of how unpopular Harper was and how much people liked Trudeau. In the actual election, the NDP finished below 20%, not much better than it had been pre-Orange Crush. What was all that effort that went into building the party worth?

I agree that Mulcair was the best leader who was able to damage Harper to the point of being unelectable. Harper will soon cease to be our Prime Minister. The circumstances are different. Perhaps one of the candidates from 2011 has had a chance to improve and has the potential to be a great leader. Perhaps someone else will show that (s)he has what it takes to lead the NDP, whether from inside or outside of Caucus. The NDP needs to adapt to those circumstances, and we cannot count on Liberal failure to help the NDP back because Trudeau can very easily charm his way out of whatever promises the Liberals intend to break. Mulcair tried to "mop the floor" with Trudeau, and failed.

Next.

The risk of course is that Mulcair and buddies use the year to sandbag themselves in position.

That might happen. The possibility doesnt bother me.

In other words, explain what we really have to lose, by the NDP taking substantially more risks [not the, "yes, it probably would have been better to be a (bit) bolder in this campaign"].... going more or less wherever we feel like.

It's not Mulcair, let alone his "ego"

The NDP braintrust has one playbook- fly in safely once you reach a leading position.

The fact that they just got there, or what the depth of it was, didn't matter. "Good to go."

Stockholm wrote:

I'm just saying that Mulcair and the NDP campaign is partly being "knocked" because for a brief shining moment after Rachel Notley won in Alberta, the federal polls looked so good.

You can't discount C-51. When the public mood turned against it, Mulcair looked bold and decisive, and thanks to the Liberals trying to have it both ways the NDP was clearly the anti-Harper party.

And then the campaign. LET'S SOFTEN TOM! Put him in ball pits with toddlers and teach him to smile like Mr Sardonicus. Even though, from what they had seen of him, Canadians liked "Angry Tom." (Most people were angry, too, and they weren't watching Question Period. He wasn't over-exposed.) And WE'RE NOT A RISK! Try to win over who, financial analysts and editorial boards, with balanced budgets uber alles?

Mulcair even took credit for the balanced budget pledge. I believe "That was my idea" is a direct quote, so we can't pin this winning proposition on Lavigne and McGrath.

We deserve better than this.

It was definitely C-51 that pushed the NDP into the lead briefly. It had little, if anything, to do with Notley and Alberta. Maybe in Alberta, but nowhere else. Look at the polls. The NDP went up right after C-51 became a big story, and gradually sank as people talked about it less and less. If the media had done the responsible thing and kept this all-important issue front and center the party would have done far better, instead they focused on the totally irrelevant niqab, prompting a bleed of votes from racists and a subsequent stampede to the Harper-lite party as the anti-Harper option (oh the irony). Before people jump all over me, yes I know the NDP made lots of mistakes and those mistakes made it easy for leftist voters to turn away when the time came, but the facts are still clear. The NDP rose when they took a risk for the public good, and sank again when they became timid about protecting that lead. More than anything else, the party needs to learn once and for all that what works for other parties can't work for us. The Liberals can score a big majority they don't deserve by simply looking like the least-worst option. That will never happen with the NDP. When we don't inspire, we can't succeed.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Maybe they would be forced to take a second look at why Notley won her election while Mulcair, Horwath, Dix, Chow, and Wasylycia-Leis did not.

Because she and the Alberta NDP were the only functioning alternative to a dead man walking 44 year old government?

Stockholm wrote:

I agree 100% that in retrospect the NDP should have run a gutsier, more populist campaign and not allowed itself to be "outflanked" by the Liberals etc...but who knows if it would have made any difference. In the end, years of Tory negative attack ads against Trudeau set the bar very very low for him - and in the end Trudeau performed far better than expected and more than held his own in the debates. Maybe it wouldnt have mattered what the NDP did - most Canadians always liked the idea of liking Justin Trudeau and maybe once he showed that he actually was "ready" - nothing else was going to matter.

And with that in mind, there's a very real present voting constituency to keep in mind: those who voted NDP now and likely would do so again, yet who don't exactly feel *bad* about PM Justin and all that he represents.  Not to the point where it sways said voters Lib-ward in 2019--they'd still likelier vote NDP out of principle and to keep the Grits straight--but if whatever party base deems *them* to be good-riddance ingrates, then a tailspin into AudreyAlexa single-digit oblivion awaits.  And likelier that than Sanders/Corbyn, sad to say.

Stockholm wrote:

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

It was definitely C-51 that pushed the NDP into the lead briefly. It had little, if anything, to do with Notley and Alberta. Maybe in Alberta, but nowhere else. Look at the polls. The NDP went up right after C-51 became a big story, and gradually sank as people talked about it less and less.

That is simply not true. Bill C51 became a big issue in January, February and a bit of March and the NDP might have picked up a point or two by opposing it - but right up to the very end of April the NDP was still way back in the low 20s...Bill C51 was an issue to a small group of activist civil libertarians but to about 90% of canadians it was an esoteric, incomprehensible issue. The Albereta election was may 5th and literally within one week of the election - NDP national figures skyrockteted from the low 20s to the low 30s. It had almost nothing to do with Bill C51 and everything to do with rachel Notley. I think you give Canadians far too much credit if you think that any significant number of run of the mill low information voters actually give a hoot about a  complex bill that some people say might threaten civil liberaties - maybe... 

People are projecting a lot of fantasies onto Canadian voters by believing that Bill C51 was ever a vote determining issue for more than at most 5% of the population (if that)

I'm afraid you're the one who is misremembering this. As you say, it was an issue in January for small group of activists. The general public paid it no mind whatsoever, except to be overwhelmingly in favour of it (with no idea what was in it). It was during the time it was being voted on that mainstream media started criticising it and people started to wake up and take notice (May 6th, for those with short memories. The exact same time frame you're talking about). By the time the vote passed, the public's mood had totally shifted to be overwhelmingly against it, and the NDP started reaping the rewards. Given that the vote and Notley's victory happened so close together it's hard to prove that one or the other is the bigger factor, but my personal experience was one of watching news stories about C-51 decline almost in lockstep with the NDP's numbers.

The NDP needs three way races to win. They tried to marginalize the Liberals and make it a two way race and it backfired.

In Alberta the PC's and Wildrose split the right wing vote and that is why the NDP won. In the federal election the hated Conservatives got 59.5% of the votes. There is no doubt that when one of the two right wing parties becomes a fringe group the Alberta NDP will lose most of their seats. The only hope they have to stay relevant is to institute some type of PR system.

It is sad what happened to the NDP. Around January, Tory business acquaintances were all lining up to go for NDP. Harper had to go, no question about it. Why didn't the NDP keep those voters? Then they switched to Liberal during the writ period. For a time, Mulcair's support extended into Blue Liberals/Red Tories. I asked why they liked Trudeau better than Ignatieff. The only explanation was all the Conservative ads against Trudeau. Ugly people with ugly things to say. Bad optics.

I am not blaming the unions for this at all, and I might have a year ago. I've spoken to many union people in the last 6 months about energy, trying to fight privatization, etc. As far as cleaning the planet and social justice go, they are always on the right side no matter who they choose to vote for. Perhaps, everything is strategic to them. Yet when a Quebec union endorsed the Bloc I saw the end of some kind of collective unity that the prior NDP had managed in 2011 in Quebec.

In addition, the return of Gilles Duceppe and his reasonable style brought the Bloc back to 10 seats, which is not 12, but is certainly better than 4. The NDP can fight on in Quebec, and they have as a best-case scenario a target they have reached recently. The Bloc are back to fight another day. Even the Conservatives have a foothold here as well. Quebec remains the most interesting place in the world. Stay thirsty my friends!

And that all being said, the Conservatives have seats in every province west of the Maritimes, and they will always get their vote out as we saw on the 19th of October. The Liberal vote which had been hiding in the NDP all came back, a small number of Tories swung to the Liberals, and a huge number of apathetic non-voters came out to defeat Harper.

The main cause of the Conservative Party's defeat was Conservatives themselves. There is a certain ex-journalist based in Calgary who had been running the Conservative 'social media campaign'. What this was is an attempt to get people off of Twitter and Facebook by calling them names, stalking, death threats, etc. Any time someone would demand the truth they would be called socialists and terrorists and whatnot by the ex-journalist and his fellow anonymous trolls. They were calling people crazy and deluded because they do not sexually pleasure Conservative alpha males, and much other behaviour which is beyond the Pale.

For some reason or other, the Canadians on Twitter (or the #cdnpoli I suppose you could call it) started pushing back on these anonymous Conservative twitter assholes. It got right into the whole attitude of Conservative misogyny, racism, and homophobia, which they still strongly believe in. Abusers and their abusees will still be enough to form a majority government, if the rest of Canada does not react.  

Ranting and screaming and yelling about it (as I have seen here) will not change one iota, as I hope has become patently clear here by now. 

The upcoming leadership "review" [affirmation] as set out in the Consitution is at Convention in the Spring. Only delegates vote.

It is a pro form exercise at evry Convention. It isnt really designed that way, per se. But the powers that be are happy to use it as a bulwark.

Practically, speaking Mulcair would have to get WAY more than 50% to stay. But also practically speaking, trying to unseat the Leader at Convention is a windmill tilt.

It would take a HUGE effort to dump Mulcair under those circumstances, in just 6 months. It would just be a distraction to try a serious campaign.

That said, technically the Leader is running for the job. Someone else can run against him. That offers a good bully pulpit for the next 6 months.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

The NDP needs three way races to win. They tried to marginalize the Liberals and make it a two way race and it backfired.

In Alberta the PC's and Wildrose split the right wing vote and that is why the NDP won. In the federal election the hated Conservatives got 59.5% of the votes. There is no doubt that when one of the two right wing parties becomes a fringe group the Alberta NDP will lose most of their seats. The only hope they have to stay relevant is to institute some type of PR system.

Also cf. BC, 1972 vs 1975.

What's the main reason do you think that Mulcair doesn't want to step down?

Surely he must realize that the odds are against the NDP forming government in 2019, and that it's also unlikely a 65-year old leader will he chosen as PM?