orange crush

Having an orange crush on the NDP

The NDP are flying high. Humberto DaSilva reminds us why they deserve to.

Related rabble.ca story:

Not Rex: Orange crush

Tags:

Dividing Canadians

Trish Hennessy

| May 17, 2011

(Part two of a series)

Stephen Harper played the fear card and won, while the NDP made history by becoming the official Opposition.

Some pundits suggest this means Canada has become an ideologically polarized nation, but I say that's premature. While we may be on the way to becoming ideologically divided -- pushed in that direction by a hyper partisan, heavily ideological majority federal government -- the 2011 electoral results suggest something more primal is at play.

As I stated in yesterday's blog, the politics of fear can be exploitative, distracting and divisive. Here's how it affected the anti-Conservative choice in the 2011 federal election.

The Official (orange and pink) Opposition

Gerry Caplan

| May 6, 2011

Like so many others, my brain has been scrambled since Monday night. Too much, too fast, too unexpected to digest. Too many anomalies, too many surprises. And how do we possibly account for the appalling turnout -- barely more than boring 2008 -- given the drama of the last two weeks plus all those kids using social media, plus the high advanced poll?

Let me try to impose some order on my intellectual chaos.

Columnists

Learning and co-operation best options for tough challenges ahead

Quebec tried, but the rest of Canada couldn't pull it out of the hat.

As delighted as many of us are to be sending a historic number of NDPers to Ottawa, the fact is that this election was largely a referendum on Stephen Harper's rights-defying prison-and-punishment agenda, and he won. The Official Opposition will exercise precious little real power.

Of course, many of us disagree strongly with right-wing Tea Party politics. But resistance to the Conservatives went much deeper. Harper took so many liberties with the basic tenets of democracy and respect for Parliament that even the country's leading constitutional expert became an advocate of strategic voting (and projectdemocracy.ca) to defeat him.

Tags:

NDP Canadian politics Harper government strategic voting Federal election 2011 Election 2011 Orange Wave orange crush

Jack Layton's success is good news for Canada

Brian Topp

| May 5, 2011

The New Democratic Party first ran for office (as the CCF) in 1935 and has contested every federal election since -- three-quarters of a century of electoral history.

It is therefore not a small thing that Brad Lavigne holds the gold medal as my tribe's most electorally successful NDP national campaign director. Or that Anne McGrath co-holds that award as the most electorally successful NDP chief of staff (the Hon. Bill Knight holds the silver medal as national campaign director for 1988. Your humble blogger is the bronze winner in that role in 2008... for the time being).

Jack Layton is a man of many abilities, including his ability to attract some of the best political talent currently working in Ottawa.

Strategic voting is more important than ever

Murray Dobbin

| May 1, 2011

Analysts and activists across the country are still trying to get a serious grip on the stunning rise in the polls of Jack Layton's NDP -- almost pinching themselves in the aftermath of fear and the loathing that characterized the first weeks of the election. How is it possible that Harper could stay in striking distance of a majority -- 39% -- when almost everyday some other outrage or scandal or dirty trick was exposed in the media? And then just as dumbfounding, how, in this atmosphere of seeming political unconsciousness, could hundreds of thousands of voters across the country -- in virtually every part of the country -- suddenly turn to the NDP?