2. Various factions of the NDP across Canada have been successful in getting elected, like in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It's great to have great policy and ideas like "nationalize this, nationalize that..." but if you don't have an appeal to the electorate, you can never get into power to be able to move forward your platform.
I live in one of those provinces, and it is incredibly frustrating. Despite what they use as a slogan, "Today's NDP" isn't moving forward at all. They've cut corporate taxes, have welfare policies to the right of the Chamber of Commerce, raised tuition, kept the threshold for card-check certification at the level Filmon set it to, and a whole laundry list of things which show they either aren't moving or are moving the wrong way. They know how to "appeal to the electorate", though, but that doesn't make them right and all the radicals who are pissed at them (such as myself) wrong.
You can talk about some sort of incrementalist approach, but when we're not even moving (or worse, moving in the wrong direction), I really don't have that kind of patience.