Continuation of this thread:
http://www.rabble.ca/babble/canadian-politics/how-can-liberals-be-taking...
Liberals taking votes from NDP - conundrum continued
Mon, 2009-03-30 07:56
#1
Liberals taking votes from NDP - conundrum continued
Fri, 2009-03-27 20:51
#2
The time to put the "rotten corpse" of social democracy has long since past. Let the soft NDPers flock to the Liberals, the enviros to the Greens, the organized labour to their own tred-iunionizm party, and perhaps with the socialist hangovers with NDP illusions dissolving into a class-strugglist "socialist" party.
Fri, 2009-03-27 20:59
#3
zero plus zero = zero
Fri, 2009-03-27 21:03
#4
The time to put the "rotten corpse" of social democracy has long since past....... and perhaps with the socialist hangovers with NDP illusions dissolving into a class-strugglist "socialist" party.
Ethereal.
But not fair.
The corpse of "class strugglist socialism" has been so long dead that it doesn't stink anymore.
Fri, 2009-03-27 21:24
#5
"Your strategy is plain old immiseration, Tommy, and making things worse so they can get better later has never built the left anywhere."
Well, I dissagree. Most of the programs we hold near and dear were born in the dirty 30's. And we got them without an NDP majority in Parliament--- though having provincial majorities were certainly instrumental in the battle for health care.
And, it's not a matter of making things worse. Things are already worse. And much of it at the hands of the Liberals. And, of the Conservative things that are hurting us, the Liberals seem quite content to let alone when they have a majority.
The stumbling block for the NDP to ever form a majority has been the Liberals. And it seems the only function the NDP has preformed in the political game is to rescue them from time to time.
If the NDP aims to make change through articulating what working people need, we don't even need a majority. So, let's do that. It's not a waste of time.
But, don't waste people's time by making them think the NDP wants to make change by forming a majority in Parliament-- something it really isn't intending to do when push comes to shove.
Fri, 2009-03-27 21:46
#6
The time to put the "rotten corpse" of social democracy has long since past. Let the soft NDPers flock to the Liberals,
And the Liberals are in desperate need of soft voters since their worst showing in decades last October.
Meawnhile the NDP enjoyed one of their strongest electoral performances in the party's history. More campaign funding means more votes. We'll never have Bay Street money propping us up, and neither will any truly socialist party for that matter. The NDP is the most democratic of the mainstream parties. The two old line parties' scrutineers always watch NDP votes closely on election night.
Mother Abagail said it's time to make your stand.
Sat, 2009-03-28 00:11
#7
The time to put the "rotten corpse" of social democracy has long since past....... and perhaps with the socialist hangovers with NDP illusions dissolving into a class-strugglist "socialist" party.
Ethereal.
But not fair.
The corpse of "class strugglist socialism" has been so long dead that it doesn't stink anymore.
So why all the talk of Marx, class struggle, "class warfare," and anti-capitalist politics, then? Or are you self-reflecting here as being someone on the left?
Sat, 2009-03-28 00:43
#8
"Your strategy is plain old immiseration, Tommy, and making things worse so they can get better later has never built the left anywhere."
Well, I dissagree. Most of the programs we hold near and dear were born in the dirty 30's. And we got them without an NDP majority in Parliament--- though having provincial majorities were certainly instrumental in the battle for health care.
And, it's not a matter of making things worse. Things are already worse. And much of it at the hands of the Liberals. And, of the Conservative things that are hurting us, the Liberals seem quite content to let alone when they have a majority.
The stumbling block for the NDP to ever form a majority has been the Liberals. And it seems the only function the NDP has preformed in the political game is to rescue them from time to time.
If the NDP aims to make change through articulating what working people need, we don't even need a majority. So, let's do that. It's not a waste of time.
But, don't waste people's time by making them think the NDP wants to make change by forming a majority in Parliament-- something it really isn't intending to do when push comes to shove.
1)In the Thirties, no major social progress had been made in Canada yet(pre-1935), so that point was actually a bit of a trick question. While some of those gains were made under the second Mackenzie King government, most of them didn't occur until nearly the run-up to the 1945 federal election, when the Liberals moved a bit left to hold off what looked like a huge potential CCF breakthrough(a trend that was signaled also by the great Saskatchewan victory in '44).
2)I'm not against pressure and organization from below. All I'm saying is that that pressure would have born much more fruit with the Coalition in power than with Harper having a majority. With a Harper majority, organization will still go on to maintain services on a level of pure survival, but it couldn't be about making gains.
3)The NDP had been becalmed in the polls for a long time prior to the coalition idea. The gains it made in the election were very small and the party didn't even hold its ground in some provinces. So it's not like the party would have been doing sharply better if the coalition idea had never occurred.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
Sat, 2009-03-28 16:17
#9
It's not exactly about the NDP doing sharply better in the short term, but the Liberals doing sharply worse.
The NDP wants to get elected; that's the problem. No one ever gets elected in Canada. The other party gets unelected. You just have to position yourself to be the benefactor. As long as you are focussed on being elected, you are missing the real game.
Political power is a prepositional matter. It's all about what you can do for, or to someone. The legislature or parliament is not where you get that power.
It's where you excersize it.
Any NDP strategy has to concentrate on building political power by accumulating people who it can do things for. And by being able, and seen to be able, to do things to people.
Has anyone on NDP staff even done an audit of financial contributors to the Conservative Party to see if they are in fact amoung the quick?
I bet not.
Sat, 2009-03-28 16:28
#10
Boom Boom
WRT to the title of this thread, why anyone would leave the NDP to vote Liberal in the next election is a mystery to me. Iggy is a pretentious little prick who thinks he's better than anyone else. He's even more loathsome than Harper, if that's even possible.
Sat, 2009-03-28 18:51
#11
If you watch Iggy during a scrum or interview, you get these little pauses after he thinks he's said something clever. I'm sure his thinking skips a beat just there, waiting for someone's recognition that he's such a clever boy. I think it's that which motivates Iggy Thumbscrews. Not a whole lot different from his friend, Benedict Rae. Like most politicians, they are attention junkies, and were undoubtedly annoyingly precocious children.
Harper's an idealogue. I don't doubt he was a good kid. A scarily good kid who made his bed every day, after his mother asked him to do it once.
Layton's a tougher read. I think he has very good (well practiced) superficial social skills, but underneath it all he really doesn't get people, even if he likes them very much. He's the kid who had lots of friends, but no best friend.
(chuckles)
Wonder how far off I am.
Sun, 2009-03-29 02:39
#12
Iggy apparently disowned his younger brother while both attended the same college. And I can see clear through Iggy's sneer. He's laughing at Canadians behind that stupid grin of his.
Sun, 2009-03-29 02:51
#13
He disowned his younger BROTHER? what on Earth did the lad do to merit that?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
Sun, 2009-03-29 20:52
#14
If the man ever writes his autobiography, will he call it "I, Gnatieff"?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
Sun, 2009-03-29 21:13
#15
Not sure how this character assassination - entertaining and justified as it is - seeks to solve the conundrum. It really only deepens it...!
Mon, 2009-03-30 02:07
#16
Fair enough.
I withdraw my post.
Mon, 2009-03-30 16:01
#17
Buzz Hargrove has now spoken out on the recent decline in NDP support compared to the Liberals. He thinks the NDP needs a new leader.
Former NDP activist and president of the Canadian Auto Workers union Buzz Hargrove says the New Democrats are losing ground to the Liberals because the party has lost touch with its roots, and instead focused too heavily on building leader Jack Layton's profile.
"Jack as a leader has developed a hell of a profile for himself, but I don't believe he's developed a profile for the party on the issues that are critical to Canadian families. He's assumed that if he built Jack, the party support would follow and, politics just doesn't work that way. People will vote for the people who are out front on the issues that are important to them and their families," said Mr. Hargrove, who was kicked out of the provincial Ontario and federal NDP parties after he called for tactical voting in the 2006 federal election, which included voting for Liberal candidates in ridings where they had the best chance of defeating the Conservative candidate.
***
Mr. Hargrove said that Mr. Layton erred in focusing his attacks on the Liberals both in the last election, and in 2006, and that attacking Prime Minister Stephen Harper would have better reflected the thinking of NDP supporters. He added that he doesn't think the party did enough to differentiate themselves from the Liberals.
"I think going after the Liberals was a major mistake...They felt more comfortable attacking the Liberals when the people I talked to were concerned about Harper. He would have got more mileage and more support in the country if he had of went after Harper. I also didn't think he differentiated himself and his party much from the Liberal platform either, there wasn't very much to attack, it was more about personalities than major issues."
Mr. Hargrove said he was surprised that after the last election, which was the third the NDP fought under Mr. Layton who replaced former NDP MP Alexa McDonough as leader in 2003, that people in the party were not calling for a change in leadership because though the NDP gained some seats, their results were seen to be disappointing.
"I would have thought after the election when they didn't improve their lot to any degree that someone might have surfaced saying, 'We've got to do something different with somebody else,' but that didn't happen, so it's not clear that people are pushing," he said.
Harris MacLeod and Abbas Rana, [url=http://www.hilltimes.com/html/cover_index.php?display=story&full_path=/2... loses ground, Hargrove questions why party doesn't look for a new leader,"[/url] The Hill Times, March 30, 2009.
Mon, 2009-03-30 16:04
#18
Withdrawn.
Mon, 2009-03-30 16:49
#19
Does anyone care what a senile old bat like Hargrove thinks?
Look at this passage in particular which has to win an award for incoherence:
"Mr. Hargrove said that Mr. Layton erred in focusing his attacks on the Liberals both in the last election, and in 2006, and that attacking Prime Minister Stephen Harper would have better reflected the thinking of NDP supporters. He added that he doesn't think the party did enough to differentiate themselves from the Liberals."
Earth to Buzz: In the last election, Layton and the NDP made virtually no mention whatsoever of the Liberals during the entire campaign. The whole thrust of the NDP campaign was to attack Harper and to position the NDP as the only party that is actually opposed to him and that the NDP was serious about running to win!
Earth to Buzz again: First he criticizes the NDP for supposedly attacking the Liberals in the election (horror of horrors), but then he says that the NDP didn't do enough to "differentiate itself" from the Liberals. Sorry Buzz, you can't have it both ways. Either you want the NDP to differentiate itself from the Liberals - in which case the NDP has no choice but to also criticize the inadequacy of Liberals policies or you don't.
The very fact that this whole article is largely based on the irrelevant blather of a numbskull like Hargrove makes everything else in the article irrelevant.
Mon, 2009-03-30 17:37
#20
Good quote Stockholm - Yikes!
I think the NDP has done best with clear direct policies and tends to fail when it launches in to rhetorical excercises. I have always said there is limited airplay for the NDP and the party should avoid trying to "out-cute" itself-- refrain from getting into the personal or criticising character like issues-- stick to bread and butter with detail: exactly what changes to EI are needed; what conditions should be required of the Big Three or if we can do something else with those plants; exactly what tax changes would we propose; what infrastructure should be built and how paid for; etc. etc. etc. When we get in to the standard political crap everyone is already sick of it backfires on us more than it does the other parties. Come out with a real jobs strategy, Green Economic Plan and industrial plan and keep plugging those issues and we can do well.Any digression into the sorts of politics-of-the-day stuff and this gets printed instead of the mat of our proposals and then we are not differentiated from the others. It is not about being different from the Liberals that gets us traction it is when we are able to get people to see us as different from all the others including the Cons.
Also the party really has to invest in the local grass-roots stuff- more interactive things- moderated conversation on the issues on the web- even a speakers' corner (fully moderated but public content only); a real demonstration and encouragement for people to participate; A more considered modest demeanor from the leader- no pre-judging votes and a clear path for more open consultation.
Mon, 2009-03-30 18:48
#21
Does anyone care what a senile old bat like Hargrove thinks?
Look at this passage in particular which has to win an award for incoherence:
"Mr. Hargrove said that Mr. Layton erred in focusing his attacks on the Liberals both in the last election, and in 2006, and that attacking Prime Minister Stephen Harper would have better reflected the thinking of NDP supporters. He added that he doesn't think the party did enough to differentiate themselves from the Liberals."
Earth to Buzz: In the last election, Layton and the NDP made virtually no mention whatsoever of the Liberals during the entire campaign. The whole thrust of the NDP campaign was to attack Harper and to position the NDP as the only party that is actually opposed to him and that the NDP was serious about running to win!
Earth to Buzz again: First he criticizes the NDP for supposedly attacking the Liberals in the election (horror of horrors), but then he says that the NDP didn't do enough to "differentiate itself" from the Liberals. Sorry Buzz, you can't have it both ways. Either you want the NDP to differentiate itself from the Liberals - in which case the NDP has no choice but to also criticize the inadequacy of Liberals policies or you don't.
The very fact that this whole article is largely based on the irrelevant blather of a numbskull like Hargrove makes everything else in the article irrelevant.
I think it's also noteworthy to point out that the Liberals lost far more ground to the Conservatives than the NDP did.
Mon, 2009-03-30 19:28
#22
i think that for Hargrove its all become a personal thing against Layton. Just like before that it was a personal thing of his against Alexa MacDonough. He fancies himself some big mover and shaker in the NDP and when the party leadership isn't deferential enough and doesn't bow and scrape enough before the throne of King Buzz - he picks up his toys and runs into the waiting arms of Paul Martin.
Mon, 2009-03-30 21:11
#23
Yeah, you can level a lot of charges against the NDP, but to suggest we focused too much on the Libs in '08 is just absurd.
Tue, 2009-03-31 09:31
#24
Bailing Buzz has no credibility. The going got tough and he got going. He left the union knowing the shit was going to hit the fan.
Quite Frankly the NDP did a great job in the last election campaign, and they didn't attack the LPC at all. Perhaps Buzz is senile and reliving the 2006 campaign where the LPC where attempting to run the 2004 campaign over again by attacking the NDP. Unfortuneately for the LPC the NDP had a plan in 06 to counter the LPC spin.
But in 08, Dion and his GreenShift did the LPC in all by themselves. The NDP looked like the only party capable, yes capable, of holding the CPC to account.
Unfortuneately the LPC were just that bad and Dion was that incompetent. But it had nothing to do with the NDP.
The NDPs problems soon after began when they joined with ranks with that same incompetent bumbler.
I am surprised that anyone listens to Buzz, let alone should they. There are real problems that need to be addressed, and there is no reason to listen to the leader who parachuted his ass the hell out of there, in order to avoid dealing with the real problems facing the CAW.
Funny this person has time to worry about the 4th party in the HOC. You'd think there would be alot more on his mind.
Tue, 2009-03-31 12:22
#25
I was talking to a someone fairly high in CAW leadership on the weekend, and that person had few good things to say about Buzz--- now that he's gone. Unfortunately, for the career conscious CAW activist, timely disention isn't prudent.
I wouldn't say, however that Buzz has no credibility. You can take whatever he says and figure it's what the Liberals would like the NDP to do. So, just do the opposite.
....well, it's a kind of credibility.....