Woo! Hoo! Welcome to the Democratic Party of Canada

Yep, and we're gonna beat the pants off those Liberals next election, and just as soon as Canada's bankers instruct Steve Iggy and his brother Michael Harper when to make a move

I agree with most of what youre saying Kropotkin, and I understand your disillusionment.  I'll add that I never thought the NDP was about much more than a Parliamentary voice for presenting these concerns, and a sometimes useful vehicle for bringing more public oriented and people sensitive government to outposts of empire like BC.  Social Democracy has always been about (some) compromise with capitalism, like the union movement has, at least since Keynes, but when government was spending and building and regulating and accepting dissent, and MS media was at least sometimes siding with more progressive forces there seemed to be more hope everywhere.  I prefer the anarchistic varieties of socialism myself, seems truer to its original ideals, but I don't see much movement to make that a reality anywhere either.  Not since the cooperative and credit union ideas were spawned and eventually mainstreamed.  Mondragon remains a purely Basque region isolate, the Kibbutz worked ok but only for a few and didn't stop the greater Zionist machine, and the only truly social democratic holdouts left seem to be in Scandinavia. So whats left to look to?

Mostly I'm not quite ready to give up yet, most ND members are still on the left side somewhere and generally good people IME, and theres still some ideas that have at least a chance IMV, but I shouldn't have presumed to ask you for support, no.    I guess it'll just come down to showing others that this "take back the NDP" movement can succeed, at least in part.  If it can't then the NDP coalition won't survive and another smaller leftist formation will take its place, while the rest of the Dosanjhs and Harcourts can join their natural allies in the Liberal party and find out just how tough it is to even control the beast from within its own belly.  Re my questioning certain Islamic regimes here, I just don't see them as working towards any of the same progressive goals, beyond perhaps providing some opposition to the States in the region.  As well as a needed bogeyman to replace the Russians and Chinese.  I don't and have never supported any military intervention by western powers there, but am not quite as suspcious as others here of the home grown opposition to Tehran or their own ability to resist that crumbling "Washington consensus".  I hope that at least explains what must sometimes seem my rather peculiar contraditions at times.  There are still some socialist-leaning social democrats, but the problem isn't the democracy part its the lack of it now.  We all have our own points of no-return though, and noone else can say otherwise.

*I believe the Manitoba liberals are still running as a third party, and they'll hang in in Nova Scotia awhile no doubt, but in the end the average middle class liberal has to wake up too and see how far even they have strayed.  The NDp doesn't have to kowtow to their one section of the membership either, at the expense of most the others.

I was very agnostic about the whole idea of dropping "New" and becoming the Democratic Party of Canada - but now that I see how the idea is causing all the ideologues wearing mismatched socks to go ballistic - I figure it must be a good idea!

There's a New Party in the U.S.  Although it is not a traditional electoral party.
http://www.newparty.org/
As for the NDP, I still say Social, or Progressive, Democratic Party is the way to go.

Goods points madmax about new brunswick and newfoundland. ;)

I agree BA.

If they force a name change without a resolution and seeking of what it should be from the membership, then they are already  by their very actions, hyprocrits, as it is hardly "democratic" to do so. And for that reason alone people should flock away.

Stockholm wrote:

I was very agnostic about the whole idea of dropping "New" and becoming the Democratic Party of Canada - but now that I see how the idea is causing all the ideologues wearing mismatched socks to go ballistic - I figure it must be a good idea!

Can anyone be a New Democrat without being at least a grudging pragmatist? Ujjal and Bob are gonna love how you fling it.

Stockholm wrote:

There is no mechanism for changing the party name without a resolution passing at the convention so that is a moot point. But delegates are elected by the membership and they can vote on a new name. We don't need an OMOV national referendum on a party name - unless we want to start having the entire membership vote on every single thing.

The central headquarters is in the process of trying to gather as many unused credentials as they can for distribution by them.  Democratic my ass!!  They have phoned the President of my riding numerous times and it was more than one individual.

Being from one of the most successful NDP ridings in the country we are always wary of what the central brain trust is doing because they keep coming up with hair brained ideas.  We on the other hand just keep sending lefties to parliament election after election after election.  The central party has never won this riding the activists committed to left wing change are the people responsible for our electoral success. The common wisdom from the right of our party was that while they respected Svend for being the first openly gay politician in parliament they said he would pay dearly at the polls.  Strangely the lefties said who cares we need to be true to our principles and the people gave Svend his largest win in the election after he came out openly.  So I don't buy the fact that we have to hide our principles because Canadian voters respect integrity more than ideology.

But go ahead brain trust piss off all the activists who work on elections and see how many of your centrist liberals are willing to staff the phone banks and hand out the leaflets and provide audiences for town hall meetings because I don't know about other ridings but that is how we win here.

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

horsefeathers.  This is a typical thing done before all conventions.  Some ridings have more people that want to go than spaces and others the opposite.  There is no grand conspiracy and certainly not over something as mundane as a couple of resolutions on a potential name change. 

Cripes people need to get a grip.

I didn't say there was a grand conspiracy I questioned whether it was democratic. They can't get any from our riding because the membership at the delegation and resolution meeting raised the issue themselves and voted to only provide credentials to members from the riding.  Pooling credentials is basically a proxy strategy and more suited to a corporate model than a democratic party.

Its about being inclusive and making the convention open to as many party members as possible. If you don't like it - then i suggest you sign up as a delegate and come to the convention and argue against any resolutions you don't like.

BA is absolutely right - ths is what happens in every convention - unused credentials get redistributed so that as many people as possible who want to attend are able to do so.

IMO, "NDP" is catchier than "DP."

Stockholm wrote:

This is starting to remind me of how those ninkompoops in the so-called Socialist Caucus fought tooth and nail against having the leader elected by the membership as a whole - I guess they know that "too much democracy" would water down their already minute influence.

Way to rewrite history. LMAO  It wasn't the union movement that opposed a single member vote system it was the socialist caucus.

Don't worry Stockholm there will be no left foot soldiers remaining in the party to bother your centrist sensibilities.  They only work their butts off at elections and how dare they want to express their political opinions that don't don't advocate the third way. Begone foul spot.

Stockholm wrote:

does anyone call the Democrats in the US, the "DP"? Does anyone call the Liberals the "LP"? (if so, they might be mistaken for a slab of vinyl!)

No, but we call the New Democratic Party the NDP And I would love me a slab of vinyl right now, better than those tasteless CDs (not Christian Democrats).

The thread seems to have gone off-topic, so i will add my two cents. Kropotkin from Burnaby appears to have a highly inflated opinion of the "power" of his autonomous local riding association and their political influence on the voters in north Burnaby. The truth is, the local NDP riding association, and the local BC NDP constituency association for that matter (after all they are all the same people) are part of the problem with the NDP - may I say, they are often regarded locally as the "out in the field" faction. It's obvious to me, after reading his numerous posts on this site, local opinion may ring true.

The last federal election campaign was a lucky win for this group. Their local campaign, and their lack of cohesive community work before and during the campaign, almost resulted in a loss for the incumbent MP - he squeaked by with a 798 vote win, out of a total of 47,486 votes. In comparison, NDP candidates on all sides of that riding won by significant amounts (Vancover East won by over 15,000 votes, Burnaby-New Westminster won by almost 7,000 votes, and Vancouver-Kingsway won by more than 2,700 votes).

In the recent BC provincial election, their selection of a weak candidate virtually guaranteed this seat as a loss, in spite of intense support and hand-holding by not only the provincial party (that, IMO, spent way too much time and money trying to prop up this candidate) but by all three  provincial candidates and their campaign teams in Burnaby. The campaign in Burnaby North was severely compromised by the inability of the candidate, the Election Planning Committee and almost all of the members of the local campaign team to embrace a successful winning strategy. The preferred method of 'doing what we have always done because we alone know what's best' ruled the day.

With their over-inflated opinion of themselves, and their inability to work together with neighbouring riding and constituency associations, local labour and community organizations, and their short-sightedness towards and lack of successful outreach into the multitude of ethnic groups in Burnaby, it's only a matter of time before this long-held federal NDP seat will fall. And that is a sad thing. The local so-called 'activists' will have nobody to blame except themselves.

Maybe its time for some new people to get involved in NDP politics in north Burnaby, before it's too late. There's a need there to step into the 21st century and adapt to and embrace the change that needs to happen to continue to ensure the NDP remain strong in this community. Maybe welcome some new faces, look at some new ideas and give up the comfort of the security blanket you have wrapped around and isolated yourselves with.

Oh, we are looking to get rid of ours, not going to move them again.

Oh... read that swioll earlier and only refered to it, and others like it, as the msm is advocating it and we know how friendly they are to the NDP.

It's also a clever strategy of distracting anyone from discussing any actual policy, which I would suggest was a big part of its selection as the hot-button issue for this convention. The communications-controlled NDP is all to clever to avoid giving the media any real grist, like some embarassing or volatile policy resolutions, to chew on. At the same time, it smacks of sending a message to the party base to turn in and tune out; HQ (aka the CLC & communications wizzos) will happily decide the party platform.

In terms of what I'm heating the popcorn for, I'll be interested to see if/how the Alexa-Darrell speech rivalry plays out (the Feds put Alexa in the main line-up suggests to me that they don't fancy Dexter's moderate streak, but I could be wrong), the party core's reaction to Andrew Ference should also be amusing- I bet they won't know what to make of him (should be fun), and Ken Georgetti could, should give us the core of the NDP's upcoming economic election platform. Let's hope he's got his hand on the dial. An indication that the Federal NDP may have successfully quarantined the NDP's "moderates" or "third wayers" is the way that they booked Dexter and Doer for the same "On a Halifax Pier" event. Then again, they are the only provincial NDP leaders that have been politically successful in this economic recession. I guess their words bring comfort to the masses

Our neighbours South have the "birthers" and we have this nonsense. Is that you August?

And the L's will be referred to from here on out as simply The LOL Party

Ah! It's the Godfather Game: The NAFTA Editon.

To be in the Family, you have to take the name....

http://www.instructables.com/id/The-GodFather-Mafia-Guide/

This is NOT Tommy Douglas's party any more, and such association will not be good for Canadians. 

burnaby-bob wrote:

The last federal election campaign was a lucky win for this group. Their local campaign, and their lack of cohesive community work before and during the campaign, almost resulted in a loss for the incumbent MP.

You don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.  Bill and his staff are proactive in the community and our phone banks were staffed by a multi-ethnic group of people many of whom were there precisely because of the hard work him and his staff do in the community.  Libby in East Van is now the safest NDP seat in the house and she is on the left of the party and speaks boldly about issues like the evil war on drugs. In an election were BC voters abandened the Liberals in droves  Peter in B/NW ran against a Conservative who was less than stellar:

"Real-estate agent Sam Rakhra, the Conservative standard-bearer in Burnaby–New Westminster, has been disciplined three times by the Real Estate Council of British Columbia. His campaign spokesperson, Robin Dhir, told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that Rakhra disclosed these incidents to the Conservative party before he obtained the nomination."

Bill Siksay ran against a popular talk radio host whose show is on Chinese language radio in Burnaby.  Leung ran a campaign almost exclusively in Chinese and his Liberal opponents vote collapsed.  But those are minor considerations right?  So Bob do you work at the parties headquarters in Burnaby?  

So I'm still gonna vote for them. They cant fool me with the clever name change-o-rama. Gotta keep voters on their toes.  

The extraordinary thing about that article is that they claim that the Name Parti Democratique would "cause problems" with francophone voters - but they don't bother to actually interview anyone francophone for the piece!! If they did they would probably discover the following:

1. To the extent that the NDP is ever caught up in having "pede" as part of its acronym, its actually more like to be a problem right now since NDP in French is NPD - which is invariable "l'enn-pede" in French. A party with a name that was three words long becomes and acronym. A party that is just a one word name is almost never an acronym - that's why we never see the Liberal referred to as the LP or the PL. Of course the Parti Quebecois gets called the PQ all the time - even though it in French it sounds like P-Cul - whihc literally means "asshole party" - they don't seem to have suffered as a result. If the party name actually dropped the New/nouveau, never again would you see election signs saying "NDP" or "NPD" and instead all the branding and logos would start saying "Democrat".  

2. The expression "pede" is actually more of an expression used in France than in Quebec and on top of that in France they are always calling their parties the PS and the PC etc...

Leave it to the Star to interview a few unilingual anglos of what they think the hypothetical French translation of a party's name might or might not mean.

Stockholm wrote:

The extraordinary thing about that article is that they claim that the Name Parti Democratique would "cause problems" with francophone voters - but they don't bother to actually interview anyone francophone for the piece!! If they did they would probably discover the following:

Not quite. Let me rectify a few things.

Quote:

1. To the extent that the NDP is ever caught up in having "pede" as part of its acronym, its actually more like to be a problem right now since NDP in French is NPD - which is invariable "l'enn-pede" in French.

It's not more of a "problem" now. The sound "pé-dé", alone, corresponds to a known abbreviation that has a derogatory meaning. On the other hand, "enne-pé-dé", as a whole, does not correspond directly to any abbreviation. Further, the prefacing "N" does not translate into a readily cognizable modifier—the sound has no meaning in itself—that would cause the listener to separate it from the other two letters in such a way as to obtain a result where "pédé" would remain intelligible, only aggravated by some qualifier. In other words, the "N" obviates rather than amplifies the potential evocative meaning of the letters "PD".

Another thing: no elision is used when an acronym begins with a consonant. Thus, we say "le NPD [le enne-pé-dé]" and not "l'NPD [l'enne-pé-dé]".

Quote:

A party with a name that was three words long becomes and acronym. A party that is just a one word name is almost never an acronym

(I'm assuming here that in your second sentence, you do not count the word "parti".) You yourself contradict this assertion later on...

Quote:

- that's why we never see the Liberal referred to as the LP or the PL.

It's true that we mostly refer to "les libéraux" or "les conservateurs". In writing, however, the parties are not unfrequently referred to using their three-letter acronyms, "PLC" and "PCC" (those parties' names are officially composed of three words, unlike the Parti québécois, for instance). 

Quote:

Of course the Parti Quebecois gets called the PQ all the time - even though it in French it sounds like P-Cul - whihc literally means "asshole party"

Um, no, it doesn't "literally" mean "asshole party".

Quote:

- they don't seem to have suffered as a result. If the party name actually dropped the New/nouveau, never again would you see election signs saying "NDP" or "NPD" and instead all the branding and logos would start saying "Democrat".  

2. The expression "pede" is actually more of an expression used in France than in Quebec and on top of that in France they are always calling their parties the PS and the PC etc...

The expression probably is slightly more widespread in France, but it remains understandable to most people in Quebec.